Mathilde Robinson

If we entertain the prospect that raising taxes on the wealthy to a sufficiently high level necessitates moving beyond the revenue-maximizing rate, the criteria for a just tax become more complex. Under a Rawlsian framework, such a tax would ideally increase equality without reducing the economic status of the worst-off in absolute terms. Such a system would satisfy the difference principle.

However, it may be possible for a tax to violate the difference principle and still satisfy Rawlsian justice. Because, among Rawls’ two principles, the first is lexically prior—that is, it must be satisfied before any consideration of the second principle—and concentrated wealth may undermine our scheme of equal basic liberties in the political sphere, a tax designed primarily to disperse wealth can be justified on the basis of preserving liberal democracy, without appeal to economic performance.

Essentially, Rawls’ principles of justice as fairness provide a broad justification for redistributive taxation, with several contingencies. If a tax that produces no tradeoffs is possible, it is the most just option. Yet, when unequal wealth jeopardizes the ability of citizens to participate in democracy on equal terms, a Rawlsian framework may deem a heavily redistributive tax necessary, even if it carries economic consequences.

A "Pressing" Issue

Mathilde Robinson

In 2006, media mogul Rupert Murdoch proclaimed that we are living in a “golden age of information.” Cynics might observe that Murdoch himself is the patriarch of a disinformation dynasty. But today, even as Americans are inundated with news and punditry from all corners of the Internet, we are losing the journalism that matters most to our communities.

A 2020 study from the University of North Carolina found that nearly a quarter of community and regional newspapers have closed since 2004. The researchers, led by Penelope Muse Abernathy, created a map of “news deserts”— communities “with limited access to… credible and comprehensive news.” Out of the over 3,000 counties in the U.S., two-thirds no longer have a daily newspaper. Half have only one paper, in most cases a weekly. Two hundred have no newspaper at all (Abernathy, 2020).

As local newspapers—many of which have been fixtures of their communities for decades, if not centuries—vanish, we need to examine the implications of our changing media ecosystem. Why are local papers in decline? How does that affect our society? And how can we bring back vibrant local reporting?

The Presses Stop: Why Local Papers Are Dying Out On May 5, The New York Times ran a headline straight out of its employees’ worst nightmares: “Newspaper’s Top Editor Is Now a ‘Homeless’ Blogger.” Although The New York Times is thriving (Berr, 2021), the story of Rich Jackson illustrates the fate of many local papers. Mr. Jackson became the editor of The Herald-Times—the paper that has served Bloomington, Indiana, for over a century—when its holding company, Gannett, was bought by GateHouse Media. Not long after, he was laid off and evicted from his apartment in the paper’s headquarters, eventually landing at a Motel 6, where he started a blog entitled “The Homeless Editor’ (Tracy, 2020).

Although Mr. Jackson’s life was upended, my hometown is fortunate that The Herald-Times is still going. But the processes that led to his layoff are chipping away at our local paper and at papers across the country.

Local papers face a financial squeeze as advertisers look elsewhere. The

Brookings Institution reports that newspaper advertising revenue in the U.S. plummeted 68% between 2008 and 2018. Digital advertising makes up “a growing share of [this] shrinking pie,” but as newspapers move operations online, they find themselves crowded out by Internet giants. Facebook and Google control 77% of the digital advertising market at the local level (Hendrickson, 2019).

As advertising revenue drops, mergers and acquisitions start to seem like the best survival strategy. Now, after a wave of consolidations, the largest 25 newspaper chains in the U.S. own one-third of all newspapers in the country—up from a fifth in 2004. Unfortunately, these new newspaper conglomerates operate under a slash-and-burn business model (Abernathy, 2020). Companies like GateHouse and Digital First Media buy up small newspapers, then lay off journalists to cut costs in a process that leaves behind what Abernathy terms “skeletal newsrooms with beleaguered editors and reporters struggling to provide … coverage of their communities.”

Bad News: The Dire Consequences of News Desertification Of course, not everyone would be devastated by the demise of local reporting. Thomas Jefferson complained that papers “present only the caricatures of disaffected minds” (Harris, 1973). Richard Nixon considered reporters “enemies” (Benac, 2017). And, as we all know, Donald Trump is tired of all that “negative press covfefe” (Hunt, 2017).

There’s a reason why politicians throughout history have loathed the news: because it acts as an additional check and balance, a “fourth estate,” against both government corruption and corporate misdeeds. From crumbling river walls in Johnstown, PA, to squalid conditions in Tampa Bay housing programs, local newspapers have exposed travesties and tragedies, spurring local reforms, legislative advocacy, and grassroots activism (McDevitt, 2019; McDevitt & Siwy, 2019; Pulitzer Prizes, 2014). It’s no wonder, then, that a 2018 study found that when newspapers reported on toxic emissions from consumer goods manufacturing plants, those plants reduced their emissions 29% more than plants whose emissions remain uncovered. Since newspapers were more likely to write stories about emissions from plants close to their headquarters, local papers were essential (Campa).

Local news is also vital to democracy. When the Rocky Mountain News shut down in 2008, civic engagement in Denver—measured in terms of activities like contacting representatives and boycotting products—declined 30% relative to comparable cities (Shaker, 2014).

Unfortunately, newspaper closures don’t just weaken democracy—they also poison it. As local papers disappear, unscrupulous alternatives crop up to fill the void. An investigation from The New York Times last October uncovered a network run by businessman David Timpone, consisting of over a thousand websites that spread paid propaganda from companies, conservative think tanks, and Republican operatives. These sites use innocuous names, like the Des Moines Sun, the Ann Arbor Times, the DuPage Policy Journal, and Empire State Today, yet their business model relies upon low-paid freelancers who churn out biased coverage at the behest of P.R. professionals and big donors. In September, the entire homepage of one such fake newspaper, the Illinois Valley Times, was plastered with paid puff pieces praising Sue Rezin, a Republican state senator (Alba & Nicas, 2020).

Without access to reliable local news, Americans are pushed toward more polarizing sources, such as social media and cable television. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Americans who get their news primarily from social media are less informed, have lower levels of political knowledge, and are more likely to report being exposed to conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic. Disturbingly, members of this group are also among the least likely to express concern about the impact of “made-up news” on recent elections—suggesting that they may not be aware of the prevalence of mis- and disinformation (Mitchell et al., 2020). In fact, a 2017 study by M.I.T. researchers found that misinformation spreads “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth” on Twitter; tweets containing false news were 70% more likely to be retweeted than those containing factual information (Vosoughi et al., 2017).

The decline of local coverage also drives audiences toward national news, a trend that sows further division nationwide. A study led by Joshua Darr of Louisiana State University revealed that the loss of local newspapers contributed to the “nationalization of local politics,” as Americans increasingly relied on national news sources. This, in turn, caused a decline in split-ticket voting, where voters were more likely to cast ballots for presidential and senatorial candidates from the same party (Darr et al., 2018). A later study examined tens of thousands of broadcasts made during the 109th through 112th Congresses, finding that cable and broadcast television coverage “vastly overrepresents extreme partisans on both sides of the aisle.” Essentially, the most provocative politicians get the most airtime (Padgett et al., 2019).

Although a credulous public, poised to accept conspiracy theories and partisan pandering, may pose a danger to democracy, the overall decline in trust of the media is equally threatening. A 2019 study released by Gallup

and the Knight Foundation found that 45% of Americans trust their local news sources, compared with only 31% who trust the national news. Yet trust in local news is declining, perhaps because people feel it isn’t doing enough: 60% of Americans think their local news does only a “fair” or “poor” job of holding elected officials accountable, and similar numbers wish that local news provided more coverage of K-12 education, drug addiction, public works projects, and the environment (Sands, 2019). These demands create a Catch-22 for local journalism: Newspapers lose subscribers when they can’t meet readers’ expectations, but declining revenue makes it impossible to provide quality coverage. Between 2008 and 2021, around 30,000 newspaper reporters lost their jobs (Walker, 2021)—and empty newsrooms can’t produce the sort of journalism that cultivates a community’s trust.

When Americans have nowhere to turn for the information they need, our public discourse and the democracy it sustains are truly in peril. As researchers from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism wrote in their study “Public Trust in the News,” “Without some people or institutions that can be trusted to inform us, the task of informing ourselves would become so laborious and unwieldy that public knowledge would be … confined to narrow and parochial experience” (Coleman et al., 2009).

Turning the Page on a New Era of Local Journalism In counties across the U.S., local news is teetering on the brink of extinction. Fortunately, communities are coming together to save their local papers.

In some cities, online news sites have thrived even as print papers have floundered. After a series of layoffs when The Denver Post was acquired by the private equity firm Alden Global Capital, a group of reporters and editors from the Post went rogue. They resigned from the Post and established the Colorado Sun, an online startup providing local news to the Denver area (Markus, 2018). In California, news sites like Berkeleyside and the Voice of San Diego serve cities that have experienced newspaper closures (Pérez-Peña, 2008; Schmidt, 2019).

Unfortunately, the success of these outlets won’t be easy to replicate nationwide. The Colorado Sun only became possible because of an infusion of venture capital. Berkeleyside, meanwhile, raised $1 million in a Direct Public Offering, a strategy that required soliciting thousands of dollars in investments from Berkeley residents (Schmidt, 2018). In lower-income areas, that’s simply not possible. Using 2018 data, Abernathy’s team found that ninety percent of such news websites are located in affluent parts of cities and suburbs, probably because those areas have more ac-