Journalism should be tax deductible

It's me, hi, I'm the tenth writer today asking you to subscribe to my thing, it's me.

If you’re like me, you stare directly into the sun and spend a lot of your day wondering if the destruction in journalism we are seeing *everywhere* is purposeful. Or is it just a giant coincidence that this is happening in 2024, as America faces the most obvious assault on our democracy in our history?

You make a good point. This is nothing new. 

Tech has been killing journalism since the first dad decided to post something for free on Craigslist instead of buying a classified ad. That always felt more like happenstance, especially given the “Whoops! We accidentally made this public” vibe of Craig Newmark’s site. But in the last decade, the intentions have been much clearer. Big tech knew it was killing journalism. Think Facebook’s “pivot to video,” which successfully killed about 40-50% of traffic going to many news sites without any material benefit to the social media monster. 

Now, the guys who helped build the simplistic but relentless tech that has decimated journalism, as the deregulation of the 90s massacred local paper after local paper, are warning us that what’s left of the news will soon be dominated by AI.

All of that is backstory to our current crisis, which is happening in an era where the words AI spits out are still generally garbage – cud chewed up nine times, spit out, and shaped to resemble sentences. That era won’t last long, unfortunately. But it won’t end before November. So it’s the un-artificial intelligence I’m worrying about now.

In 2023, there were 2,681 layoffs in broadcast, print, and digital news, part of the 20,000 media jobs lost in general. That’s more than any year since the pandemic began. 

In 2024, the pace seems to only be quickening with the demise of a single publication, The Messenger, setting the tone. Dozens of quality journalists were sent scrounging for jobs without any of their clips online, as the company – which blew about $50 million in about a year – seemed to want to avoid February’s web hosting fees.

A huge part of this story is that the model is broken. It’s generous to even call it a model. Web ads don’t pay for shit unless you’re a retailer yourself or a behemoth that sells the ads yourself. Meanwhile, billionaires who volunteered themselves as the saviors of our most storied rags have conveniently decided that breaking even is far more important than serving democracy. 

Subscriptions have become the only option for pretty much everyone, but this speeds the process of turning journalism into fan service.

I can superserve you, dear reader, because I'm a single voice with a single family and a gainfully employed wife. But when publications do this, they generally have to play up the heat that drowns out the light by concern trolling the left with laundered Republican talking points so liberals hate read, hate share, and even hate subscribe.

It’s all part of the process of turning us, those who actually tune into the news by compulsion, into political junkies. And junkies aren’t known for their quality control.

But verily I say to you that journalism shouldn’t have to be a charity. It’s a public service essential for the sustenance of our democracy, like higher education but with a comment section.

That’s why I propose a simple way to engage the public in the cause of saving journalism. Make the money you pay to subscribe to any publication a tax credit, directly subtracted to the amount of taxes you owe annually. (Yes, I put “tax deductible” in the title when I mean tax credit but the title doesn’t scan without it. SORRY!) Cap it at $100 or $300 if necessary. But make it enough so any American who earns enough to pay federal taxes can be guilted into subscribing to their local paper.

Yes, this would feed some terrible right-wing publications. But you know what? They’re doing fine. And if they’re not, their billionaires don’t care. The right’s greatest advantage is how weak real journalism has become and how desperate “the left-wing media” is to engage in the faux Fox scandals that drive their clicks. 

Will this open up all sorts of wild questions about what a “publication” is? Hell yes. But we suffer far worse vagaries for “churches” because of the First Amendment, often with the opposite of any benefit.

By opening up journalism to the more than 166 million Americans who pay federal taxes, you inherently democratize the process. You widen the target audience to all adults. You will put journalists back to work. And publications will, ideally, be forced to do more than repeat whatever Trump just said or write the ten thousandth article about what it means that Joe Biden is 11 trimesters older than Donald Trump.

Yes, Biden/Harris should run on a journalism tax credit and propose that it look backward to include any money you spend on publications in this election year, an election year that could decide if we will have any more election years.

It must be exhausting always rooting for journalists. Because no, they aren’t built to please us. They can’t just whisper sweet probabilities from their models that assure us everything will be fine. 

But they are public servants. And it’s time to start putting the power of the taxpayers behind them, while there are still some left.

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UPDATE ON ME

Week one of hiring myself to work for democracy was a little amazing. I’m so giddy with what I have to do that the giddiness often becomes anxiety. One of the comforts of having a real boss is a conception of what you need to do to please her. Working for democracy will never offer that. But the freedom and purpose I feel right now should be put in cans and sold to college freshmen.

My main focus is earlyworm, which is about turning political junkies into democracy junkies with smart news and smarter actions.

Our goal for earlyworm is 300 total members by Friday, the 16th of February. We’re just over half way there. So apologies if you hear me ringing some alarm bells. If you haven’t signed up already, please do. Free or paid, it all matters. (If you paid here, please don’t pay there. I’m not that good yet.)