Dump CBS-Paramount streaming

Douglas Burns, the founder of The Iowa Mercury Substack, is pictured as a child with his uncle, James B. Wilson, and grandfather James W. Wilson, by the press in the mid-1970s at their former family newspaper in Carroll, Iowa

CBS-Paramount settled with Donald Trump for $16 million over editing of a segment on then presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump’s presidential museum gets the boost in funds, according to the settlement agreement. Paramount then dumped "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" after he criticized the move as a "big, fat, bribe."

For context: At our much, much smaller news organization, the Carroll (Iowa) Times Herald, we refused a settlement plan from the attorney for a former police officer who sued us for libel. We won the case, and the truth ultimately prevailed. Stronger protection for news organizations even emerged in our Legislature largely as a result of the painful episode, which factored into our loss of a newspaper that had been in my family for 93 years. (See "Murder The Truth" by New York Times journalist David Enrich, 2025, Mariner Books)

Why do I bring up the comparison?

In talking about the growth of Substack and the subscription model, I observed to a journalist friend in a larger Midwestern city that $7 a week is a lot for people who support 10 or 20 Substacks like The Iowa Mercury, which I founded as we lost our newspaper.

Well, wait, my friend said, noting that people pay far more for a range of television or video streaming services they often forget they even have —services like, Paramount Plus.

I live in rural Iowa, but when I think of community journalism I feel a kinship with the old Brooklyn Dodgers. I've read accounts of the ballplayers, who in the mid-20th Century, made a modest living, traveling home from games on the subway in New York City, living in the same neighborhoods with their fans. It built bonds.

In rural communities, journalists live on Main Street or Hillcrest Drive in ranch-style homes or apartments with the people they write about daily. We are trusted in a way that the elite journalists of the Island of Manhattan just are not, largely because our lived experiences are middle-class, striving, often economically anxious. We aren't celebrities. We are the guy next door.

Trust, itself, is a lost currency in our nation. Trust will be built from the community journalism level up, not through a preaching down from elite nests of comfort — and disconnect — in metropolitan corporate media.

So if you are angry about the CBS-Paramount settlement, take a stand and cancel your $8/month streaming subscription to Paramount Plus — and use the savings to support a small-town, regular-guy-led organization — The Iowa Mercury -- with $7/month. I know how to manage community journalism and understand the forgotten reaches of rural America — and how to spot the journalism talent to help cover it.

We won't sell out, no matter the cost.

Veteran Iowa journalist Dave Busiek makes the case for boycotting of CBS News and Paramount over the Trump decision.

Please take your passion a step further. Consider graduating from a free to paid subscriber if you are already in The Iowa Mercury network. And contribute more through our Give Butter fundraiser if you can.

About The Iowa Mercury

(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )