Steven Waldman, President and Co-Founder of Report for America, connects the dots between the local news crisis, the “financialization” of newspaper ownership and the spread of disinformation on social media. Brian Stelter also questions Waldman about the ramifications of recent news industry news, including the international ramifications of Australia’s proposal that tech platforms pay publishers for news and a hedge fund’s offer to buy Tribune Publishing. Waldman says the demise of the local…show more The coverage is “disastrous for democracy” and suggests a number of solutions, including tax credits and nonprofit ownership models. “On the order of the amount of philanthropic resources out there … it is actually inexpensive to repair, and yet the consequences of what it does are so severe,” he says.
