Saving and rebuilding America’s local free press system | Frank Blethen

On May 4^th it was my privilege to keynote a very special event in Brussels planned and hosted by the United States Ambassador to the European Union, Mark Gitenstein.

Mark, with degrees from Duke and Georgetown Law School, has had an illustrious Washington, D.C., legal and policy career.

From 1981-1987 he served as minority chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, serving under then Sen. Joe Biden. In 2009 Gitenstein was appointed ambassador to Romania, having been nominated by President Barack Obama. On December 18, 2021, he was confirmed as the new ambassador to the EU after being nominated by President Biden.

Before his current appointment, Gitenstein and his wife, Libby, moved to Seattle to be close to their grandchild. They kept their place in Seattle and will return when his EU term is up.

I met Mark when he attended a major Save the Free Press meeting in Seattle which The Seattle Times hosted. He quickly grasped our nation’s free press crisis.

As ambassador to the EU, he has embraced saving and strengthening the European free press as an important initiative. It is also something we as Americans need to be aware of. Just like in America, a strong free press is critical to democracy in the EU.

Here is the speech I delivered in Brussels:

Thank you, Ambassador Gitenstein, for inviting me, and for your awareness of how fragile democracies are becoming as the free and independent press struggles to survive.  

This has become a critical issue in America, once the home to the world’s strongest democracy, a democracy brilliantly based on strong, local self-governance and citizen engagement.

Local civic engagement, created by trusted independent local newspapers, is what created our national passion for democracy.

In America today, there are three causes driving the collapse of our trusted local free press system:

• The loss of local newspaper stewardships to absentee financial mercenaries who have massively disinvested in local journalism and journalism staffs.
• The monopolization of digital advertising by Big Tech. This illegal monopoly has destroyed local newspapers’ dominant revenue stream.
• The inexcusable failure of successive presidents, congressional leaders and regulatory agencies to deal with the loss of local newspapers to the absentee financial mercenaries.  

America’s civic fault lines are deteriorating. Civility has not been this bad since our Civil War in the 1860s.

It is ironic this demise has not been driven by political disruption, but rather by American capitalism run amok. Capitalism is destroying our once trusted local newspaper system while enabling unfettered and irresponsible social media and embracing destructive digital advertising monopolies.

Our founders built the American democracy on four pillars:

Localism: A national system of independent, local newspaper stewardships as the foundation for robust self-governing communities. Local engagement which would fuel national support for American democracy.

Subsidization: Local newspapers would be subsidized to ensure an informed and engaged citizenry. To foster engagement, the Founders created postal delivery as the neutral subsidy to deliver local newspapers.

Literacy: Increased literacy was also necessary for self-government to thrive. Hence, the Founders doubled down on federal investment in common local schools.

Freedom of the press: To protect their news system they enshrined freedom of the press in the U.S. Constitution.

The only business mentioned in the document, the press system was intended to always have local stewardship, and never to become part of non-local financial investors’ portfolios to plunder and destroy.        

Trust and localism  

Civic trust and local engagement go hand in hand.

Consistently, local newspapers have been the public’s most trusted source of news and information.

It is human nature to trust local newspapers because we know, or are familiar with, the local journalists and local owners.

Even though half the country has become a news desert or place with ghost newspapers, people still cite their local newspapers as their most trusted source of information.

To restore trust, local civility and strong local governance, America needs to rebuild its once vaunted system of local newspaper stewardships.

The downward spiral of trust and engagement

The downward spiral of trust began in the 1960s when Congress created a confiscatory death tax rate of 70% on all family business assets, including family newspapers.

Local newspapers’ family stewardships could not afford to pass their papers on, so they began selling to outside financial opportunists.

It took almost 40 years for the acquiring Wall Street surrogates to destroy our once-vaunted local free press system and give rise to an increasingly divisive country.

The last two decades have been particularly bad. Nationally during this period, we lost 58% (43,600) of our newsroom journalists. 

The death knell for local newspapers has been Google’s illegal monopolizing of digital advertising. That advertising had been the life blood of America’s local newspaper system.

Saving and rebuilding America’s local free press system

Everyone is looking for new revenue sources.

Philanthropy and non-profits are the darling of the moment.

They do have an important role to play but they are not going to save the free press.

In Seattle we are truly fortunate to have some strong foundations and many individuals and corporations supporting our nationally unique Public Service Journalism Program.

However, we are an anomaly.

There is not enough philanthropy to fund and sustain local newspaper journalists needed across the country.      

For our democracy to survive and thrive, we need to correct the systemic problems and make sure our rural areas and low-income urban areas are served.

We cannot accept as normal the news deserts and ghost newspapers which are being created.  

The steps to redemption are clear. The willingness to act is unclear.

While some of the solutions may be unique to the U.S., the principles are useful to consider:

• Re-establish local newspaper control and stewardship by requiring absentee financial investors to divest to local families or groups.

• End Big Tech’s debilitating monopoly of digital advertising.

• Exempt local family newspapers from federal and state death taxes.

• Allow individual and corporate donations for public service journalism to be paid directly to local newspapers and not taxed.

• Create a federal fund and/or state funds for newspapers to provide impoverished neighborhoods with free local print and digital subscriptions.

• Create a fund to provide grants to local communities creating startup newspapers where news deserts and ghost newspaper exist.

• Recreate the postal delivery subsidy, especially in rural areas.
• Create civic literacy centers to teach low-income communities how to use both digital and print newspapers.