Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBurke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact, —very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. – Thomas Carlyle (1840)

Printer’s ink flows in my veins. In 1831 my great-great-grandfather founded The Country Gentleman, America’s largest agricultural journal when agriculture was pretty much all we did. His son followed him. My father was a journalist and local newspaper publisher in Manhattan’s northern suburbs. I followed him. I made my living publishing – newspapers, magazines, online local news. My older son and daughter are in the news biz. My daughter publishes local newspapers in the Hudson Valley, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. My son is a gifted and intrepid independent journalist covering, among other things, the meltdown of the morals of The Washington Post. (He’s got a fearless feisty Substack page, petetucker.substack.com, check it out.) My kids’ mom’s family was prominent in the news business. In a dazzling stroke of luck, I married a famous journalist. Many of our dearest friends are journalists. I’ve published millions of words in journalistic outlets, including this one.

Journalism was never the most lucrative of professions, but we liked to think it the noblest, a sort of secular priesthood stubbornly devoted to the gathering and dispersion of truth. Democracy depended on us, as Carlyle predicted. The standards for journalistic propriety were tattooed onto our DNA. We took pride in journalistic heroes, who risked their all to transmit the truth. (The Washington Post, back in the comparatively pristine pre-Bezos days, likened son Peter to John Peter Zenger on their editorial page. I was never prouder.)

The news profession was honored during my time. Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, civil rights movements were famously fueled by fearless reporting. Gradually electronics began to transform the news business into entertainment. Fewer folks read. Newsgathering became costlier. Local businesses, which advertised locally, were replaced by chains, which advertised regionally or nationally. Independent publishers sold out to larger companies which sold out to plutocrats for whom news was less a mission than a tool to purchase influence or feather in their cap. Then along came the Nameless One with his contention that the news business was a conspiracy against him and his, a pack of lies. We laughed. What could be more ridiculous! Then the Nameless One was reelected President (speaking of ridiculous) and he prosecuted the detested press, shook them down, got his critics garroted, gloated in their pain. The plutocrat owners of legacy media now sucked up to the President to inveigle his largesse. A free press? Hah! Not if it got in the way of incremental billions.

The truth will keep trying to out – that is its nature – but less and less in legacy media, panting for profits to placate their proprietors. As in other autocracies, truth will depend on penniless independents, willing to risk penury and penalties to bear honest witness. Corruption, like mushrooms, thrives in darkness. The plutocrats, attempting to purge the Web of these invidious verities, will often succeed but sometimes fail. “Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people.” (Isaiah 60)