@jasonkoebler.bsky.social , in 1988, a year before he died, I had the privilege of hearing I.F. Stone speak at the ACLU of Northern California offices in San Francisco. Although most of it was about his recently published, and I believe final book The Trial of Socrates, this still-brilliant mind offered some lessons for journalists present and future.

Working in the 1940s and later in D.C. and writing about the political/governmental establishment, he was keenly aware of the ethical rot brought on by making deals for status and access. Wanting to be an exception, he made a practice of never seeking permission to accompany notables into their meetings, and instead questioned them on the public staircase as they departed. In consequence, he didn't get the expenses-paid junkets or free booze, but, as an outsider, he still got the story and was free to write for, first, The Nation, and then Picture Magazine _, _New York Star, The Daily Compass, and finally I. F. Stone's Weekly exactly what he felt needed saying, when he wanted to say it.

Izzy Stone was right. You can be a journalist or cozy with your subjects, but not both.

#journalism
#IFstone

@cobalt That is another huge argument.

When the good news sources are paywalled, the only "news" that the average person has access to is that which someone pays for them to see, that is, propaganda.

This is also a problem with advertising-supported media, and there are all kinds of ways that has gone wrong. The two best references I have on that are a 1909 lecture and a 1974 interview.

The first is by a magazine publisher reflecting on the tremendous growth of advertising-supported media over the previous 50 years (pretty much from its inception around 1860), "Commercialism and Journalism" by Hamilton Holt: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft

The second is I.F. "Izzie" Stone on the "Day at Night" PBS programme: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g

What Stone hits on is that as large-city dailies achieved scale, they became largely independent of advertiser influence, Diversified ad revenues from classifieds and legal notices also helped. At the same time, there was enough competition among the major dalies (usually in different cities) that there wasn't an overall monopoly on news sources. In particular, Stone contrasts the large-city papers with rural and urban small-town papers whose editors had far less independence.

#HamiltonHolt #CommercialismAndJournalism #IFStone #DayAtNight #Journalism #media