You may not know much about Bari Weiss. I wouldn’t blame you. Most folks, even blog readers, don’t know media figures like they know pop stars and athletes. I actually find Bari Weiss fascinating though. You see, politically she’s sort of a unicorn. She is the founder of “The Free Press,” a center-rightish publication. She is the editor at CBS Evening News, and it’s going pretty rocky. The far right hates her because she is an LGBTQ woman and Jewish. Most of the left hates her because they think she is appeasing Trump with her “free speech” and “diversity of opinions” shtick. Her website famously features her “resignation letter” from the New York Times a few years ago, which was clearly written to turbo charge her career. Weiss wants to hold herself out as an intellectual, a leading voice on free speech, and an important person. She also wants to appease her bosses at Paramount, maintain access with powerful people, and create viral, lightning rod level moments in the media. The result is a CBS that is a mess.

At the Washington Post, it’s hard to argue anything is going well. The paper of record for our nation’s capitol fired it’s sports section. Seriously. The paper is owned by Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, but is behaving like a flea market bargain shopper. When the Washington Nationals open their season next month, there won’t even be a lead reporter assigned to the team. The paper that brought us Watergate is dying a slow death, in front of our eyes.

Our media is dying, and so far as I can tell, no one gives a shit. Most of America hates the media for one of two reasons- either they think they’ve become a bunch of sensationalist hacks that give us “both sides” stories all the time in order to keep access, or they think the media has a bias against their side because they won’t tell them what they want to hear. I’ll let you decide which side is which (or if both are both), but let’s be honest, most of you reading this hate the media too. Sports fans hate ESPN because they think ESPN tries to set the agenda of what sports news is (they do). Political readers think the press is biased. I’m sure art and food readers have reasons they hate the press too. Let’s be honest, we all hate the press. We just all have our reasons.

Here’s the thing though- our press is broken, and our populace is already ignorant enough with a healthy media. If people are getting their media from TikTok instead of PBS, you’re going to get the quality of public that you’d likely expect. Here in Easton, the Express-Times no longer prints a daily newspaper, it is fully online, behind a pay wall. The Morning Call is dying in Allentown. The Bethlehem Globe Times died when I was a kid. We’re basically down to a television network, a PBS, and an NPR, but the funding for those things is drying up. Consolidation already has seen publications like “The Athletic” bought by the New York Times and basically turned into the news section for professional and college sports nationally. An ever smaller group of wealthy folks have bought up the major television networks in the nation. Radio has already been consolidated to a few conglomerate groups. And now, we’re seeing budget cuts done to the consolidated news sources. Our media ecosphere is dying. That’s assuming it’s not already dead.

I’m not sure media can be done well as a for profit business. With that said, I’m not sure how you can finance media companies if you don’t make money. I think the future is in writer-managed publications like The Lehigh Valley News, but they need reader subscriptions or reader funding to survive. I’m not sure if that is going to work, given the state of current media publications.

With ever the less positions in the media, our media is becoming very similar to our politics- a bunch of Ivy League and elite institutional grads seeking their next viral moment. That is entertainment. I’m not sure it’s journalism. I’m fairly sure it’s not good for us. And I’m fairly sure David Ellison and Jeff Bezos don’t give a shit.