There’s nothing wrong with cutting back on news; plus, updates from Cambridge and CommonWealth

Photo (cc) 2019 by Anthony Quintano

Ginia Bellafante’s friend has a very odd definition of what it means to tune out the news. In a recent New York Times article on liberals who have decided their mental health would be better if they stopped paying attention to the news (gift link) in the Age of Trump II, Bellafante writes:

When I spoke with a friend in Brooklyn a day or two after Donald Trump won, he told me he had committed to reading only the print paper — and just in the morning, forgoing any possible all-consuming afternoon digression into whatever might be up with Tulsi Gabbard. When I checked with him earlier this week, he was still maintaining the ritual and it felt good, he said.

Someone who reads a newspaper every day, whether in print or in digital, is actually at the high end when it comes to news consumption. Compared to most people, he is extraordinarily well-informed. Although Bellafante doesn’t tell us what he cut out of his news diet, if he’s decided to forego cable news and politically oriented social media, he may be even better informed than he was when he was jacked in to the national conversation for many of his waking hours. As I like to say, friends don’t let friends watch cable news.

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When Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 while losing the popular vote by a substantial margin, it set off a frenzy of news consumption and the rise of the #Resistance — hyper-well-informed liberals and progressives who devoted much of their time and emotional energy to opposing Trump through actions such as the 2017 Women’s March. News consumption soared. You can’t stay it didn’t matter; Trump did, after all, lose to Joe Biden in 2020.

But there’s no question that Trump’s 2024 victory over Kamala Harris has been met with more ennui than energy. This time, Trump won the popular vote, albeit by an extraordinarily small margin. It seems like the burst of energy that greeted Harris’ unexpected candidacy last summer was for naught. News outlets favored by liberals, such as MSNBC, are losing audience, as Elahe Izadi reports (gift link) in The Washington Post. (The Post, too, is bleeding readers, much of that in response to owner Jeff Bezos’ arrogant decision to cancel an endorsement of Harris just days before Election Day.) Izadi writes:

Perhaps heavy news consumers are the ones tuning out the most now. Maybe people who were stressed about the uncertainty of the election no longer need to monitor the news because they now have certainty. Or could there be a general we’ve lived through this before malaise?

But maybe what’s wrong is that anyone would regard this as unhealthy. There is absolutely no need to freak out over the latest reptilian deviant Trump has appointed to his Cabinet as soon as you learn about it on Bluesky and then stew in your despair that evening while talk-show hosts on CNN and MSNBC kick it around. You can do what Bellafante’s friend does — let it go until the next morning, then find out about it in the paper.

News avoidance is not just a post-election phenomenon. As Betsy Morais wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review last June, ratings and circulation have been down for quite some time. “Of course, a certain amount of news avoidance can be healthy,” she said. “Sometimes, we all need a break — and besides, you don’t need to inject cable into your veins to keep abreast of what’s happening.”

Even Fox News, a.k.a. Trump TV, is down, though not by as much as its competition. You can be sure that Fox will go wall to wall today with the Hunter Biden pardon, but you don’t need to watch.

What we do need is to be informed, and journalism remains vital to democracy. We don’t need to be barraged constantly about the latest developments in national news. Read your local paper, whether it’s in print or digital. Go for a walk. Don’t let it all go — but understand that keeping yourself in a constant state of agitation is unhealthy and doesn’t contribute anything to the greater good.

News boost in Cambridge

There was a time when Cambridge, Massachusetts, stood as the largest city in the U.S. not to have a daily newspaper. That didn’t matter so much when it had a robust, independent weekly like the Cambridge Chronicle and an equally robust weekly like the Cambridge Tab, which was part of a small regional chain.

But community journalism in Cambridge has been in sad shape for a long time. The Chronicle, now under Gannett ownership, is a ghost paper with little in the way of local coverage. The only real news outlet in the city has been Cambridge Day, founded in 2009 by Marc Levy, who’s operated it as pretty much a one-person shop for much of its existence.

That began to change in April 2023, when the Day established a relationship with a nonprofit advisory board and set about trying to raise $75,000. Now the Day is taking the next step. Aidan Ryan reports in The Boston Globe that the outlet has gone nonprofit. Under the aegis of Cambridge News Inc., the outlet, which also has a print edition, is seeking to raise $1.5 million and expand its staff, with the goal of hiring a publisher, an editor-in-chief and several staff reporters.

Several of the folks involved in Cambridge News were also part of the earlier nonprofit effort.

The Day serves Somerville as well as Cambridge. Levy told Ryan: “I’m very glad to be able to help build something that can serve Cambridge and Somerville for, I hope, a really long time. It’s been starvation mode over the past months, and I’ve had to shepherd resources as wisely as I could.”

My “What Works” co-author and podcast partner, Ellen Clegg, and I met with several of the Cambridge News folks a few months ago to hear about their plans and provide some advice — especially Ellen, who is the co-founder of the nonprofit Brookline.News. Among other things, we talked about the city’s controversial proposal to provide $100,000 in support of local news. I came away reassured that there was a decent amount of political insulation to guarantee the Day’s independence, although I still consider it to be a less-than-ideal arrangement.

I wish Levy and his new partners well. Cambridge deserves a comprehensive news organization, and it sounds like the nonprofit is intent on making that happen.

CommonWealth’s editor speaks

Another nonprofit news organization that’s in growth mode is CommonWealth Beacon, which covers state politics and public policy. Longtime editor Bruce Mohl guided the site before retiring last month. He’s been succeeded by Laura Colarusso, a veteran editor who’s worked for Nieman Reports, GBH News and The Boston Globe. (Note: I’m a member of CommonWealth’s editorial advisory board.)

Colarusso talked about her vision with staff reporter Jennifer Smith in an episode of “The Codcast,” a CommonWealth podcast. Their conversation ranged from the meaning of objectivity to the local news crisis to the rise of artificial intelligence. It’s well worth a listen.


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One thought on “There’s nothing wrong with cutting back on news; plus, updates from Cambridge and CommonWealth”

  1. A post from Bob Sprague, the founder of YourArlington, who for some mysterious reason was blocked from posting this himself: “I’ve known Cambridge Day founder Marc Levy since the early 1990s, when he was my top student in the journalism class I taught at Emerson College. I, too, wish nonprofit Cambridge Day all the best and a continued connection with YourArlington, next door.”

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