Ronan Farrow joined The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz for an interview released Monday morning, and noted the downfall of local news outlets while discussing his upcoming HBO documentary Endangered.
“When I started out, and I was in network news and in cable news, I really prioritized putting local reporters on and picking up stories that local investigative reporters had done.
“In general, it was clear even then — this is the better part of a decade ago now — that there was a real shortfall in that kind of local reporting. And that is what creates accountability. It’s an institution — journalism, that is — that’s enshrined in the constitution for a reason. Right? It’s specifically protected because it does provide a check on power and corruption. And you see the consequences of an absence of trust in the facts and an absence of good journalism in national politics and you see it locally.”
Farrow pointed out one of the subjects featured in his documentary is Miami Herald photojournalist Carl Juste, and often worried about whether he would still have a job or not, which is something Farrow pointed out many in the media feel.
“There are experiments that seem to be working in how you make national journalism sustainable. There’s contribution based models. There’s things like ProPublica, there’s what The Guardian is doing, there’s subscription based models that are starting to work. The New Yorker has a successful subscription based model. But, fundamentally, local news outlets are just dying rather than adapting is what the numbers show us. Too often.”
According to HBO, the documentary chronicles “a year in the life of four journalists as world leaders denigrate the press, distrust of the media is on the rise, and journalists are facing situations more typically encountered in war zones”.
