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Ever since news operations became professional in their approach to journalism, from World War II on, Americans have taken for granted the ease with which they can be informed and participate in the government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Thousands of newspapers reaching every corner of America and major television networks made sure we all had the same set of facts, whether that was about the tragic consequences of the Vietnam War or corruption at the highest levels of government.

But today, the information infrastructure that helped the U.S. function so long as a working democracy has been fractured at best and decimated at worst.
While national daily newspaper circulation has been declining since the 1990s with the onslaught of “free news” on cable TV, economic developments in the last 10 years and business models have changed dramatically for the news industry.

The result is the number of newspapers in the U.S. has declined from 9,000 to 6,000 since 2005, and the number of working journalists has declined by 60%. Those appear to be daunting numbers, but there remains a silver lining.

One measure of national newspaper circulation that includes large players like the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that have extended their national digital reach, puts overall newspaper circulation rising from 32.3 million in 2019 to 42.9 million in 2022. The ability to “share” news articles on social media and websites also likely adds “invisible” circulation to the mix.

And many newspapers, including The Free Press, have expanded their news offerings online to provide much more news than in the past simply because they don’t have to spend reams of money on newsprint to provide more news.

And while newspaper corporations have cut staffs and editions, the nonprofit online news groups have been soaring. The Institution for Non-Profit News reported a 17% increase from 2021 to 2022 in the number of new nonprofit newsrooms to a total of about 315 nationwide.

Total revenue of the nonprofit sector increased 19% to more than $500 million.

Minnesota is served by at least three such nonprofit newsrooms, including Minnesota Public Radio, MinnPost and Minnesota Reformer, who regularly share their state news at no cost with other news outlets in Minnesota, including The Free Press.

Such partnerships have also been successful at filling the news void that may have been left by others going out of business. And while statehouse reporting was often the first thing cut by corporate and publicly traded news organizations, the nonprofit sector has also filled that gap. Nonprofit news organizations covering statehouses has quadrupled since 2014, according to research by the Pew Research Center.

These journalists now make up 20% of the statehouse press corps compared to just 6% eight years ago.

But clearly, many Americans get their news from unreliable fake news sites or social media, which have severely cut back on fact checkers of information that gets posted by others. At the same time, the ability of AI to mislead has been growing. The recent election in Slovakia had a false audio news report of a candidate saying he would raise beer prices and rig the election.

Reporting news is a public good and more and more a public business where subscribers and consumers will be relied upon fund the information infrastructure that is necessary to carry on our democracy of the people, by the people and for the people.

— Mankato Free Press, Jan. 3