Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most.

Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news.

The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion.

Study after study proves that journalism fuels and promote a strong democracy.

Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings. “Functioning more like birdshot than a single bullet,” the Times explained, “these high-volume social media campaigns represent the new vanguard of modern political influence, saturating the internet with a topic until it is all but unavoidable.”

A perspective that appears popular online may well be the result of this digital “astroturfing.” A decade ago, many Americans blamed the Russian government for insidious meddling in American politics using armies of paid content pushers. Now the same tactic is being deployed by campaigns and nonprofits.

This disturbing trend goes hand-in-hand with a shocking decimation of journalism. A June 2026 study found that the number of journalists per capita in the United States fell by more than 80 percent since 2002, and those jobs that remain are increasingly focused on sports and crime rather than public policy, government, or other issues.

As out-of-work journalists turn to freelancing, the situation for piecemeal work is equally grim. The National Writers Union recently found that freelance pay remains stagnant even as the cost of living has more than doubled.

Desperate to make ends meet, some independent journalists might attempt to garner large enough........

© Common Dreams