When local news dies, so does democracy | Chuck Plunkett

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nearly 1,800 newsrooms have shuttered across the US since 2004, leaving many communities unseen, unheard and in the dark. In this passionate talk and rallying cry, journalist Chuck Plunkett explains why he rebelled against his employer to raise awareness for an industry under threat of extinction -- and makes the case for local news as an essential part of any healthy democracy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. The New York Times or the BBC, those aren't news
0:08.9	sources that are in financial jeopardy. But local news sources? The newspapers dedicated to mid-sized
0:14.4	towns like Denver, Colorado or smaller places, they're shuddering. And in his TEDx Mile
0:19.5	High Archive talk from 2019, journalist Chuck
0:22.3	Plunkett presses his case for why local news is so crucial for our shared democracy and our
0:27.8	shared understanding of the truth.
0:32.2	I've been a journalist for more than 23 years at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review,
0:38.7	and most recently, the Denver Post.
0:45.5	When I started at the Denver Post in 2003,
0:49.7	it was among the country's 10 largest newspapers,
0:53.7	with an impressive subscriber base and nearly 300 journalists.
0:59.0	At the time, I was in my 30s.
1:02.0	Any ambitious journalist that age aspires to work for one of the big national papers,
1:07.0	like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.
1:09.0	But I was simply blown away by my first few weeks at the Denver Post,
1:13.7	and I thought, this is going to be my paper.
1:16.7	I can make a career right here.
1:19.9	Well, seven years passed,
1:21.9	we were sold to a hedge fund, Alden Global Capital.
1:26.3	Within a few years, buyouts ordered by past and present owners
1:30.3	would reduce the newsroom by nearly half. And I understood. The rule of thumb used to be that 80%
1:38.3	of a newspaper's revenue came from pricey print ads and classifieds. With emerging giants like Google and Facebook
	...

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