How to kill a story, by Amazon

Dear Readers,

A few weeks ago, a freelance writer I know (who asked that I protect his identity) submitted an article he wrote about Amazon to an editor at a large online publication.

The article was about the ethics of being an Amazon customer, given its appalling treatment of workers. He had interviewed a Congresswoman, a business school professor, and the founder of a project whose aim is to direct people away from Amazon use.

After a number of editing rounds, both he and the editor were excited to publish the piece. But at the last minute, it was pulled from the publishing queue.

It wasn’t his editor who killed it, but rather a higher-up in the news organization. He was concerned that publishing the piece would impact Amazon’s ad spend on the publication’s website. This editor, an industry vet who has been a journalist for decades, was embarrassed and apologetic. He said it reminded him of the days when revenue from tobacco ads could kill stories about the dangers of smoking.

Advertising has always had a stranglehold on journalism. Sam Fulwood, a former journalist and researcher at the Center for American Progress, said that that back when he was a reporter in the 70s and 80s, the articles he wrote for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere fit around the advertisements - that’s how many ads there were - rather than the other way around. 

Today, as advertising dollars dry up during the pandemic, yet another wave of layoffs are hitting the news industry, from The Atlantic to Vox Media, VICE and Buzzfeed. One list that compiles job losses in the media is updated every few days, and on it there are already at least 100 smaller local news outlets that have closed down or laid off workers. 

Many of the problems with profitability in the media are a result of the rise of tech companies. Outlets like Facebook and Twitter take a disproportionate amount of the advertising revenue that used to make newspapers and other journalistic outlets viable businesses.

When so much is lost, it’s hard to crawl our way back. While advertising for a long time was the necessary evil, it’s now become journalism’s only lifeboat. That power dynamic is pretty disconcerting, as we see in the anecdote about Amazon above.

Just as concerning is what fills the vacuum left when news outlets close. With local media gone, news coverage shifts to national news, which often focuses on partisan conflict. This has been found to polarize people, politically. 

One study found that more than one in five newspapers across the country have closed in the past five years, leaving vast swaths of people across the country with no reliable source of news in their community. This is most often due to lost ad revenues. Those areas that tend to lose their local news outlets are most often areas that are already “in distress” economically, with a poorer, older, and much less educated population in comparison with counties in America that have multiple mainstream sources of news.

Ahmaud Arbery was a young black man out for a jog when he was murdered by two white men. The story went viral in the last few weeks. But his murder nearly slipped through the cracks of the media (and justice system) for one main reason: where it happened.

At one time, America had thriving local newspapers and media all over the country. Local journalists were close to the community. This meant they could follow up on tips immediately and talk to people in person about unfolding situations.

Ahmaud’s hometown of Brunswick, Georgia isn’t a news desert altogether - there is a local paper with a staff of four reporters - but it was enough of a desert that his murder never came to light. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also covers the town, but its HQ is more than 300 miles away and the Brunswick area is covered only when there’s a severe weather event. 

A tip to a New York Times food writer was what started the circuitous journey that brought a murder to public awareness.

Of course, many factors are at play in cases like Ahmaud’s. Even when we had a more comprehensive media map, stories about people of color were often ignored due to racism, and injustices left unseen. The fact that some stories can come to light through amplification on social media is helpful. But the flip side is that the tech giants that deliver most of our news in this day and age also have given a huge, un-fact-checked platform for the spread of disinformation and propaganda. 

Some journalists, in an attempt to escape the layoffs but stay true to their trade, are moving to platforms like Substack (Lioness’s own newsletter host), and trying to strike out on their own, writing newsletters funded by reader donations or subscription fees rather than advertising dollars. One former journalist, Emily Atkin, who now writes her own newsletter about climate issues, told the New York Times she was on track to gross $175,000 this year from more than 2,500 subscribers. 

Billionaire businessmen as our only hope for media doesn’t feel like it’s going to turn out well. But at the same time, what should a publication, faced with the loss of a corporation's advertising dollars that are necessary for its very survival, have done? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

What we’re reading this week...

Are we the only ones who have found that the darkness and uncertainty of these times has drawn us like a magnet to film noir? Has all this time at home led you, too, to take up spying at neighbors through rear windows as a form of human contact? This Daily Shouts piece in The New Yorker tells us why an Alfred Hitchcock film bingefest might be just what you need right now. 

Human beings are impatient creatures by nature, and we don’t deal well with uncertainty. In the past, we relied on oracles and prophets to tell us what the future held; now we rely on professional forecasters who interpret data and research. But this approach, too, is flawed - politicians and journalists pass on the information to a public anxious for clarity about the future, but footnotes are missed or numbers misread. It may be time for us to take a lesson from the superstitious past, and stop trying to predict what will happen. Instead, “we should ask only what we want to happen, and how to make it happen.”

That’s our newsletter for this week! We look forward to hearing from all of you, with any reader responses, tips, or unsung stories of your own to share. Reply to this email to get in touch!

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