Local news has been devastated. Much of it no longer exists in any viable form. In many cases, multiple publications have merged into pseudo-regional blocks, thereby obliterating much of the point of such outlets. Their digital variants are templated nonsense that’s barely a step up from low-league football sites.
And, yes, editorial bias does creep into the mix. Plenty of publications are deeply partisan. However, even there you can spot regression. The Telegraph is an excellent case in point. It’s a full-on right-wing newspaper, but it also used to be a quality publication. You might not have agreed with what was in it, but you couldn’t fault its journalism. Now, its online component is a screeching parody of its former self, like the Express for people who think they know better.
Elsewhere, even stalwarts are suffering. The Times recently had a staff cull of the people behind the news writing—the production staff. Something like half of them were left; those that remained were expected to do more work in the same time. Quality therefore slips—there’s no alternative. And when that’s news you’re talking about, errors creep in.
I should note that no-one owes any sector anything. It’s not like we owe newspapers their very survival. But we are also seeing what happens when people stop investing in news en masse (with a daily newspaper, say), how the nature of storytelling within news has to change within 24/7 news cycles on TV, and when people tend to get most of their ‘news’ from social networks and yet rarely read beyond the headlines.
