Journalism’s Slow Death Threatens Democracy

The public’s love-hate relationship with the media has tipped toward just hate in recent years, but professional news media, especially local news, are foundational to democracy. America’s constitutional framers took the media’s role as informers and educators of the public so seriously, they not only carved out freedom of the press in the Bill of Rights, but also subsidized the circulation of periodicals in the newborn republic, a federal practice that continued until relatively recently. The news business’s slow death spiral should alarm us across political divides.