What Are You Paying For? 

As a boy in Montréal, I delivered newspapers door-to-door (neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night, etc…)  It was seen as an essential service to keep the population informed and actively participating in our democracy. Getting real ’news’ is a bit harder now but no less essential – particularly for business leaders. To be effective, we need to know what’s going on in the world.

Not everything. Not every rumour, outrage, scandal, or “breaking news” alert. But enough to understand the tides and currents that could affect the business — positively or negatively.

You also need enough context to have intelligent conversations with customers, suppliers, employees, investors, and the odd cab driver who has somehow solved monetary policy before you’ve reached the airport.

It’s part of the job. Like exercise. You may not love it every day, but ignore it long enough and you’ll feel the effects.

Twenty years ago, this was relatively easy. You read one or two newspapers, maybe a magazine, and watched the evening news. That gave you a reasonably broad view of the world.

Today, it’s harder.

Much of what we call “news” is really entertainment dressed up as information. Its job is not to inform you. Its job is to hold your attention long enough to sell you something — a product, a service, a subscription, a political view, or simply more outrage.

This is true of much broadcast news. It’s true of a lot of magazine content. And it is absolutely true of most social media.

But what about podcasters, bloggers, and independent commentators?

Some are excellent. Many are smart, thoughtful, and well informed. But being persuasive is not the same as being right.

Professional journalism, at its best, has a process. A story is investigated. Sources are interviewed. Documents are reviewed. Claims are corroborated. Facts are checked. Editors challenge the conclusions. Weaknesses are identified. The standard is not, “Is this interesting?” The standard is, “Can we defend this with evidence?”

Is that process perfect?   Of course not.

Journalists have bias. Editors have bias. Publications have bias. Owners have bias. We all do.

But there is still a big difference between information that has been tested before publication and commentary designed to confirm what an audience already wants to believe.

So how do you get a balanced view?  You pay for it.

Just as you pay a mechanic to look after your car, a dentist to fix your teeth, and a grocery store for the food you eat, you should expect to pay for credible information.

        When news is free, you are usually not the customer. You are the product. 

For what it’s worth, I subscribe to several news sources, and the differences between them are often as useful as the coverage itself.

I pay Bloomberg for an American-centric, capitalist view. I pay The Guardian for a left-leaning, European perspective. I follow CBC, Canada’s national news service, which I pay for through taxes. I pay for local business coverage through the Ottawa Business Journal. And I pay for The Kyiv Independent to get a ground-level view of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

None of these sources is perfect.

That’s the point.

Reading across them helps me see what is being emphasized, what is being ignored, and where the assumptions differ. The gaps are often just as interesting as the headlines.

As business leaders, we need to invest time and money in real information. Not just for the benefit of our companies, but because functioning markets and functioning democracies both depend on people having some shared understanding of reality.

So here’s the question:   What are you paying for?

Andrew