Democracy’s Hidden Crisis: Why Local News Matters More Than You Think
The collapse of local journalism is often discussed as an industry problem. It is really a democracy problem. That is the central argument John Chachas makes in a pointed essay for The AI Journal, drawing on decades of experience advising media companies through some of their most consequential transactions.
Chachas founded Methuselah Advisors in 2010 after years at First Boston, Lazard, and other major investment banks. He advised on the $18 billion buyout of Clear Channel Communications and Disney’s sale of ABC Radio. As CEO of Inyo Broadcast Holdings, a television broadcaster reaching millions of American households, he watches the economics of local media deteriorate in real time.
His diagnosis is direct. Tech giants built their platforms largely by indexing and monetizing content they did not create. Local newspapers provided the raw material. “The use and taking of content produced by newspapers by the likes of Google and Facebook is criminal,” he writes. “It has destroyed the economics of local media apparatuses that were fundamental to how our democratic institutions function.”
What has been lost goes beyond newsroom jobs. Local newspapers held power accountable at the community level. They covered city council meetings, school board elections, and local court proceedings. When a paper closes, nobody fills that civic gap. The streaming giants that have replaced them, Netflix and Amazon Prime among them, have no interest in local coverage. As Chachas puts it, “all of the tools that people need to live their lives are ignored by these giants.”
The concern about artificial intelligence compounds the problem. He draws a sobering parallel to the 1983 film WarGames, in which a defense computer nearly triggers nuclear war after escaping human oversight. His worry is not science fiction. It is structural. “There will come a point when technology is not containable,” he writes. The misuse of AI to fake personal images and likenesses is already a live issue, he argues, one the legal system has been far too slow to address.
On employment, he is equally direct. The standard reassurance that AI creates as many jobs as it destroys does not hold up. AI will produce “many fewer real jobs and many more ‘make work’ jobs,” he argues. That is not a satisfying future for young people building careers, and it is not politically sustainable.
His proposed remedy is practical: corporations that deploy AI in ways that eliminate jobs should be compelled to fund a Universal Basic Income trust. The companies capturing the productivity gains should bear a proportional share of the social costs. Chachas grew up on a cattle ranch in Ely, Nevada, where his father was the district attorney. Problems do not resolve themselves. The erosion of local news and rise of AI displacement are problems demanding exactly that kind of direct action, and the window for preemptive response is narrowing.