I spent an October weekend in Phoenix at a journalism conference—and the experience truly rattled me.
Newsgeist, which is produced by Center for News, Technology and Innovation, brings together about 200 journalists and news leaders from around the world to discuss the topics and concerns on the minds of the attendees. This year, themes included dealing with AI, how to better reach audiences/potential audiences, and the topic that left me rattled: the immense threat to press freedoms by the actions of the federal government since Donald Trump reassumed the presidency.
I went to Phoenix knowing about these threats, of course—but the gravity of the situation we’re facing right now in the United States really set in after journalists from other countries, where press freedoms were taken away, pointed out that what happened in their countries is happening here, but a lot more rapidly.
Look at what has happened in Hungary, for example, and notice the parallels. This is from a 2024 story by The Associated Press:
Since 2010, Orbán’s government has promoted hostility to migrants and LGBTQ+ rights, distrust of the European Union, and a belief that Hungarian-American financier George Soros—who is Jewish and one of Orbán’s enduring foes—is engaged in secret plots to destabilize Hungary, a classic antisemitic trope. …
According to press watchdog Reporters Without Borders, Orbán has used media buyouts by government-connected “oligarchs” to build “a true media empire subject to his party’s orders.” The group estimates that such buyouts have given Orbán’s party control of some 80% of Hungary’s media market resources. In 2021, it put Orbán on its list of media “predators,” the first EU leader to earn the distinction.
The title didn’t come out of nowhere: in 2016, Hungary’s oldest daily newspaper was suddenly shuttered after being bought by a businessman with links to Orbán. In 2018, nearly 500 pro-government outlets were simultaneously donated by their owners to a foundation headed by Orbán loyalists, creating a sprawling right-wing media conglomerate. And in 2020, nearly the entire staff of Hungary’s largest online news portal, Index, resigned en masse after its lead editor was fired under political pressure.
This is the same Orbán who has given well-received speeches to American conservative groups. The same Orbán considered an ally and “a great man, a great leader in Europe” by Donald Trump.
And now Donald Trump is following Orban’s playbook to silence the news media.
I was worried before Newsgeist. Now I am legitimately afraid.
If you care about freedom of speech and democracy, you should be, too. Don’t take it from me; take it from the journalists whose countries slid into authoritarianism—and now see the exact same thing happening in the United States of America.
If you’re a regular reader of our monthly print edition, you probably noticed this month’s edition looks a little different.
For the second time in our print edition’s 12 1/2 year history, we’ve had to switch printers. The first switch happened in 2020, when Gannett, the parent company of The Desert Sun, shut down its Palm Springs press and moved printing operations to The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. We had been printed in Phoenix since then—but Gannett shuttered that print operation in early October.
So as of our November issue, we’re being printed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
This illustrates one of the biggest threats to printed newspapers like our monthly print edition—the decreasing number of presses. A couple of decades ago, virtually every town in the country had at least one press. These days, that’s not the case. Instead, a dwindling number of presses are handling print jobs from a wider geographic area.
The bulk of Southern California’s daily newspapers are now being printed by one operation in Riverside, including The Desert Sun and even the Los Angeles Times (which shuttered its press in March 2024). Meanwhile, the Phoenix daily is now being printed in Las Vegas, on the same press as the Independent.
This is a problem. Print newspapers are not dead—but due to the dwindling number of presses, they’re in jeopardy.
Note: This is a slightly edited version of the editor’s note that appeared in the November 2025 print edition. Portions of this were originally published online in the Oct. 23 Indy Digest.