Summary
This document provides some news and information about the state of independent journalism in 2025. Additional content will be added as it becomes available.
Last year’s journalism report focused on the benefits of local community papers. For more see “Local Journalism Report 2024.”
Benefit of Free Speech
Independent journalism and free speech support a healthy democracy. We tend to focus on the principle and virtue of free speech, but don’t consider the tangible benefits of free speech. We support free speech because of a vague understanding that it’s “the right thing to do.”
Yet, freedom of speech is not just about distributing power, it’s about the effective crowd-sourcing of ideas.
It’s common for a city government to hold town hall meetings to get feedback from the community about a new library that’s planned. How big should the library be? What should be the budget? What architecture and materials should be used and for what visual outcome? How important is sustainability?
Public engagement supports self-governance and a sense of belonging. That’s human nature. Gathering public opinion has an added benefit. It’s like having a super computer. Problems with the planned library construction are more likely to be identified by a large group rather than a few insular people. Opportunities for better design, cost savings, and innovations are also likely to be identified.
When we see the benefit of inclusivity, we look for ways to involve as many people as possible. If we think of democracy as a power struggle, we try to silence those who might challenge what we (and our big egos) believe makes our personal ideas better than anyone else’s.
The power of democracy, and the power found in freedom of speech, is not just about self-governance but also about finding excellent creative solutions by bringing in suggestions from many people.
The way democracy should work is to gather good ideas from as many people as possible, then have ethical and competent administrators (politicians) implement the best policies and practices that people seem to agree about.
NEWS
CNN (7 Jun 2025)
In the video below, Scott Pelley discusses the play “Good Night, and Good Luck” that premiered on Broadway in March 2025.
The video is queued up to 9m 31s at the point where Pelley describes the importance of journalism to democracy. You can start from the beginning for the full video.
CBS Evening News (5 Jun 2025)
The video below is about a small local paper that started a coffee shop to help sustain the newspaper business.
Ryan Holiday (23 Apr 2025)
A well known teacher of stoic philosophy was invited to the United States Naval Academy to give a talk. About 20 minutes before he was scheduled to be on stage, the invitation was cancelled when it was discovered that he was going to talk about the recent banning of books at the Academy and the censorship of controversial ideas. A video of his talk is now available and the first few minutes explain the event cancellation. Video — https://youtu.be/ZcnE1-SClfg