Grieve The Loss Of Local Newspapers During Photojournalism Exhibition At Milwaukee Art Museum

 

Via Forbes

January 30, 2025

Grieve The Loss Of Local Newspapers During Photojournalism Exhibition At Milwaukee Art Museum

"Between 2005 and 2023, more than 2,200 weekly newspapers have shuttered, dropping from nearly 9,000 to roughly 6,000 according to research conducted at Northwestern University. Imagine if the same statistic held true for hospitals. Newspapers care for the health of American democracy as surely as hospitals do its physical health....

Worse still, at the same time, 43,000 newspaper journalist jobs have been eliminated, nearly two-thirds! Imagine any other industry critical to American society, the American way of life, and American democracy losing two thirds of its workers in less than 20 years. There’d be congressional hearings. The president would address the nation with a bold plan to reverse the trend...

Why are politicians and the public not crying over these job losses? Because journalists–the good ones–hold the powerful to account. Politicians, corporations, the wealthy. The powerful benefit when newspapers close or reduce coverage. Citizens lose....

An exhibition on view through March 16, 2025, at the Milwaukee Art Museum demonstrates how photographers have understood and wielded the power of images to convey events. Through more than 100 objects, “True Story: Photography, Journalism, and Media,” offers a window into a bygone past of robust, objective, professional news coverage in America focused on the picture makers...

Photographs previously offered incontrovertible proof of what journalists were telling their readers. Thanks to technology, the public can no longer believe its eyes.

Filling the void left by the evisceration of newspapers has been partisan cable news commentators shrieking talking points 24/7/365, masquerading opinion as news, perspective as information, and, increasingly, social media."

True Story: Photography, Journalism, and Media at the Milwaukee Art Museum