'Thank you' to my subscribers, thoughts on the demise of 'Fleet Street' and journalism...
... and how you personally can improve the media
This article might sound like I’m singing for my supper, but I thought it would be helpful to offer an insider’s perspective on the modern media, how it is funded and some of the problems it faces, especially us niche faith-focused types. It involves my saying a big ‘thank you’ to those who pay a subscription to my Substack, especially as at the moment I’m not offering content that is exclusive to paid subscribers. I take their payment as a gesture of support for the work I do, and I appreciate it, as I think the rest of this post will make clear. I also thank the publications who regularly pay for my work and so make it possible to be a full-time writer - especially Premier Christianity magazine, Christian Today, and the Catholic Herald.
I first became a professional journalist in 2000, after a few years of student journalism, and I was lucky and absolutely delighted to quickly get my dream job on national newspapers, where I stayed for five years. I first worked for the Independent on Sunday and then for The Guardian on their business sections. I was extremely privileged to get such a role and have that experience at that young age. It gave me a unique insight on the world, the media, and the skills that would help me in my later career as a writer in the Christian media. I also witnessed the last, dying days of ‘Fleet Street’ excess and so I have plenty of stories to tell at dinner parties: drunken escapades, large expense accounts and wild behaviour.
It’s not like that any more, at least it’s not as bad, but there are negative knock-on effects of the end of Fleet Street’s power. Newspapers were once funded by monopolies on job advertising: the Guardian’s Wednesday society pages was the only place where senior public sector managers would look for a new role; the same for Monday’s Media section. The Times and The Daily Telegraph had similar strangleholds on elite jobs; The Financial Times on the City. These acted as ‘cash cows’ that enabled editors and editorial staff to be pretty indifferent to advertising and income, and pursue investigations and news for the purer motivation of ‘getting a story’ rather than earning income - funding extravagant trips and plenty of ‘good lunches,’ which was part of finding new stories and contacts.
I left The Guardian in 2005 just after it triumphantly launched splashed out enormous amounts on its ‘Berliner’ size, which was launched with much premature confidence for the future. Not long afterwards, newspapers started to be seriously hit by the effects of the internet. Look back over those two decades, and think how different the sector is. All job advertising is now online, so those ‘cash cows’ are long gone. Newspapers and old-style serious magazines like The Spectator have many online competitors, often with much lower costs. Fewer and fewer people are buying newspapers and more look online and expect content to be free. While online articles do attract advertisers, income is much lower and it is dependent on content, which is a corrupting influence. This is the reason for the new genre of news article: “clickbait,” published only to entice people to ‘click’ and therefore secure ad revenue, even if the quality is rubbish or it is outrageously offensive just to attract attention.
Trust in the ‘mainstream media’ is very low and negative comments are widespread, sometimes for good reason - as a shocking recent report on BBC bias against Israel during the recent war shows. However it is much harder for a newspaper to do a good job with much less income and a much more complex world.
Journalism is not known for its ethics, but there did used to be a moral code, internal as well as external from the Press Complaints Commission, however much the haters complained. The threat of being sued was a good regulator for any working journalist. Happily in my role in the Christian media I observe concern for ethics to be much stronger: I have had more important ethical discussions with my editors than I used to in the mainstream press. Christians in the media often genuinely want to do the right thing and are aware of the power we wield.
There is no doubt that there is a liberal bias in the media, despite old impressions that Fleet Street was too conservative. People in the media in general are more left wing, and there are not many practising Christians. Even in my time, before the ‘woke’ revolution, faith was mocked and largely ignored on both publications I worked on. Consider the small number of publications who regularly covered stories of Christians fired for their beliefs: usually the Mail, the Telegraph, and Christian outlets. Consider the many amazing stories of Christian heroes you hear about regularly in your church - and whether those stories appeared in the mainstream press. I’d never heard of people like Corrie ten Boom, Maximilian Kolbe or Jackie Pullinger until I became a Christian and started reading a lot about my new faith, yet these people deserve to be household names.
The media can and does influence society. Politicians are not as afraid of the mainstream press as they used to be. But they are afraid of losing votes, and the media is one means by which they can do so. Investigations and reports can influence those who read them, their behaviour, buying habits and opinions. The media is therefore an important means by which the world can become a better place, however limited and flawed it is. And while there does seem to be a strong bias in the mainstream media, e.g. against gender critical ideas, faith, conservative sexual ethics: that can change, if we put our money where our own personal values lie.
All of that taken together, this is my conclusion and my exhortation: it is important for all, especially if you are a Christian or are politically conservative, to intentionally and voluntarily support people and organisations in the media. We have become used to getting content for free, but that is not good for the health of the media and society as a whole.
Deliberately subscribe to your favourite ‘mainstream’ media source in both the secular and Christian/political worlds. You may not like everything it publishes. When you don’t - write a letter to the editor. Buy the paper version, or subscribe online. Even if you can get it for free.
Choose one or two individuals who you want to support voluntarily. For example, many YouTubers now have Patreon accounts for people to support their work, even though they don’t have to pay for it. Substack is a great innovation for journalists. Some excellent US writers, like
and have become ‘big’ outside of the mainstream media and now earn enough income to pay for other staff and/or become an outlet in their own right. They’ve become respected enough that they are writing for the mainstream media too. If there is a writer on here who you believe is doing good work - your choice to support them will make a difference and can influence the media as a whole.Deliberately read, like and share articles that you think are important. Because advertising revenue is tied to ‘clicks’, when you do click, read and share, you are supporting that writer and the content within. If many people read a particular article, editors are more likely to commission new pieces about the same subject or the same writer.
Be discerning about what you read. There are an awful lot of publications now and there is much less of a bottleneck for quality, fact-checking and so on. While I think it’s good that there are a lot of new conservative-leaning publications, some of them publish questionable articles, both from a spiritual/moral point of view and a quality and accuracy point of view. Others are just plain depressing: negative, pessimistic, angry. Unfortunately this generates ‘clicks.’ Of course then there is the problem of ‘fake news’ and the bias of those who claim to ‘fact check’.
Pray and have compassion on us! Yes, the media get things wrong. Yes, there is bias. Yes, there are inaccuracies. But consider that it is not easy to get a well researched, objective article written in the timeframe required by the modern immediate publishing cycle. It’s also hard to fund such work. I don’t like thinking of what I do as a ‘business’ and to an extent I trust God for my financial needs - but I do have to earn a living. I am able to work for free occasionally or do some in-depth, seriously researched pieces for meagre pay - the Christian media is just not rich enough to fund the latter, and the secular media is unlikely to be interested in anything that is too ‘Christian’. In the old days on newspapers, I might have a week to research a feature - that is a lot of money and not cost-effective unless it gets a huge audience, these days. Really good investigative journalism takes much longer than a weekand is very expensive. For the media to improve, the finances need to improve. You can be a part of that.
