Trade press, and even plain press coverage of the industries we study has long provided crucial information. Of course they have always required critical reading, but the demise of general journalism has hit the trade space. Actual journalism from sources without paywalls has become rare. I find a lot increasingly just ill-informed. The number of times I’ve explained the difference between balance sheet (revenue/cost) and stock price to ‘journalists’ in recent months makes me sad and worried. There is a profound lack of basic data competence (you can’t compare different metrics or US with worldwide), method understanding (self-report surveys are the bread and butter of consultancy firms but are usually designed to tell a specific story, and people lie), as well as basic industry understanding. A few qualified journalists remain and occasionally they get to do actual journalism, but cheap to produce opinion-masquerading-as-journalism rules the day (at least in English language and especially non-paywalled sources).
We know the problem – you get what you pay for and advertising does not replace the subscriber support that once paid for actual journalism. Shelling out for a Broadcasting & Cable subscription in my late grad school days was painful, but feeling compelled to read it cover-to-cover provided my foundational knowledge of the field. While free access to Variety is great, the masthead is a shadow of what it once was (and increasing emails updates about stuff well beyond remit).
There are new publications. I’m curious about general business sources like The Information, Digiday, and Business Insider that keep their goods behind paywalls (and though the latter titles are included in ProQuest-type subscriptions, the paywalled articles aren’t available, at least here). The problem is they aren’t media focused so I’m curious about an article maybe once a month and that is a poor return on investment (from research budgets few of us have). I’ve asked our librarian to look into access and at last request the publications didn’t have an institutional option (similar for the proliferating Substack based analysis). As far as I can tell, a media-focused source emphasizing quality journalism rather than reprinting PR releases and half-baked hot takes that drive clicks does not exist.
Trade press has been used in our scholarship to track ‘discourse.’ Using it this way (for contemporary study) is increasingly problematic. There is hardly a single discourse given the range of sources these days and their fragmented readerships. For instance, the ‘discourse’ about streaming varies widely by country and based on whether a source is chasing clicks or relies on reputation.
I don’t have answers. I’m curious whether others are finding ways to get institutional access or educators’ rates and whether the quality of paywalled sources is better. At a minimum, if the journal reviewing I do is a broader indication, we need to be more careful with our reliance on these sources, avoid getting caught in hype (read click-driving angles), and be careful what we teach students to use as it takes a fair bit of knowledge to read around the baloney.
This is yet another stage in the broader crisis around business models and knowledge production. We may have more access to more sources but aren’t better informed.
