‘Cruel optimism’ holds back meaningful change for community journalism

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Over the past decades, we’ve watched as one new “innovative” news start-up after another has promised to curb the loss of community journalism in America. They were going to fill the holes left by the loss of more than 3,000 newspapers over the past 25 years and the loss of tens of thousands of community journalists.

They have been promoted in glowing, exciting terms. They are promoted by metropolitan-based organizations with no connection to the reality of what is needed to sustain and nurture civic and community news in small-town America.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on digital startups as foundations, billionaire owners and citizens have sought to replace the journalism so important to our country and communities. Websites, blogs, podcasts and digital-only news programs have been the recipients of much of the funding.

Too often, these projects have failed or are a faint shadow of what has been lost. They simply do not generate the revenue to sustain their operations, much less expand them.

Too often, these innovative startups are regional in their coverage, single-interest focused or heavy on lifestyle stories. Most of the time, none fill the void of lost coverage of city councils, county commissions, school boards or economic development organizations.

Despite every effort these supposed community-journalism saviors have made, community newspaper losses have not stopped. If anything, they are accelerating.

Yet with each of their pronouncements of rebuilding or saving community news, they create a false impression that help is on the way or already here. It’s not. Each effort, while commendable, has proven wholly inadequate in replacing lost newspapers or the community journalism that is the bedrock of civic news in our small towns.

In reading Johann Hari’s book “Stolen Focus,” about social media’s theft of our ability to focus on or pay attention to what is meaningful in life, we came across a term that applies poignantly to what we face in the battle to get help for community newspapers — “Cruel Optimism.”

In life, whether it is someone’s effort to lose weight, manage their time on the internet or save community newspapers, there are shining examples of success. Supposedly, they hold the answer to success for all of us. But this assumption is fundamentally flawed.

“The truth is that it’s not so easy for everyone else to do what [they have] done,” he says of the isolated success stories. “This is the problem with cruel optimism — it takes exceptional cases, usually achieved in exceptional circumstances, and acts as if they can be commonplace.”

Cruel optimism is a strategy that often puts unrealistic solutions in front of people, making them responsible for their successes or failures. It takes responsibility off the corporations, their executives and our political leaders for their failures to address the root causes of the harm being done to us individually and as a society.

Take the rise of obesity as a pervasive problem in America. We’ve been told repeatedly that the problem is our failure to control our diet. Eat healthier foods. Watch how much you eat and exercise regularly. Follow these simple steps and you will lose weight and feel better.

“Look at a photograph of a beach taken [50 years ago]: everyone is, by our standards, slim. Then a whole series of changes took place. We replaced a food-supply system based around fresh, nutritious foods with one consisting mainly of processed junk,” Hari writes. Cities have reduced the opportunities for walking and biking.

People have become more stressed and isolated, focusing on social media. They binge-watch TV programs or sit for endless hours on their phones. Kids play less often outside.

Junk snacks, “comfort foods,” Hari calls them, became pervasive. Milk, fruit juice or water for breakfast, lunch, or supper have been replaced by Mountain Dew, Coke, or another sugary soft drink.

Nineteen of every 20 people who commit to a diet fail within five years, Hari writes. It wasn’t just because of their lack of dedication; it was substantially due to no change in the foods available when their commitment broke down. This is cruel optimism. Create hope, but don’t change the foundation upon which long-term success is built. We don’t blame the food industry, or society, for their failure to address the underlying problems; we put it on the individual, shifting blame and guilt.

We’ve seen this cruel optimism at play over the past couple of decades when it comes to what is needed to save community newspapers and provide citizens with a healthy diet of information in a representative democracy. Instead, each solution leaves community journalism malnourished and our citizens feasting on the junk menu of the internet.

Membership models, nonprofit status, grants from philanthropies, temporary subsidies for journalists, diverting staff time from covering the news into other areas to generate revenue on the side — none of these will stop the decline of rural community newspapers. Our staff is already too overwhelmed trying to get each week’s newspapers out to spend time on sideshows that raise scarce revenue in our small towns.

Digital solutions have proven a dead end for saving newspapers. We’ve done the math at our three community newspapers. The digital advertising and subscriptions, while important, don’t support even one person. For most small-town newspapers, digital payments represent no more than 5% of their income.

For community journalism to survive, citizens must play a role in funding its future through measures passed by our state Legislature and Congress. That funding must be secure and ongoing.

Our key needs are:

1) Funding that sustains quality journalism through financial assistance with hiring and retaining staff.

2) Tax breaks that improve the bottom line to help pay the bills and mortgages.

3) Financial incentives and assistance for the next generation of local community newspaper owners and assuring a living wage for their hard work and commitment.

4) Funding for training the next generation of journalists.

Reed Anfinson is a past president of the Minnesota and National Newspaper Associations. He and his wife, Shelly, own three county-seat newspapers in western Minnesota.