A month ago, I surprised a lot of people by announcing that I was making an unusual career move: After a lifetime in the journalistic trenches—including as a consistent writer for three publications that had scaled back or killed their print editions or both—I was running for a State Senate seat in the Brooklyn district where I grew up.

I launched the campaign for a variety of reasons, many of them having to do with my own frustrations with the political class. I’m not writing and reporting like I used to, but I’m trying to hold bad actors accountable in a new way. I don’t know if, 30 years ago, a more robust news landscape would’ve kept me firmly in the reporter camp, but I do know it can be a disillusioning time to be a reporter, particularly in local news and especially in New York City.

On Thursday, the latest gut punch arrived: DNAInfo, which for a time had served up admirable granular coverage of New York and other cities, was shut down by its billionaire owner, who blamed the bad economics of local news for the decision, though DNAInfo reporters are convinced a recent, successful union drive at the outlet was the real culprit.

The frightening decline of the newspaper industry has hit all cities and towns hard. No one has been spared. Digital advertising cannot make up for what print once paid for. Google and Facebook gobble up what little ad revenue exists in the digital space. In the past 15 years, more than half the jobs in the news industry have disappeared, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released in April. In January 2001, the industry employed 411,800 people. In September 2016, that number plummeted to 173,709.

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On January 3, 1938, the BBC’s first ever foreign language radio station – BBC Arabic – made its inaugural broadcast. The station was launched in almost direct response to Radio Bari, the Arabic language radio station of the Italian government that had been broadcast to the Arab world since 1934. Radio Bari’s broadcasts consisted of a mixture of popular Arabic music, cultural propaganda intended to encourage pro-fascist sentiment in the Arab world and news bulletins with a strongly anti-British slant. British officials had initially been largely unperturbed by Italy’s efforts, but from 1935 onwards, as Radio Bari’s output became more overtly anti-British and specifically attacked British policy in Palestine, they became concerned and began to discuss how Britain ought to respond.

It was soon decided that Britain needed to establish its own Arabic radio station in order to counter Italy’s broadcasts. As the Secretary of State for the Colonies remarked in August 1937, “the time has come when it is essential to ensure the full and forcible presentation of the British view of events in a region of such vital Imperial importance”. Detailed discussions began over what form the station should take. In addition to logistical issues concerning content and where it should be based, British officials were concerned as to what type of Arabic should be used in its broadcasts. There was a keen awareness that in order for the proposed broadcasts to be both widely understood and taken seriously, making the appropriate choice linguistically was crucial. The Cabinet Committee that was formed to discuss the issue reported that the Arabic used in Radio Bari’s broadcasts in the past – speculated to be that of a cleric of Libyan origin – had been “open to criticism as being pedantic and classical in style and…excited the ridicule of listeners”. The potential for ridicule, in addition to the fact that many uneducated Arabs would struggle to understand it, made classical Arabic an undesirable choice. Yet given the significant variation in regional dialects that exists throughout the Arab world, the choice of a single dialect was equally problematic. British officials in the region possessed strong and sometimes divergent opinions about what course of action should be taken.

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