Mainstream media is under threat. The deliverers of deep-dive public interest journalism are losing eyeballs to TikTokers, YouTubers and other online influencers and podcasters.
Ever shortening attention spans, media consumption increasingly being planned around what people want to hear rather than what they need to hear, AI-generated content and the myriad of entertainments competing for people’s precious time, is putting the business model that sustains mainstream media under extreme pressure.
I, however, remain an optimist because none of the various players currently eating our lunch can do what we do better, year in, year out.
That is why serious journalism, perhaps supported by as yet unthought of new business models will survive, because there will always be a need for the insight that great human journalism delivers.
The beginning of this month saw the unveiling of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, the highest accolades in American journalism.
I’ve listed below a few of the winners, along with the judges’ citations. Read, be impressed and then ask yourself, who else other than the types of organisation and individuals who enter these awards, could have served up such essential and brilliant reporting:
- Public Service (ProPublica, for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz): About pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.
- Investigative Reporting (Staff of Reuters): For a boldly reported exposé of lax regulation in the U.S. and abroad that makes fentanyl, one of the world’s deadliest drugs, inexpensive and widely available to users in the United States.
- Explanatory Reporting (Azam Ahmed, Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer, and Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times): For an authoritative examination of how the United States sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan, primarily by supporting murderous militia that drove civilians to the Taliban.
- Local Reporting (Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times): For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms.
- International Reporting (Declan Walsh and the Staff of The New York Times): For their revelatory investigation of the conflict in Sudan, including reporting on foreign influence and the lucrative gold trade fueling it, and chilling forensic accounts of the Sudanese forces responsible for atrocities and famine.
- Commentary (Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker): For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.
- Feature Photography (Moises Saman, contributor, The New Yorker): For his haunting black and white images of Sednaya prison in Syria that capture the traumatic legacy of Assad’s torture chambers, forcing viewers to confront the raw horrors faced by prisoners and contemplate the scars on society.
- Audio Reporting (Staff of The New Yorker): For their “In the Dark” podcast, a combination of compelling storytelling and relentless reporting in the face of obstacles from the U.S. military, a four-year investigation into one of the most high-profile crimes of the Iraq War – the murder of 25 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
This is the kind of content which ultimately makes a difference to the way we are governed and live our lives. Exposing corruption, inequalities and poor governance, helps societies gradually evolve and improve.
There is a need for this type of in-depth reporting, and only dedicated journalists, backed by serious publishers, can deliver it.
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