05/13/2025

The Death of the Daily Newspaper Imperils our Civic Infrastructure

Unglamorous, boring stories once formed the backbone of civic life

Think of the thrilling sequences you’ve seen in the great journalism films: Bob Woodward huddling with Deep Throat in the parking garage in "All The President's Men," for example, or Hildy Johnson hiding her key source, an escaped convict, in a rolltop newsroom desk in "His Girl Friday."

Most days, my first newspaper job looked nothing like that.

It was with The Citizen, a 200-year-old newspaper covering the largely rural area around Auburn, New York, halfway between Rochester and Syracuse. When I was hired there in 2010 straight out of journalism school, the metro desk had five reporters, each with a tightly defined beat. Mine was Cayuga County government.

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