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WaPo - Opinion What legacy media got right this election (gift link)
WaPo - Opinion What legacy media got right this election
We’ve made our share of mistakes, but readers of traditional media understand the stakes of this election.
By Catherine Rampell
November 5, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Two-and-a-half cheers for traditional, “legacy” news media this election.
Sure, everyone hates us. As the interwebs (and this newspaper’s owner) keep reminding me, trust in news organizations has reached all-time lows. When a major party’s presidential candidate muses about having reporters locked up or murdered, crowds cheer. Meanwhile, our audiences have been siphoned off by upstart news brands or social media.
And Lord knows we (myself included) have made our share of mistakes.
But you know what? If you had consumed all your election news this year exclusively from The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or other journalistic dinosaurs, you’d probably be well-informed. You’d have a sense of what the stakes are this election. You might even know what the candidates stand for! The same cannot be said if you instead primarily relied on TikTok influencers, random bros with podcasts or Discord streams, and Elon Musk’s X platform.
For all our faults, traditional journalists have still managed to unearth and explain what the candidates stand for and how their agendas would affect regular Americans. Readers often claim the media “won’t cover” some critical issue or other, but such kibitzers probably know about the story in question only because some hardworking journalist excavated it.
/snip
We’ve made our share of mistakes, but readers of traditional media understand the stakes of this election.
By Catherine Rampell
November 5, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Two-and-a-half cheers for traditional, “legacy” news media this election.
Sure, everyone hates us. As the interwebs (and this newspaper’s owner) keep reminding me, trust in news organizations has reached all-time lows. When a major party’s presidential candidate muses about having reporters locked up or murdered, crowds cheer. Meanwhile, our audiences have been siphoned off by upstart news brands or social media.
And Lord knows we (myself included) have made our share of mistakes.
But you know what? If you had consumed all your election news this year exclusively from The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or other journalistic dinosaurs, you’d probably be well-informed. You’d have a sense of what the stakes are this election. You might even know what the candidates stand for! The same cannot be said if you instead primarily relied on TikTok influencers, random bros with podcasts or Discord streams, and Elon Musk’s X platform.
For all our faults, traditional journalists have still managed to unearth and explain what the candidates stand for and how their agendas would affect regular Americans. Readers often claim the media “won’t cover” some critical issue or other, but such kibitzers probably know about the story in question only because some hardworking journalist excavated it.
/snip
9 replies
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