They have the user base — billions — and engineering prowess

They have the user base — billions — and engineering prowess
that no media company can match, which Stan Wischnowski, the Philadelphia Media Network executive editor, told me, is “putting democracy as a whole at risk because it has put at risk the kind of watchdog journalism we’ve been doing for 187 years.”
It might, for instance, help efforts to increase subscriptions to newspapers with
digital paywalls, while making them more adept online and on social platforms.
Last week, the institute followed up by announcing
that it had secured $26.5 million more from donors, and Mr. Lenfest committed an additional $40 million in future matching funds, all with a goal of finding “sustainable business models for high-quality journalism.”
In an interview, I asked Mr. Lenfest a leading question: Does the diminishing of local newspapers mean open season for corrupt city officials?
“There will be a tremendous vacuum if these local newspapers don’t continue to print.”
I grew up in Philadelphia, reading The Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposés of the Philadelphia court system — by a team including Buzz Bissinger —
and of the Philadelphia Police Department K-9 unit by William K. Marimow, now the paper’s editor at large.
The new environment is forcing newspapers to scramble to come up with a solution
that can keep the lights on, and keep the staff large enough to continue to do real, probing journalism, before it’s too late and it’s all over.
And, like all newspaper groups, it is trying to reorganize its newsroom to provide
its journalism in new forms that fit with new media consumption habits.