PLEASE, DROP THE PAY WALL
Give America The Vital Info It Needs For November
A Momentous Week
Don’t let my understated adjective downplay what we saw unfold from 6:00PM Saturday, July 13, to what is still ahead as Joe Biden comes to grips with his un-electability.
The Mad King came within a centimeter of death by AR15 on live TV… MAGA had its Woodstock… the Christian Nationalists raptured their messianic Satan… the death rattles of country club Republicans reverberated across Milwaukee. For my very few MAGA acquaintances, the orgasm of a coming landslide victory is almost too miraculous for even them to believe.
The Democrats are, well, being Democrats. Instead of decisively and strongly withdrawing the nomination of an almost certain loser, they’re doing the drip, drip and the whine, whine, and the OMG, OMG! Biden CANNOT win. So quit talking about the polls and the backstabbing and the shielding him from embarrassment. PULL THE FREAKING NOMINATION!
Finally, from my colleagues in the news media, these uniquely American moments, potentially as impactful as Gettysburg, have produced some of the best analysis and writing I’ve ever read. Truly, I don’t think the ground level reporting and the opinion columns have ever been better. FINALLY, these journalist are capturing what is driving American voters to pick a wannabe dictator over a democracy.
Except, huge sections of America can’t read their work…
They’re locked out, blocked by paywalls. Whether these Americans agree or disagree with the writers and the mastheads, they cannot access this essential journalism.
While I completely understand why every entity from The New York Times to The Bulwark to The Wall Street Journal to The Atlantic NEEDS us to pay for their reporting, a whole bunch of folks can’t shell out $500+ a year to do so.
What to do? Drop the paywalls from now through inauguration day.
One Point Of “UNITY”
Both MAGA and Anti-MAGA are convinced their opponents are what stands in the way of democracy. For MAGA, Biden represents American Carnage, stolen elections, criminal immigrants, anti-Christian Leftists, “woke” radicals, and weaponized justice. For Anti-MAGA, the Mad King means codifying racism and misogyny, women losing reproductive healthcare, militant Christianity as national religion, and in the West Wing, a vile, lying, narcissist and his enabling thugs.
Yes, these are extremist feelings. I believe they could be filtered by learning more about the people with whom each of us disagree, by READING and LISTENING to learned journalists and experts who’ve taken the time to do what we all can’t, truly study these opposing movements.
Two Examples….
…from my own reading this week.
Ezra Klein in the New York Times (paywall) on J.D. Vance’s appeal to those left behind by a modern economy… “One thing to understand about Vance is that he’s not just a convert to Trumpism. He’s a convert to something that’s called national conservatism. And that whole back part of the speech, which, if you listen to it, he talks about when he proposed to his wife, he had law school debt and a cemetery plot in Kentucky. And in this town, he’s talking about…is that, to them, America is not a creedal nation that asks for the whole world’s huddled, hungry, tired, and poor. America is a land. They are its people. It is their land. They own it. And they will die to defend it.”
Aha Moment for me: I know those people. Grew up with them in a now decimated steel town leveled by globalism and abandoned by Democrats and Republicans. I learned with them at West Virginia University. I speak with them when I visit home twice a year. Begrudgingly, I understand, though do not accept, their points. I can see their pain. It’s real.
Jonathan Blitzer in The New Yorker (paywall) on the money and people behind Project 2025:
“American Moment… was correcting the ‘injustice; of the fact that, for the first few years of Trump’s term, the views of such young people were ‘artificially suppressed’ in Washington.
‘The way that the Trump legacy will be immortal, the way that Trump himself will be immortal, is if there’s a corresponding generation of people that are drawn to politics based on his vision,’ Sharma said. Some conservative ideologues tend to see Trump as a wild but ultimately necessary means to an end.
In Sharma’s view, Trump is the ‘alpha and the omega of the conservative movement.’ He told me, ‘The only reason these opportunities exist is because Trump ran and won. The only reason these opportunities exist today is because Trump hasn’t left the scene.’”
Aha Moment for me: American Moment, a non-profit, is kind of a training camp for ultra-loyal Trump acolytes who, if he wins, will crush democracy. Saurabh Sharma is its 26-year old president.
Blitzer’s piece revealed the Nazi-like bureaucracy driving the theology of MAGA. He affirmed the Mad King is a figurehead, not the brains, of this extremely dangerous movement.
But, unless you’ve paid the toll, you can’t read these stories easily. They’re locked up.
Please, Drop The Paywall
So, I’m respectfully asking – The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Bulwark, Bloomberg News, The Nation…any national or local agenda-setting media no matter their political leanings – DROP THE PAYWALL. Drop it, as your gift to protecting democracy. Literally, put your money (profit, earnings, etc.) where your mouths are.
“You ACTUALLY want us to GIVE THIS AWAY, FOR FREE?” - Every Editor and Publisher in the world….
Yes. Here’s why.
You, my colleagues, have all read and used this Thomas Jefferson quote as a shield against never-ending attacks on a free press…especially since we were branded “enemy of the people” in 2016:
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,
and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
In this case, I’m asking for a FREE, as in no cost, press. As in, from now through Inauguration Day, drop the paywalls on reporting and opinion defining, clarifying, explaining, the viewpoints, philosophy, and theologies of those who seek the White House. Or, as an alternative, curate select articles with balanced reporting and opinion in a special FREE package for voters to access.
Do this because democracy “depends” on your content, and it “cannot be limited without being lost.”
Your (our) paywalls are such a limit.
If you agree, please click this link, and email the appeal I’ve written to the leadership of these great media companies. Their addresses are included.
But…There’s FREE Local TV and NPR
Unless you pay for streaming or cable both are free. And, I encourage them to step up too with improved coverage.
But – as an alum of local TV news this pains me – many TV newsrooms haven’t responded. Some, like the Sinclair-owned and some FOX-owned stations, are MAGA mouthpieces. Others haven’t invested in the correspondents and analysts necessary to deeply cover and fact-check.
Believe me, they have the money. For NBC affiliates in swing states, the pipeline of advertising dollars from politicians, the summer Olympics, Sunday Night Football, and the new Big 10 football contract, gives them zero excuse for not stepping up.
Still they have their moments.
Phoenix’s 12 News anchor Mark Curtis cooly dissected MAGA loudmouth and Arizona senate candidate Kari Lake in a live interview following her appearance at the convention. Curtis, politely and relentlessly, pierced Lake’s motormouth of misinformation. He focused directly on her frequent failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Flustered, Lake went the personal attack route, firing “fake news” accusations and insulting Curtis over Nielsen ratings. Curtis drew high marks from frequent MAGA apologist Phil Boas from the Arizona Republic who called Lake “repulsive.” We need more of this. (Full disclosure, I worked with Mark for 17 years at KPNX. He and political reporters Brahm Resnik and Joe Dana are top notch.)
Local NPR affiliates, especially in smaller cities, don’t do the same level of reporting as the network. Worries over declining contributions and facing retribution from local MAGA trolls has led to softball interviews and safe analysis. (More full disclosure. My son reports for the NPR affiliate in Phoenix but DOES NOT cover politics).
Local broadcasters have another incentive to up their game. Every few years, all are required to renew their broadcast licenses with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It’s a white knuckle process that can become heavily political. Lose the license and you’re out of business. Piss off the FCC or Congress, and forget about buying or selling station groups.
An FCC weaponized by Project 2025 will be a nightmare for any stations and ownership groups who Trump decides are enemies of the people.
While the pay walls remain up, read for FREE
While we await the decisions of the media companies, I’ve put my “Greatest Hits” of journalism this week in this folder for you to read free of charge. I’ll update the folder as needed.
As always, thanks for reading.