Parting Thoughts for 2024

Tough lessons from a hard year— and thanks for your engagement

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

This is likely the last edition of Second Rough Draft for this year, and therefore the first of two columns of which I make traditions: this week, some reflections on the waning year, and then, in January, a look at some stories I’d like to see elsewhere in the year ahead.

The revolutionary temper and old presidents

I want to start this ending where we began— with a couple of the stories I said I hoped to read in 2024. With your indulgence, here’s what I wrote back in January:

My own hunch is we are now witnessing a boiling-over of 35-plus years of resentment of widening inequality, from which those who populate our leading universities, large corporations (especially tech), financial firms, entertainment industry, social sector, residential enclaves—and newsrooms!—are seen to have gained much more than most Americans.

During these years, Democrats have held power just as often as Republicans; neither have done much to alleviate inequality, even when Democratic control was at its zenith, as in 1993-94, 2009-10 and 2021-22. The fact that Trump’s first term version of populism did not seek to redress the economic aspects of this imbalance may have blinded us as reporters to reporting out the full extent of the resulting revolutionary temper. We should remedy that, as quickly as possible.

To be clear and direct, I think the press largely failed on this in the 10 months before the election, and we mostly continue to do so, looking for tactical and macroeconomic explanations for Trump’s narrow re-election. We need urgently to do better.

I also said a few times in late 2023 and early this year that I thought we needed more reporting on whether Joe Biden remained physically up to another term. Of course, it became clear on the evening of June 27, at the debate, that he was not, and this became a dominant theme of the last seven months of his presidency. The failure here, again, was in part that of the press, and I have been struck by how little good reporting has been done since then on who around him (including his Vice President) knew what, when about his debility. That remains a good story, particularly if Kamala Harris intends to seek the presidency for a third time in 2028, as early indications are that she may.

another year of many Second Rough Drafts

But I also hope that having lost the last war on this front won’t keep the press from reporting the next one. Three years from today, with more than a year to go on his forthcoming term, Donald Trump will be the same age Biden was at the debate. He will have lived under the pressure of the presidency for twice as long as Biden, and will have passed the age at which his own father exhibited signs of dementia. Let’s keep this potential story in our sights.

Limits of wealth and legislation

As the tide of the year recedes, we’ve also seen some sorry indications of the limits of concentrated wealth in our business. Jeff Bezos said recently that he’s about to save the Washington Post for a second time. Color me dubious about this. After the wound he inflicted on the Post with its endorsement fiasco, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see the paper under new ownership in 2025. We can only hope for the same at the Los Angeles Times, where Patrick Soon-Shiong seems to find a new way every week to prove how unsuited he is to the role of proprietor.

Falling into something of the same bucket is the disappointing performance of those managing billion dollar endowments ostensibly seeking to revive local journalism, from the Press Forward consortium to the Knight Foundation that once played such a big role in the sector to the MacArthur Foundation’s announcement last week of new grants of less than $3 million direct to newsrooms and more than $12 million to intermediaries..

Looking more broadly, I think we need to acknowledge that 2024 was also the year that public policy solutions to the business crisis of the press seemed to hit a wall. Much-heralded initiatives in California, New York and Illinois yielded results that we ought to recognize as modest, while federal legislation (both bills that were potentially revenue-generating and those that would have added protection for sources) went nowhere in a legislative alignment much more favorable than we are likely to experience again anytime soon. I know costly problems make turning to government aid tempting, but I think counting on politicians for salvation is more than likely to lead to disappointment. To be fair, the outlook may be a bit better defensively, i.e. in the ability to block repressive legislative proposals.

Where the hope comes from

But it’s not all bad news, and I don’t want to end on a sour note. I continue to find inspiration in outstanding leaders providing strong, focused, innovative management of news businesses. Some of them, I am delighted to say, are consulting clients of mine. I was pleased to be able to devote three columns this year to conversations with others, and hope to do more of the same in 2025. I welcome your suggestions for who you think has particularly relevant experience, both in the comments below and privately.

Our own report card

Finally, as I do each year, a brief report card on the 42 previous columns published in 2024. As in each of this newsletter’s first three years, this part comes with my deep gratitude to you—for reading, and engaging, as many of you do. Free subscriptions to Second Rough Draft grew 68% this year, and now stand above 5700. Readership of a typical column grew more than 50%, to well over 6000 views, while open rates ticked down slightly to 53-54% most weeks.

The leading sources of readers, above and beyond subscriptions, continue to be LinkedIn and the Substack platform itself. Notably, while Bluesky has seemed to explode in recent weeks, and my own follower count there has grown dramatically, it is, so far, a negligible source of readership, and not nearly what Twitter was before Musk. (I still post the column to Twitter, but have otherwise generally stopped engaging there; I also post to Threads, where engagement is also low.)

This year, for the first time, one of these columns achieved ten thousand views, and then four others did as well. The Spring column on the cultural problems at my alma mater, the Wall Street Journal was initially the most widely read, but it was recently (and significantly) eclipsed by the challenges of the Knight Foundation, while columns on the collapse of the Center for Public Integrity (which has since shut down), issues with Press Forward grantmaking and the implications of Trump’s victory for the press also led the way.

Across all of those subjects, and the months just passed, thanks again for spending some time with me. I know this is a moment of great uncertainty and no little apprehension for many. I look forward to facing 2025 with determination, curiosity, fealty to cherished values and hope where we can find it. Happy holidays to you and your loved ones.

Second Rough Draft expects to return January 9.