So what are we going to do about it?
By Lisa Johnson
May 2025 marks my 45th year as a journalist.
But 44 of those years have been spent as a reporter, anchor, and news show host on television and radio, so when the West Central Initiative announced they were hosting a series of regional community events about local journalism last month, I couldn’t wait to go.
The centerpiece of the events was a 2024 film called “ Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink .” It tells the story of hedge fund Alden Global Capital and how they’ve been buying up newspapers all over the country and gutting them, and the journalists who are fighting back.
A lot of the challenges depicted in the film I’d seen played out in various stations over the years, but some crises came from different causes, even though they manifested similar effects.
When I started as a Fargo television reporter in 1980, each reporter in the newsroom — I think there were around five — was assigned a photographer to cover stories. That meant two journalists were concentrating on telling each story through words and visuals. I was the youngest, as a part-timer and college student, and the other reporters and photographers were in their 30s and 40s at the time. That meant that, from my photographer to my co-workers to my news director, I was surrounded by more experienced journalists, mentors, who could and did keep an eye on me. Advertising revenue shortfalls, changes in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, and even the end of the Fairness Doctrine effected dramatic changes in small market local television. Now reporters are expected to be “multimedia journalists,” shooting their own stories as well as reporting them. In addition to the fractured concentration required to work that way, at least one young woman I know of confessed to being scared to death covering some stories on her own late at night.
These mentors not only made me a better journalist, they had my back when I messed up. I went to an interview with a North Dakota Senator once, and I was woefully unprepared. He called the station and demanded I be fired afterward. Not only did my news director (who was an experienced journalist) have my back, he took me to task and helped me prepare never to make that mistake again. In many of the smaller-market television newsrooms, the news directors are barely in their 30s. I wasn’t a horrible journalist when I was in my 30s, but I learned so much about getting along with people, about best practices, about my community, that I don’t think I would have been news director material until I was in my 40s or 50s. People that age are being fired, and with them, their institutional knowledge, because they cost more than a reporter just out of college. Someone in the “Stripped for Parts” documentary talked about the need for “people with the fundamental skills” to be journalists, and those people are being phased out because they’re not “cost-effective.”
I worked in three- and four-person radio newsrooms until 1991 and now those, in commercial radio, are gone as well. If you’re lucky, there’s one person, and frequently they’re supplying at least two stations, if not more. There are only so many hours one person can work (especially for commercial radio wages), and again, as advertising revenues have dwindled and other, paid programming has become more profitable, news just doesn’t make enough money for commercial stations to maintain, no matter how desperately it might be needed in a community.
What it means is that decisions are being made, behind your back, about what you should know and what you don’t need to know. Broadcast content that delivers money to stations is what you’re being served, and the news — the information that you need is disappearing without you’re even being aware of what’s going on. The “Stripped for Parts” film also made reference to newspapers “delivering wide audiences to advertisers instead of serving the public.” We as community members, despite our right to be informed, aren’t even part of the equation for many newspapers and broadcast stations any more.
As these market challenges are gutting broadcast and print journalism, there is more and more conversation about the possibility of moving community journalism to the public broadcasting model, supported by a small amount of government funding but also by the communities themselves. I noted this with interest, having worked in public radio for about 34 of those 45 years. It’s something to think about. Journalism is one of the few callings singled out in the United States Constitution, specifically (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”) for its vital role in a functioning democracy, and it seems obvious that whatever we’re doing now isn’t working well enough.
“It’s Our Turn” is a weekly column that rotates among members of the Echo Press editorial staff.
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STRIPPED FOR PARTS 