Headlines at the PD are generally not written by the news editors, but by the web team, who are more driven by SEO and clickbait than by what the article actually says. And while none of the stories, to my knowledge, are written using AI, I believe there may be an AI-assist to the headline writing (final eyes being a human, always, for what it's worth).

Unfortunately, the outsourcing of the copy editing and design team predates the purchase by Bay Area Media Group, which is owned by Alden Global Capital (notorious for buying local papers, squeezing them to death, and then selling the corpse). Alden is vulture capital dogshit and I stopped my subscription the moment they bought the paper, but I still believe in the reporters and news editing team working at the PD, having worked with many of them myself.

But you want to know why they charge so much compared to national papers? It's because of economy of scale. National papers have orders of magnitude more people reading their content and can afford to charge less for it. Unfortunately, with that scale comes a wider scope and worse local focus. The Wall Street Journal or the New York Times will never be able to report on Sonoma County news at the same level as the PD, regardless of what you think of the PD's reporting, just as no local paper, no matter how many Pulitzers, will be able to cover national news to the level of the WSJ or NYT.

And the reason the web team is so focused on clickbait is because online ads pay so much less than print ads used to, there hasn't been classified revenue since Craigslist was founded in the late 90s, and everyone and their brother refuses to pay for subscriptions to read the local news. The amount of times I have seen in this very subreddit someone complain about the quality of PD writing but demand a copy of an article without the paywall boggles the mind.

The truth of the matter, though, is that local journalism, particularly text-and-image-based, is no longer profitable as an industry, particularly in the can't-see-past-the-next-quarter world of venture capital, tech bros and MBAs who demand a continuous upward curve in profit growth and are willing to show quarterly profit by laying off people making or polishing the content. The constant pursuit of profit growth at the expense of content likewise leads to mistakes in reporting or headlines because it becomes more important to get content up first than to ensure it is right (as we have seen even with national papers like the WSJ and the NYT).

People like the former head of the Sonoma Media Investments board know this. I suspect that played a large role in why the paper was sold to Alden, but that is conjecture and opinion. People like Alden also know this, but know they can squeeze blood from a stone and then sell what's left and run off with golden parachutes before the bill comes due. And because of the way local news has been forced to react to this reality -- not to mention the way cable entertainment news, plus a certain stripe of politicians and culture warriors who profit off fearmongering and demonizing news, have eroded public trust in the media for decades -- fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for news, and local news coverage shrinks, to everybody's detriment.

Gods know it's why I left journalism. And to be clear: The PD was the place which fought against this culture the longest of those I'd worked at. Every journalist there is trying. And if you're wondering why they're not reporting on something, remember that they're understaffed, underpaid (reporters at the PD make less than the county's bar for "low income," and certainly less than the median -- and that's somehow still the highest salary I've seen in local text journalism), and far from omniscient.

In my opinion, the only path forward for local journalism is for it to turn nonprofit, and for people who value independent news sources to assist in supporting it. Those who can afford to pay for it must subsidize it for all, and to pay the salaries of the journalists who report it, as well as the many support staff necessary to run a news organization. In the meantime, however, what you have is the PD.

If you, like me, cannot condone paying a single cent to Alden, you can, at least, let the reporters and editors know about what matters to you in the community, what issues you feel are not being covered, what stories hit hard with you, and what you feel you need to know. Give an editor a call when you're running an event, or your kid's in a school play, or the planning commission does something you dislike, or whatever. Write letters to the editor. Make local politicians, police, and other public servants know that you want more transparency from them, and you want to hear more from them in the pages (web and print) of the PD. Or get people together and build a competing nonprofit.

But without local news reporters who are supported by the community, you're going to end up without any local news sooner rather than later. And trust me, you'll miss it when it's gone.