How the Internet changed journalism ...

And how algorithm-driven news has, alas, changed America for the worse

How was your weekend?

I thought that the big news this weekend, for me, was the fact that my wife and I have decided to move — further up into the mountains of East Tennessee that we love so much. In fact, we are moving back to the Tri-Cities area in the mountains close to the borders of North Carolina and Virginia, where we lived in the 1990s.

There are so, so many family angles of this move, but the key is that we are returning to an Orthodox congregation that (it’s a complicated story) on one level is the parish that helped create when we converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 1998. Father Gregory Mathewes-Green, our family’s spiritual father, and his wife Frederica (yes, that Frederica) have retired to the Tri-Cities — since their son, Father Stephen Mathewes, is the pastor of the parish. We will live in a lovely restored home in an old town up against the face of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So there’s that. Also, we had family roll into town from Kansas, with a tornado of young grandkids.

Then you know what happened to America.

Lots of folks are asking me what I think about the journalism angles of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This remarkable story was, especially in its early hours, such a microcosm of the bitter fault lines in American life and, yes, journalism.

Let’s see. Can you figure out which newspaper front page is from a liberal newsroom and which one is from a conservative (in many ways) newsroom.

As opposed to this one:

What can I say?

Actually, I don’t need to write anything about how algorhythm journalism is shaping America.

I have already written what I have to say. In the year that led to the closing of GetReligion.org, I wrestled with all of this. Please see this post: “GetReligion will close on February 2, the 20th anniversary of this blog's birth.”

Then, after many near-sleepless nights, I wrote this grieving essay for the Religion & Liberty journal, published by the Acton Institute: “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.” If you want the podcast that went with that, see: “It's just good business? The growing debate about America's news-silo culture.”

But what I really want the Substack world to read, somehow, is the actual journal article. Some readers, at the time, accused me of “whataboutism” — but what I was trying to describe was the many ways that Internet-era business models are shaping what we get to read.

Thus, here is the top of that essay, followed by a link to the whole thing. There is no paywall on that, so it’s open for everyone.

This is what I have to say today, as Americans — rather bloodied — head deeper into the 2024 political circus.

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With the 2016 presidential election looming, the New York Times published a journalism manifesto that was disguised as a mere political commentary.

The candidate’s name was in the headline, but the implications of the August 7, 2016, essay “Trump Is Testing the Norms of Objectivity in Journalism” included coverage of a wide range of subjects linked to the hopes, fears, and beliefs of Americans who felt driven to vote for him.

The big idea — never openly stated — was that the famous motto of America’s most powerful newspaper, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” could be shortened to “All the News That Fits.” Writer-at-large Jim Rutenberg opened with this salvo:

If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?

Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career.

This raised a big question, he added, for journalists plunging into advocacy journalism: “Do normal standards apply? And if they don’t, what should take their place?”

Questions such as these have obvious implications for coverage of American politics, especially since most American journalists see the world — even issues linked to morality, culture, and faith — through a political lens. After all, politics is real. Religion? Not so much.

But these debates have moved beyond the heated media-bias wars in recent decades. The ground under American journalism is moving and that affects all of American life, especially First Amendment issues tied to free speech, freedom of association, and religious liberty.

This earthquake is linked to the wave of technological innovations that have forced all kinds of companies, including news organizations, to change their products in an attempt to survive in the digital age. The key is a process familiar to anyone who has surfed the internet. The goal is to convince users to click “like,” “forward,” “tweet,” “post,” or, ultimately, to pay money to receive more content of this kind.

This preaching-to-the-choir business model works with cute kittens and heroic dogs. It works with emotional videos of soldiers returning home and surprising their loved ones, as well as those of rainbow-haired teachers preaching to elementary school students about gender.

This sequence works — on different audiences — with “news” about the verbal and physical stumbles of President Joe Biden or election-denying sermons by former President Trump. It works with reports about environmental apocalypse or the potential for nuclear war in Ukraine. It works when federal agents arrest grandparents protesting at abortion clinics, as well as when there are few, if any, arrests in cases involving activists vandalizing pro-life churches or fire-bombing crisis-pregnancy centers. It works when some churches close, while others stay open, during a global pandemic. It works when some parents choose to take radical actions in response to rapid gender dysphoria symptoms in their children, while others risk clashes with state authorities while opposing treatments of this kind.

These changes provide some of the digital DNA in conflicts that are tearing America apart. Politicians, parents, pastors, and plenty of other people are struggling to understand what is happening in their lives while turning to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Parler, BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram, and Truth Social. And there are darker corners of this world, such as 4chan and the “Dark Web.” And never forget this crucial journalism reality: Opinion writing is cheap, while hard-news content is expensive.

There is plenty of money to be made, but one reality looms over those trying to stay in business — researchers believe that two-thirds of ad dollars in the American marketplace head straight to Big Tech powerhouses such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Try operating an ordinary local or national newsroom when competing with that.

Consumers insist they are not happy about the results, but researchers note that they continue to build their own personal information bunkers using niche-news providers.

Meanwhile, a 2022 Pew Research Center study found that only 44% of journalists think “every side of an issue deserves ‘equal coverage,’” while citizens at large support balanced coverage to the tune of 76%. Young journalists were the least likely to support balanced coverage.

How will these trends affect the future? The well-known First Amendment lawyer and evangelical pundit David French described the crisis in his book Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. The bottom line: Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture, choosing to live in protective silos of digital content. America remains the developing world’s most religious nation, yet its secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most religious believers live in another. These armies share no common standards about “facts,” “accuracy,” or “fairness.”

“It’s time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed,” wrote French. At this moment, “there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”          

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Please, read it all.