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News You Can’t Use (Editorial)

2 min read

Two bits of news converged recently causing us to have some thoughts on the value of journalism.

Among them was the finding by the Pew Research Center that last year, for the first time, the newspaper industry earned more revenue from circulation than from advertising. The center estimated total advertising revenue for the newspaper industry at $8.8 billion, down 29% from 2019. It estimated total circulation revenue at $11.1 billion, compared with $11.0 billion in 2019.

For comparison’s sake, newspapers reported $49.3 billion in advertising revenue in 2006. And Pew estimated that weekday newspaper circulation was 24.3 million in 2020, compared with 57.8 million 20 years ago.

As for the number of journalists in newspaper newsrooms, it has plummeted from 74,410 in 2006, the last year that figure grew over the previous year, to 30,820 in 2020.

The other news came from the Washington Post, which reported on Sean G. Turnbull of Stillwater, Minnesota, who makes a good living — between $50,000 and $250,000 annually — by promoting conspiracy theories online, ranging from the 9/11 attacks being a “false flag” event to the coronavirus vaccine being an “experimental, biological kill shot.”

Advertisements for survival products and precious metals generate some of his revenue. Which makes sense. If you tell people that the government and the economy are going to collapse, they might want to stock up on certain items.

“Turnbull, who calls himself a ‘conspiracy researcher,’ once considered becoming a reporter,” the Post reported. “During college, he said he interned at a local news station but became disheartened by the low starting pay.” We had to smile at this.

A country whose people get their “news” from conspiracists hawking gold and silver and five-year emergency food bars is not long for self-government. We hope we’re wrong. But we aren’t.

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