Department of Government

The good news for aspiring journalists: The barrier for generating and telling stories or sharing opinions has never been lower, thanks to smartphones and myriad online platforms.

The bad news: The media industry continues its downward spiral, including mass layoffs earlier this month at The Washington Post. Another major blow to the newspaper industry will take place in early May when the 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ceases to exist.

Still, it's a rewarding career if you can get and keep a journalism job—and don't mind seasons of low wages and long hours, according to a panel of four veteran journalists who spoke Feb. 12 as part of the Rockefeller Center and Dartmouth Dialogues series Law and Democracy: The United States at 250.

Asked by co-moderator Charlotte Hampton '26, the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth, whether students should still consider entering journalism, the panelists had some encouraging, but also pragmatic, advice.

"The industry is fundamentally one of the greatest professions there is," said Sam Stein '04, managing editor of The Bulwark. "You get to talk to incredibly interesting people. You get to go to remarkable places. You get to have a moral purpose to your work, and you get to get a little fame if you're good at it. That's pretty awesome. And you can actually, tangibly make a difference if you do it well."

The speakers, who also talked to students in classrooms that day, noted that the decline of local newsrooms weakens community information, fuels mistrust, and contributes to polarization.

The job cuts at The Post are particularly "just profound for democracy and extremely destructive," said Emily Greenhouse, editor of The New York Review of Books.

Those voids are usually filled by "showy, flashy" opinion takes that the internet prioritizes, she said, in place of traditional news coverage.

"And so, what we as a society read (and) valorize, where our attention goes to, it's very much changing the way we all think, and obviously it is having terrible effects on our politics," Greenhouse said.

Speakers said long-form stories still matter, but format mix is essential: Publications that succeed balance long, thoughtful pieces with rapid response content across audio, video, digital, and social media.

"Video is eating everything right now, and short form, vertical video is becoming the dominant form of dissemination of journalism, and the influencer world that thrives on that is becoming the way most information is mediated," said James Bennet, a columnist at The Economist and former editorial page editor of The New York Times and editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. "And AI is now arriving on top of that. So, I think we're facing a period of transformation that's greater than what we've already been coping with since the arrival of the internet."

"It's going to be a challenge for you to figure out," he told students.

One positive development on the business side has been a movement of nonprofit and investor-funded local journalism that's building direct reader relationships and loyalty, such as The Baltimore Banner and ProPublica, speakers said.

The Banner was launched by a business executive and philanthropist after his bid to buy the Baltimore Sun was rejected. The Banner is expanding and doing well in part through subscriptions, said Jillian Weinberger, a senior audio producer at New York Times Opinion.

"It does seem like it's giving this city a real … chance to have a well-covered government and society," she said. "I really hope that model is replicable in other places. So that's something … that's a kernel of hope."

The Bulwark has found similar success by relying on subscribers, rather than social media algorithms, to determine its audience or making paid advertising its main source of funding, Stein said.

"Our thought process was that if we can convince people to take out a credit card from their wallet and buy our product, that was an enduring financial transaction that would be foundational for a publication," he said. "What that has meant is that a lot of what we are geared around is trying to build community."

About 190 people attended the 70-minute discussion in Loew Auditorium, with another 250 watching the livestream. It was co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Associate Dean for the Social Sciences.

The next speaker in the Law and Democracy series is former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Feb. 20 at Dartmouth.