I had a third career rolling as a freelance writer, but I lost my major cash cow when Indian Country Media Network went belly up and then I had to quit Newsweek when my editor got fired for being honest. Then cancer hit and I ran off to get my memoir written while I could.

When I turned back to writing, I was not physically able to chase news. At ICMN, a normal piece got a few hundred clicks and my standard for a runaway hit was 10,000. In Medium, I struggle to hit triple digits.

Anyway, the “free press” that engaged the Framers was along the line of Ben Franklin.

There’s a straight line from Franklin to Willam Randolph Hearst.

Media owned by publicly traded corporations was an improvement. Closely held corporations, not so much.

I am from flyover country, and there are just not that many real newspapers left. You ID them by the amount of original reporting they contain.

The university where I was educated (Texas) and the one where I taught in my second career (Indiana) both had first rate journalism schools. The dream job upon graduation was with a wire service, where you actually get to report and you have a chance of outstanding work getting noticed. The other path is to do well for years on and ordinary gig and then swing a grant to investigate something that needs light shined on it.

I don’t notice a lot of disagreement among J-school students or among reporters about what it means for a reporter to do an honest job. Those opinions are what counts in the trenches — the owners are merely selling eyeballs. Until very recently.