Why We Still Need Mainstream Media

I’ve been a big advocate for years of de-corporatizing journalism in this country. But…

Still think having it become more about who’s reporting a story, rather than what publication is important and is happening and will happen even more. Even if that reporting ends up being independently crowd-sourced, or Substacked, or entirely Tweeted, or here on Medium or wherever. By and large, that’s already how I consume most of my news.

It’s also, I think, how local news, now that scores of local newspapers are gone, will survive and revive.

But often enough, I’m still reminded why old school, ad driven, big budget news organizations do have leverage that results in a quality or at least type of reporting that couldn’t be equally replicated elsewhere. Yes, anyone these days can work up a piece on, for instance, a Trump rally that he’s blasting all over the place, so we don’t really need them for that. Yet, some of their other enterprise reporting still often results in work of incalculable value.

For some reason, late last week I was thinking about my first big break in the news business: an investigation into penny stock brokers. This was at a major news organization that remains major to this day. My boss gave me free reign to pursue the story: no daily…