A free press (assumed to be a professional press) has long been considered to be essential for a republic, especially one which is a federation of multiple republics. Even those people who scream loudly about democracy recognize this. But this foundation of government for a free people has failed. It has declined to a point that it can no longer be trusted.

Why?

Consider the recent front page of a regional daily newspaper in South Dakota:

This is the Sunday edition, in the old days often the only paper many subscribers bought (for the comics – remember them? – and other items, such as sales flyers). There are four “front page” stories. Three of them are only sports reporting: local colleges and high schools. Only a single story on the front page provides information on perhaps the most pressing international story: the Iran War.

Indeed, a war that directly affects tens of thousands in the Rapid City Journal’s market. Many of the bombers hitting targets in Iran are based at Ellsworth Air Force Base, just east of Rapid City. Their crews, their support airmen, civilian USAF employees, USAF contractors, and their families are in the area. And thousands more people in the area have livelihoods that depend on providing materials and services to the USAF at Ellsworth.

Many other stories reporting vital news could have been on the front page. There were two major wildfires (one then 5000+ acres in the Black Hills timberland and another then 500,000 acres in the grasslands of the Nebraska Sand Hills. The same very high winds which pushed those fires also caused millions in damage to buildings, vegetation, and especially vehicles (including large numbers of commercial tractor-trailers) over the Journal’s market area. Many crimes, including shootings and homicides. Important decisions made by State and local governments.

Now, not all of the daily editions of the Journal as so bad, but the trend is obvious: sports, human interest stories, and shilling for business and academia seem to dominate over important news.

The Rapid City Journal is probably the only daily printed and online newspaper serving an area perhaps 200 miles in radius around Rapid, including about half of South Dakota, a third of Wyoming, and portions of Nebraska, North Dakota, and Montana: a permanent population of a half-million people. There are a few local, rural weekly papers but nothing that provides the level of news needed to inform citizens of regional, State, national and world issues that the Journal once provided.

The quality of its editing, writing, and reporting has been deteriorating over the past two decades. This clearly ties with the rise of alternatives, even though it (and many other daily newspapers) had successfully competed with the “instantaneous” news reporting of radio and television. But the newer alternatives, various forms of online content, have whipped it. Advertising sales, readership, and especially subscribers have plummeted. Less money means less attractive salaries for writers, editors, and support.

It is not limited to “urban” dailies, of course. Small town local weekly or twice per week newspapers have consolidated, merged, or ceased to exist. Even worse, their workforce is aging out, many staffers (and owners) being long past standard retirement age.

But tied to all this, in a vicious circle, is the quality of staffers at papers like the Journal. As in so many professions, who comes out of the professional schools is far poorer in quality than those of 40 or 50 years ago. “Reporters” are more and more accurately called “writers” who do not do the things that reporters traditionally and successfully did. All too often they seem to do little more than regurgitate press releases and television news stories.

The promotion and availability of AI has actually made this worse. It is often obvious just from a short reading of an article that it was written by a program, not by a human. Both online and in hard copy.

Alternative media is also showing signs of decline, for many of the same reasons, but for one last one. The lack of trust in what is written, read, and even pictured in stories and articles has grown and is growing more.

We also should point out that the Founding Fathers, 250 years ago, had poorer quality sources of information and a less professional Press, yet were able to establish a stable republic. To say nothing of technology and speed of distribution. But the difference is stark: Americans did not have governments that tried to control every breathing minute of our lives, and Americans did not have the kind of worldwide markets that we have and need to know about today. Worldwide markets and economy, we submit, are good; powerful and constantly-meddling government, we believe, is very bad.

All this means a free press is even more critical today than ever. Even while it is declining to the point of disappearing. Truly independent and objective, not biased, reporting and publishing are needed, and we must seek to establish such outlets.