Jeffrey Epstein's crimes would have gone unexposed without local journalism

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg paid tribute this month to Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who exposed the corrupt lenient plea bargain prosecutors gave billionaire Jeffrey Epstein after he trafficked and molested at least 80 teenage girls.

Goldberg noted that Brown often had to pay her own expenses while reporting on Epstein and that, despite having broken one of the most important stories of the past decade, she has no retirement fund at age 59, because of the dismal financial state of the journalism industry.

Brown told Goldberg that...