When the newsrooms go dark, what remains?

By Terri Carter | Kentucky Lantern

Late last week, I woke in the mid­dle of the night with ver­ti­go. The float­ing ear-crys­tals kind where the room spins and spins, floor-to-ceil­ing, and for which the cure is to do some­thing called the Epley maneu­ver which, for sec­onds that feel like hours, inten­si­fies the spin­ning, mak­ing you feel like you have slipped grav­i­ty until the spin­ning final­ly, mer­ci­ful­ly, slows and stops.

Also late last week, the Lexington Herald-Leader gut­ted its newsroom.

Veteran reporter John Cheves shared this news on Comment on Kentucky, say­ing, in part, “It’s pop­u­lar in some quar­ters to sort of sneer and then mock news­pa­pers, or to greet with apa­thy the demise of news­pa­pers, but I can assure you you’re gonna miss us when we’re gone.”

It is pop­u­lar to sneer and mock. But as some­one who already lives in the small-town news desert of Anderson County, KY — where there are, to my knowl­edge, at least two com­plex local inves­ti­ga­tions that need to be done, but no one is here to do them — I already have a too-real sense of what he means.

Last week was also the 25^th anniver­sary of ⁹⁄₁₁, and I repeat­ed­ly thought of that last part from Cheves — you’re gonna miss us when we’re gone — as I rest­ed my head to keep from trig­ger­ing the ver­ti­go and lis­tened to dozens of archived news reports from the morn­ing of ⁹⁄₁₁ and the months and years that fol­lowed. Virtually every sto­ry was from 60 Minutes or oth­er accred­it­ed news sources, includ­ing local news­pa­pers and TV sta­tions that were trust­ed by every­one from griev­ing fam­i­lies to fire depart­ments to com­pa­nies who’d been housed in the World Trade Center try­ing not only to recov­er their busi­ness­es, but to sup­port fam­i­lies of employ­ees who’d died or were still list­ed as missing.

You can’t do this with­out think­ing about today’s frac­tured media landscape.

Consider:  If a ⁹⁄₁₁ hap­pened today, would you know the dif­fer­ence between a true or false report? Could you trust an “influ­encer” — or a hun­dred “influ­encers” — over cre­den­tialed jour­nal­ists? How would you know which pho­tos and videos are real, or if someone’s state­ment had been fair­ly edit­ed? Who might a vul­ner­a­ble, griev­ing fam­i­ly trust with their sto­ry? How many scams and false reports would there be due to jack­als just try­ing to get clicks and make a buck?

Considering the pre­pon­der­ance of lies and AI-slop pro­duced dai­ly by the U.S. President him­self — on his own social media plat­form and on video/microphone — how will we know what to believe or what to do in a nation­al emergency?

Because in 2026, that’s where we are.

And here comes AI.

I read and watch a lot of con­ser­v­a­tive news these days. Not Fox or OANN — that’s not news, that’s junk food — but seri­ous, pro­fes­sion­al­ly edit­ed out­lets like The Dispatch and the Wall Street Journal. If you’d have told me 10 years ago that my infor­ma­tion diet would soon include men like Jonah Goldberg, Kevin D. Williamson, and Robert Kagan, to name a few, I’d have laughed. And yet I am increas­ing­ly con­vinced that, just like the reg­u­lar phys­i­cal exer­cise we abhor, the dai­ly exer­cise of con­sid­er­ing oppos­ing argu­ments, of talk­ing to each oth­er, of being able to sep­a­rate straight report­ing from thought­ful opin­ion while being open to both, are the keys to our san­i­ty and our future.

I was talk­ing recent­ly with a local friend who does not agree with me polit­i­cal­ly. We both miss hav­ing a robust, local news­pa­per. “We have no idea who we are as a com­mu­ni­ty any­more,” they said. 

One of the ⁹⁄₁₁ sto­ries I lis­tened to over the week­end, while I kept my head still, was with vet­er­an Associated Press pho­tog­ra­ph­er Richard Drew from the 60 Minutes archive. “My job is to record his­to­ry every day,” he said. And when John Dickerson asked him what hap­pens with­out the focus on facts and his­to­ry?  “You’re not a jour­nal­ist,” Drew said. “Then you’re just a per­son with a camera.”

What will we do when the news­rooms go dark?

When we are flood­ed with so many pho­tos and videos and sto­ries from so many sources that we don’t know what’s real?

When there is no one left with the resources, pro­tec­tions, and skills to con­duct prop­er inves­ti­ga­tions and hold the pow­er­ful to account?

When we find our­selves out search­ing the mas­sive, dis­ori­ent­ing swirl of infor­ma­tion, how will we find our history?

As with ver­ti­go, the room spins.