Why I still subscribe to the News Tribune (and why I will continue to, despite, well, you know)
It is harder to list reasons to subscribe to struggling local legacy media news sites like the News Tribune in Tacoma than it is to come up with resons to quit. It’s harder to make sense of the monthly cost than it is to join the exodus made worse by each action of the big brains who run the company that owns it.
News sites — not to even get into the print editions — are all smaller than they were before — hell, they’re smaller than they were yesterday. Another reduction in staffing at McClatchy papers across the U.S. was announced this month, including four in Washington state — the News Tribune, the Olympian, the Bellingham Herald and the Tri-City Herald.
So why keep subscribing? I ask myself that, a lot. They don’t do as much. They don’t cover some of what I’m most interested in. They are owned by chains that are run by the worst type of executives — those who lack the self-confidence to discuss their decisions and who greet other opinions with declarations that we just don’t understand their vision.
Which is true. I don’t. I think C-suite suits at McClatchy have made bad decisions for decades that made the inevitable splintering of the news audience worse. They were late to see how the business model was changing from ad-driven to subscription models. Then they all-but-killed the print edition when it still had life and profitability and could have provided a gentler glide path to a digital conversion. They bounce from one strategy to the next and blame someone down the org chart when it doesn’t work out.
Now they flail yet again. I’m still waiting for anything from the bosses — local or national — to explain what the new plan is and why we should stick around.
Predictably, each announcement of new reductions, new jobs lost, invites the trolls to dunk on the mainstream media. Most hated their local papers when those papers were robust. Most likely they hated them because they were robust. They now get to use new cuts to justify their long held complaints. They filter it through their partisan catechism and blame left-wing bias or right-wing bias or corporate ownership. They compare it unfavorably to their favored new-media outlets that are, last I checked, pretty darned biased and often corporate owned. But never mind that, at least they’re on your team.
I try not to focus on them or engage. I also don’t have time for people who say they get their news for free on social media as though those sites aren’t just reposting news stories from mainstream sites (or worse, stealing them via AI search). Instead I’m talking to the persuadable middle in hopes that they will take a look at their reasons for not supporting a local news site and apply a different standard.
When I wrote recently about the changes in Tacoma during my 12 years in Minnesota, the condition of the News Tribune was one of the most striking. And I worried that something important was being lost and that there was nothing out there to replace it. Local news has been declining for at least a few decades, so there has been plenty of time for something comparable or better to come along. Some try, but all have small or niche markets.
The Tacoma Weekly, has a small staff and pretty good events listings with a lot of government news releases. The non-profit Cascadian focuses on Lakewood and west county, though has some reach beyond that. It works with an all-volunteer force of writers and editors. I hope a print-only arts zine called Underground Sound can keep going. Grit City follows a magazine format and doesn’t try to be a regular news source. The Volcano helps fill the arts niche and community calendar service abandoned by the News Tribune
Still, not much out there performs the same function of old school media, which is to serve as a center square with broad enough reach and varied enough content so that people can spend a few minutes there to see what is going on in the community. We are beyond a time when folks will spend all their time in such a forum. But having it around provides some chance that we will see neighbors as something other than allies and enemies, that we will see something that surprises us or takes us out of our bubbles.
Complaints about the bias of legacy media are themselves legacies of a time when the local paper had clout, could influence elections and politicians. They don’t. They can’t. The News Tribune doesn’t even try, beyond the act of choosing which stories to cover and which to not cover which has the potential of putting a thumb on the scale.
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Let’s take a look at recent stories in the News Tribune.
- Police searching for missing girl from Puyallup
- Jury delivers verdict for Pierce County woman tried for fatally stabbing husband.
- Tacoma’s Union Station set to begin upgrade.
- Semis cut ribbon on Pierce County’s new SR-167 expressway
- Washington state employees walked out of Olympia offices
- Tacomans will vote on a tenants rights measure. No one can agree on the cost.
There has also been some development news on projects I’m interested in as well as some restaurant and retail coverage. I get a little city council and county council news (though not enough). I read about the park board drama and the renters-rights drive. The writers in Gig Harbor and Puyallup served the function (at least they used to) of the weeklies the News Tribune bought some years back. There are also prep sports stories that do well on most local news sites but that the McClatchy brass might be inexplicably and stupidly cutting back on (see above).
I can’t find much political bias here. Or corporate dictates. But, oh well.
I have complaints about the News Tribune, probably more than most since I worked there for a decade or three. There is way too much click bait meant to artificially increase page views. There is no arts coverage. There is no community events calendar. There is no local opinion or attempts to referee local disputes with commentary from the community. There was also that little dustup over AI supported news that didn’t go over well. When they should be finally realizing that chasing clicks is a failed model, when they should be trying to build subscriptions by engaging with their readers, they do the opposite.
Staff turnover and McClatchy cheapness mean the staff is nearly all young and pretty green. The recent deaths of Matt Driscoll and Craig Sailor were devastating and took away two long-time writers with some of the strongest connection to community. I worked there until 2014, but I don’t know very many people there anymore. Now I hear some of the staffers I did work with — and others who were doing good work — are victims of the latest cuts.
I could lash out and cancel in protest. That would feel good for a few minutes. But again, all the above are bad decisions by bosses and benighted headquarters brass who don’t much care what I think and are keeping their jobs regardless of what I do. I prefer to keep my eye on those surviving local reporters and editors who keep trying to do the best with what they have (and who, by the way, pushed back against that AI news folly.) I choose to think that they’re the people I am supporting with a subscription.
Is it worth the price? As with all news sites I subscribe to, I bargain for the best monthly rate so I feel like I get my money’s worth with the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Seattle Times and Minnesota Star Tribune plus Sounder at Heart. With the News Tribune I consider half of my subscription cost to be for services rendered and half to be a civic contribution like United Way or KNKX public radio.
Can so-called traditional news sites like the News Tribune still serve that center-square function? Each cut makes it more difficult. But they are the only ones making the attempt. Too much of the rest is activism hiding behind journalism and I don’t trust it.
I worked for one of the nation’s first non-profit news sites, MinnPost in Minneapolis. It has a news staff similar in size to what the News Tribune had before these cuts. But it was a secondary read. That is, we assumed every reader already saw the Star Tribune and maybe watched local TV news.
Could something like that work here? It would take capital to start and a willingness to suffer perhaps years of losses. In Minnesota, the business staff was able to raise a few million a year from major donors, foundations, members and advertisers. But it was hard and slow.
Here’s a little thought experiment: What if a new site started tomorrow? Let’s call it The Blues Balloon. It has a few editors, a handful of early career reporters who provide a bit of government and politics, some food and outdoors coverage and features about people and places. In all respects it replicates what the News Tribune offers today but without the history and the baggage and the resentments. Would it be slammed or condemned? Would you try to help it out by subscribing and by talking it up with your friends? My guess is yes. Would it thrive? Hmmmm. I fear Tacoma lacks the business and foundation donor bases that Minnesota has. Even in Seattle, which does have strong corporate and philanthropic communities, a similar model launched Crosscut but and ultimately failed (though a backstabbing by KCTS after a merger didn’t help).
So what do do? We can sit at the cool kids’ table and roll our eyes when someone mentions the News Tribune, say “I know, I know,” and crow that we canceled long ago. But I think we’ll be worse off, the community will be worse off, if it goes away completely. I’d rather not stand by and watch that happen and will, for now, remain a subscribed.
