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A Beat of Their Own

The news industry faces a challenging moment. These journalists are rising to meet it.

Turning Loss into Opportunity

Rachael Bale ’10 was in her element. For months, she’d been investigating the trafficking of cheetah cubs across the Horn of Africa, reporting out of Somaliland for National Geographic. Her life was a whirlwind of wildlife law and field expeditions and records requests—just the way she liked it. The work culminated in a long-form investigation about criminal networks smuggling cubs out of Africa to wealthy buyers. When Rachael looks back, she remembers it as her favorite story she ever reported. It was also one of her last for the publication she’d called home for just over seven years.

Not long later, in the fall of 2022, at seven months pregnant, she was laid off from her position as executive editor of the Animals Desk at Nat Geo. The layoff, which resulted from the company’s realignment after being bought by Disney, was difficult for Rachael. Her identity had become wrapped up in her job, and losing it sort of felt like losing herself.

But Rachael, who for years investigated wildlife crime all over the world—from Zimbabwe and Uganda to Vietnam and the Philippines—is not easily thwarted. The layoff, as badly timed as it was, had a silver lining, she says: It gave her time to spend with her newborn, and space to reevaluate her career. After the birth of her son, on walks in her Denver, Colorado, neighborhood with her infant strapped to her chest, a leash leading her rescue corgi in one hand and her phone in the other, Rachael and her former colleagues brainstormed about how they could use their now-dormant wildlife investigation skills.

On one of those days, the idea for an independent nonprofit organization, , or WIRE, was born. In August 2024, the nonprofit officially launched. “It’s simple,” Rachael says. “There’s a great need for these stories. These stories aren’t being told, and we figured we know how to do them well, so why don’t we keep doing it?”

WIRE, which Rachael cofounded with former Nat Geo editor Oliver Payne and freelancer Rene Ebersole, manages investigations from conception to publication. Rachael and her colleagues want WIRE stories to reach audiences who aren’t already thinking about environmental crime, which is why they copublish with major media outlets like Rolling Stone. “We don’t want to target people who are already interested in conservation and wildlife,” Rachael says. “We want to find the people who aren’t and hook them.”

A Troubled Landscape

Though Rachael’s response to losing her job may have been unique, the layoff itself was not. Many journalists have had their career paths diverted—often not by choice—as the industry continues to face great financial hardship and growing public apathy and mistrust.

Changes to the journalism industry are not new, and in fact, experts say the industry has been suffering for at least two decades, if not longer. The biggest challenges began with the rise of the internet, when many newspapers lost advertising to the online world, and the inception of Craigslist removed the need for the classified section in print media. Adam Penenberg ’86 remembers that time well. When he was an up-and-coming journalist in the ’90s, Adam was both an observer and a player in the transformation of the news landscape. While working for Forbes Digital Tool, he uncovered that journalist Stephen Glass was fabricating his stories for The New Republic, an incident that shook up the industry and later was turned into a movie, Shattered Glass (Steve Zahn portrayed Adam in the film).

Though Adam is modest about this accomplishment (“Look, Spotlight—they took down the Catholic Church,” he says. “All we did was take down a liar.”), an unexpected benefit, he admits, was that his investigative work made online news more credible at a time when it was considered just a fad. Now an associate professor and the director of the online master’s in journalism program at New York University, he spends much of his time considering the direction of the industry. And he worries a lot about the sustainability of journalism’s current business model.

When Adam was starting out, profit margins for newspapers could rise to around 30%. Now, even The New York Times, long considered the pinnacle of journalism, has a margin of around 10%. Some of its success comes from digital subscriptions—the publication was up to over 11 million subscribers as of early 2025—but other big revenue streams are non–news related. “The New York Times is actually a games company that does news,” is the way Adam puts it (ever heard of Wordle, Connections, or Spelling Bee?).

The internet and other technological advances have continued to hurt the news industry. Newspapers once competed only with one another for readers’ attention, Adam explains. Now, with the access smartphones provide, news publishers must compete with other content streams—Instagram, TikTok, and Netflix, to name just a few—for a moment of focus. They often lose those battles. Digital traffic to news sites has continued to decline in recent years, and when people do read the news, they increasingly turn to social media rather than traditional news streams to get it.

Not only is the population less interested in traditional news, but many often mistrust it. According to , 38% of Americans reported having no confidence at all in newspapers, TV, and radio, marking the first time the percentage with no trust at all in the media was higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined. A loss of revenue, interest, and trust in news media has culminated in thousands of layoffs in the industry, condensed especially in the last few years. And in the U.S. in 2025, the news industry faces attacks from a presidential administration targeting outlets it disagrees with, creating a new set of even bigger problems.

Creating Space

Journalists, new, experienced, and in between, are trying to find their roles in an ever-changing news landscape. Jen Byers ’13 is one of them. “On one hand, we’re seeing the decline of newsrooms and traditional journalism, and they’re hanging on by a thread,” they say of the current environment. “But then we’re also seeing this massive rise of renegade independent media.” Jen has been on the front lines of that rise since the mid-2010s, when they left a career in Hollywood for on-the-ground reporting. In 2015, they began taking photos at protests and rallies in the lead-up to the presidential election. “I just saw this gulf between what I was seeing with my own two eyes and then what made it into the report,” Jen says. They wanted to bridge that gap and create work that was representative of the state of the world.

That work seemed even more necessary when they spent two months at the Standing Rock protests. On the night they arrived, Jen watched as police sprayed water protectors with freezing water. Their faces became covered in icicles as they stood there shivering—it was “the biggest and most extreme act of violence I’d ever seen in my life,” Jen says. Feeling at a loss and wanting to help, they volunteered in the media tent for much of their time there. Their job included signing in media workers, but it also involved fielding complaints from water protectors about journalists’ behavior.

“When I was in the tent, I really saw that difference between Indigenous values and Western values, and between Indigenous protocols and objective journalism protocols,” Jen recalls. They began to wonder: “How can I create more space for Indigenous methods and community-centered reporters? How can I help bring these stories, practices, and storytellers into visibility?”

Jen has sought to answer those questions as they’ve worked with Indigenous-led documentary crews, specialized in social justice reporting for outlets like Al Jazeera, and founded the . Their journalism has covered many corners of U.S. domestic conflict, often achieved via mobile reporting, a type of multimedia journalism in which a story is independently reported using only portable devices—sometimes just a smartphone.

Though traditional journalists have begun using mobile reporting, independent reporters and people of color have long spearheaded this form of journalism. Mobile reporters are a vital part of the news ecosystem, Jen says, despite the way they’ve often been invalidated by more traditional news streams. In recent years, mobile reporting has commonly acted as the first line of information when key events occur—the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020, which was filmed on a cell phone, is just one example. “So many of the most important and crucial issues of our generation were told through mobile journalism,” Jen says.

Currently, Jen is the cofounder and security advisor for, which teaches marginalized journalists how to protect themselves. Recently, they received a fellowship to turn their book, Turncoat, about practically applying alternative methods to journalism, into an episodic documentary. Still, like many journalists, they’re trying to find their own role in the industry. “What do we do? Do we try to found our own companies and build things out of the rubble? Should I just start a YouTube channel? Do I keep freelancing for $12 a year?”—Jen jokes—“I don’t know, but I can’t stop reporting,” they say. “And I think that perseverance, because so many people go into the business out of passion and necessity, that’s one of the things that’s going to keep it afloat.”

The Path Forward

Perseverance is only one piece of the puzzle, though, as the future of the industry remains unclear. Adam, knowing the current business model isn’t sustainable, thinks artificial intelligence will play a big role in the path forward—something that both frightens and excites him. Rather than people consuming their news in the traditional way, via reading, listening, or watching full stories, he believes AI will transform news into a conversational interface, where readers can use a chatbot to summarize articles. Adam has been playing with this idea himself to create YouTube videos for his channel, The PostModern Times, which uses AI and parody to inform audiences about political news.

Others have taken different paths. When the online news outlet where Emilie Raguso ’03 worked began pulling back on its daily crime and public safety coverage, she saw a “beautiful opportunity” to leave her position there and fill the gap on her own. With all her years of traditional newsroom experience, she created an independent news site focused completely on informing the community about local crime and safety.

The East Bay is not quite a news desert. But the area has experienced an extreme consolidation of its news sources, like many regions across the country. As the industry struggles financially, it is local news outlets that suffer the most. A decline in such sources is accelerating despite efforts to keep them afloat—in 2024, 127 local newspapers shuttered, leaving 55 million Americans with limited or no access to local news, found. The same study also discovered, however, that local digital news sites have been on the rise, filling some necessary gaps in growing news deserts. is one of them.

When there are few news organizations left to cover an area, especially one as highly populated as the East Bay, important stories can get missed. Emilie is ensuring some of the most vital ones don’t fade into obscurity, something she sees as a community service: “People just want the answers, and we can do that for them,” she says.

Emilie, despite working mostly on her own, doesn’t just provide answers. With her efforts, she maps key data, memorializes the victims of crimes, and ensures officials are held accountable. She spent the last couple of years reporting tirelessly on former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who was eventually recalled after facing criticism for mishandling high-profile cases and mistreating veteran staff.

In late 2023, Emilie was the only journalist turned away from a press conference with Price, despite having official press credentials. That was an instance where being a one-woman show was difficult, she says, because she had no editor or team to fall back on. But readers and First Amendment groups came to her aid. Shortly after the incident, the First Amendment Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and SPJ NorCal, the Bay Area chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, wrote a letter to Price describing how her office had violated Emilie’s First Amendment rights. A few days later, Emilie’s press access was restored.

In 2024, The Scanner was lauded for Emilie’s work, winning a National Headliner Award for local news and four California Journalism Awards for news coverage as well as sustainability, a nod to the site’s innovative business model. Just like that beautiful opportunity she saw when she first began The Scanner, Emilie sees a path forward, despite struggles in the industry, for independent news to become more common, and more sustainable.

Not Dying, Only Changing

Sustainability is on the minds of most journalists and news companies these days. The saying in the media business usually goes, “The industry is not dying, it’s only changing.” But how exactly will the industry change? There are guesses, but no one has one exact answer. Knowing the current business model is unsustainable, the only comfort, for now, may be that something will change, because at this point, it has to.

Rachael finds herself both scared and hopeful for the future. “You talk to any real journalist, any true, ethical journalist, and they’ll tell you that their career is built on a desire to serve the public. That’s what journalism is,” she says. “To see people re-energized and rededicated to the mission of investigative reporting, accountability reporting, even just the day-to-day, ‘here’s what’s happening in the world,’ reporting—that’s inspiring.”

Luckily, there are journalists out there like her, founding nonprofits, teaching the next generation, employing alternative strategies, and starting their own news sources from the ground up, ensuring that as the industry changes, it does so for the better.

Tags: Alumni