Is real journalism dead? Is print journalism dead? These questions have been circulating over the past twenty-something years in the journalistic community. 

As a journalism major, all I heard when I told someone I was majoring in journalism was that I wouldn’t make any money and that news sources don’t print the truth anymore. This can be exhausting to hear when you have a true passion and curiosity for telling stories. 

We invited Rhett Long, a long-time publisher in Utah, of papers such as the Daily Herald, Standard-Examiner, Provo Daily Herald, Spectrum Newspaper, and Spectrum Media on the Utah Stories podcast to discuss these questions. 

“We could do multi-part stories when I first entered the newspaper business. If it took a week to get the story right, it took a week. If it took a month, you put a month into it,” Long said. 

Journalism is multi-faceted, and although some critics think journalism is dead, point-blank period, some focus on local journalism facing the most significant hurdles and the biggest struggles. 

The hot topic and problem with journalism is fake news. Our country is divided politically, and sometimes it is difficult to tell whether the reporter’s bias makes the story “fake”. All in all, reading a story from multiple news sources and perspectives will help you determine the truth somewhere in the middle. 

How do you achieve a balance between journalistic integrity but also driving enough traffic and ad revenue to make a paper successful? 

“There’s a line that the investment of the product has to become more important than the bottom line…. The investment into storytelling is going to happen one way or the other, but it’s who’s going to do it right and be able to carry that,” Long said.