How You're Losing an Information War You Didn't Realize You Were Fighting

I grew up in the era of the local newspaper. My town only had two thousand people, yet we were able to keep two reporters employed. They covered school sports and did regular profiles on the students and the members of the community.We even had our own cartoonist. His drawings reflected the unique humor of our town. It was fun to flip through the pages on a Sunday morning and get an idea about what was going on. Even then, I dreamed about seeing my name in print.Alas, few local papers remain. The big conglomerates have bought them all up, and now they mainly print the same stories from one consolidated source.Today, there aren’t ambitious young people who are paid to look into the discrepancies that might appear in police reports or court rulings. It concerns me that if nobody’s out there asking questions, how do we discover criminal behavior?For the sake of the greater goodThere’s a lot of nobility in writing. It’s a profession that calls to people who are willing to make sacrifices in the name of truth. I don’t think it’s an accident that Superman’s alter ego is a fixture of an old time newsroom.In the war against injustice, reporters have historically been at the front of the line. Superman doesn’t exist in the real world, but we do have heroes. They’re known as reporters.Unfortunately, it’s becoming harder and harder for a good reporter to find a place in this increasingly digital world. It’s become quite easy for one or two sources to control all narratives. We talk about “virality” but even there it’s possible for a couple individuals to cut the legs off a story.That wasn’t the case back when every community had a printing press and a dutiful editor. Perhaps we need to consider funding journalists the same way we fund libraries, public schools, and the military.Building communityMaking a name for yourself as a writer used to kind of make sense. You could start in your home town, then expand to the neighboring city. After that, you could develop some recognition in your state before moving on to neighboring states.These days, your audience is scattered throughout the world. Even if you have tens of thousands of followers, you can likely go to the local coffee shop without meeting anyone who would recognize you.That would not have been the case if you’d come up through local papers. Your coffee shop would be the epicenter of your notoriety. In fact, your writing would begin to mold the community in which you chose to reside.These days, all writers, even successful ones, feel like they’re screaming into the void. Again, it’s challenging to look across our divided landscape and not suspect that the division is by design.The first bylineI remember the first time I saw something of mine in print. It was through a local, community-owned publication. I remember getting the magazine in the mail and seeing my name. Right then, I fell in love with the process. It’s a powerful thing to know your ideas might influence the people around you.You sense the power of the pen, and that compels you to write responsibly.Throughout the years, I’ve had every kind of writing job available. You’re never paid much. It’s a calling. From the writer’s desk, you can see how quickly a malicious narrative can spread. It’s up to you to put aside your emotional response and encourage others to get their facts straight.I don’t see much of that going on these days.Following the contradictionsOnce you get started, you realize it’s not that hard to find a story. I’ve read police reports that were so full of contradictions that I knew I couldn’t print them without first making some inquiries. Any good reporter knows that if your questions are met with hostility, it means you’re onto something.Maybe it’s something really, really big. Over the years, I’ve discovered it’s difficult for people to sell a deceitful narrative.The problem with lying is that you leave clues behind. The dates don’t line up. Witnesses remember things that couldn’t have happened. Every error leads to more questions. Eventually, at the end of the line, you find the truth. It might not be pretty, but it’s what happened.We need investigative reporters to tell us the facts even when they’re ugly, especially when they’re ugly. We have to catch false narratives early to prevent the suffering of the innocent.Cutting your teeth on critical reasoningA local paper with a distribution of a couple thousand people offers a young reporter an opportunity to learn the ropes. Nobody wants to get the facts wrong, but if an inaccurate story only goes out to a couple thousand people, it limits the amount of harm.However, the reporter is likely to think it’s the end of the world. That’s good. That reporter will do better next time.That reporter then takes that knowledge to the next paper with a distribution of ten thousand, then one hundred thousand, and so on.Local papers used to offer an experience funnel that allowed reporters to hone their critical thinking skills. Their audiences gradually got larger as they got better.It was a system based on trust and merit.We need people out in the streets asking questionsIt was comforting to know that there were people in our community who had become skilled at knocking on doors and asking questions. In the old days, every now and then, some local reporter would stumble upon some stunning level of corruption.Underpaid reporters who worked in small communities often got the ball rolling on scandals that brought down governors and senators and even presidents. Woodward and Bernstein come to mind. They were two reporters who kept tugging on a thread only to find it led all the way to the White House.Perhaps it could be said that was journalism’s greatest moment. But instead of fortifying our newspapers, the response has been to pull all the teeth. It’s almost as if powerful entities don’t want an independent army of gumshoes asking questions throughout the nation.Is it profitable?These days, the demise of the local paper is usually chalked up to profit. However, I’ve already stated that writers don’t do the job to get rich. They do it out of a reverence for the truth. Writers often live at or below the poverty level. They are nourished by their calling.It’s becoming increasingly clear that profit as justification is problematic anyway. For example, for-profit healthcare means that some extremely unhealthy people will be sacrificed. It’s infrequent that we emphasize that a drive for profit without mention of ethics is both immoral and cruel.Perhaps we should consider whether or not it’s immoral and cruel not to fund local papers.The old-fashioned newsroom has long been a safeguard against corruption. It seems to me that a generation of investigative reporters who are out tirelessly asking questions and knocking on doors might be just what our country needs.A free country needs a free pressImagine if we could bring back the mechanism that allowed ambitious young people to earn a living while learning how to speak truth to power. The loss of local media means a loss of protection. There is no longer a vanguard of ethical people who care more about the truth than defending a narrative.Perhaps losing people like that has allowed the whole nation to be led astray.Some institutions are necessary for the well-being of a country even if they constitute an expense. We have libraries to store our knowledge. We have a military to protect our borders. I think it makes sense to also support an army of critical thinkers who have been trained to sniff out corruption and make sure that truth and justice always prevail.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe