The Post-Apocalypse

116 years of journalistic tradition thrown out by ASUOP

Once upon a time, local news was the bedrock of civic engagement. That time has slipped away. Across our nation, poor and rural communities have seen the lifeblood of their towns stripped away as national investment firms buy up newspaper after newspaper in a never-ending search for profit. While profit has always been a motivating factor for owners, it was never the sole motivation. Newspapers were privately owned, sure, but the local owners of these institutions recognized the civic duty required of a newspaper owner and operator. The local paper was the nexus around which the polis congregated. The local paper informed, educated, and motivated the populace to get involved while upholding high standards of journalistic integrity. Unfortunately for small towns all across America, the investment groups that now own and operate the vast majority of our local newspapers hold no high regard for such duty. 

According to a study by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, there were 8,891 papers in our nation in 2005. In 2022, that number was down to 6,377. Also noted in the study is that in 2005, the print news industry employed around 75,000 journalists. In 2022, only 31,000 journalists remained. This means that while we collectively lost 28.7% of our papers, the United States of America lost 41.3% of our newspaper journalists. This problem, then, is twofold. Papers across the nation are struggling to stay afloat, and those papers that have managed to grab a liferaft have been forced to cut weight to avoid sinking. This dire situation has only further exasperated the investment groups' takeover of our local news industry. They buy up struggling newspapers and then rely on vertical integration to make a profit. Essentially, they pool the resources of their newspaper chains and reduce local staffing to a bare minimum. This results in what industry experts call ‘ghost papers.’ According to another report by the University of North Carolina, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 newspapers have had their newsroom staff reduced to such an extent that they can no longer provide adequate coverage of local government functions. The average newspaper now only staffs four reporters, compared to eight in 2005. Especially hard-hit areas are those with large Hispanic/Latino populations and areas relatively close to a large metropolitan area. These factors combine to create ‘news deserts,’ or areas with little to no original local reporting. 

Suppose this scenario is hitting a little too close to home for you. In that case, you may have been paying attention to the situation playing out right here in Stockton. The Record is a historic newspaper founded in 1895 as the Evening Record; Irving Martin privately owned it until 1969 when Speidel Newspapers bought it out. In 1977, Speidel Newspapers was bought out by Gannett Company, and then in 1994, The Record was purchased by Omaha World-Herald. Stay with me now, I know this is convoluted but we will get through it. In 2003, the paper was purchased by the Dow Jones Local Media Group, which owned The Record until 2013, when the parent company, News Corps, sold off Dow Jones Local Media Group to Newcastle Investment Corporation. While Newcastle owned it, The Record was operated by GateHouse Media, which subsequently filed for bankruptcy that same year. In 2019, GateHouse Media’s parent company, Fortress Investments, bought out Gannett and merged GateHouse and Gannett, keeping only the Gannett name, becoming the largest newspaper brand in the country. Fortress Investments is owned entirely by SoftBank- a massive Tokyo conglomerate. Over the course of forty years, the Stockton Record went from being a locally owned paper to one run by a massive corporate conglomerate in Japan.

The result of this series of corporate mergers and prevailing industry trends is that The Record laid off nearly a third of its reporting staff in 2017. At that point, the desertification of our local news environment was nearly complete. With a reduced workforce, The Record could no longer perform effective investigative journalism and the results were immediately apparent in local governance. While there have been a great many studies concerning the phenomenon of news deserts and ghost papers, few studies have yet to be done on what happens when desertification reaches its final stages. With its proximity to Sacramento and the Bay Area and the largest Hispanic/Latino population as a percentage of any city in the nation, Stockton has found itself in the unenviable position of being the definitive case study of a post-news world.

However, not all hope is lost. The aforementioned study by the University of North Carolina contained one more discovery that I intentionally omitted from my earlier analysis. Communities with more universities tend to have more robust local journalism. Stockton is home to the oldest university in the entire state of California.  More than that, The Pacifican was founded in 1908 and has a track record for hard-hitting investigative journalism.

 But now, when the local news environment needs us most, The Pacifican’s future is threatened. ASUOP has decided to slash funding for all independent organizations, including the Pacifican and Pacific Tiger Broadcasting, who were previously granted their own line-item within the ASUOP budget, which helped to ensure editorial independence. This decision will reduce our meager line-item budget of $15,000 this year to a grand sum of $0 in the next. Going forward, any funding provided will be at the mercy of semesterly review, at what is likely to be a greatly reduced amount. There is no guarantee of future funding should we publish something they do not approve of. 

 An in depth analysis of next year's ASUOP budget is in the works, but know this; each student at the University paid about 41 cents of their student fee last year for the services that The Pacifican provides. In other words, the Pacifican counted for 1.12% of your total yearly student fee. Now, you and I may have different opinions over whether or not The Pacifican is worthy of those 41 cents as it currently exists, but the fact remains that you likely lost 41 cents (or more) in the wash last year. Heck, I’ve definitely lost more than that to the notoriously broken vending machines in the WPC. If I had the choice between my 41 cents going into the abyss of the broken WPC vending machine complex or supporting journalism, I know which one I would choose.