In September 2025, James Marriott argued inCultural Capital that we are entering a “post-literate society.” He traced how the eighteenth-century “reading revolution” seeded democracy, science, and civil society, and warned that the dominance of the smartphone and short-form video is now eroding the habits of deep reading that underpinned those gains. It is a sobering thesis: the Enlightenment required readers, not scrollers.

For those of us in journalism, Marriott’s warning resonates. The written word is still uniquely suited to what Neil Postman once called “following a line of thought,” the process of classifying, reasoning, and interrogating ideas. It is through sentences that evidence is weighed, contradictions are exposed, and logic is tested. That intellectual scaffolding is what enables accountability, transparency, and deliberation. Without it, decision-making tilts toward the emotive, the fragmentary, the theatrical.

Deforestation in Indonesian Borneo. My photo. At Mongabay, we have seen this distinction play out in our own work. When we investigate deforestation in Indonesia or expose fraudulent carbon schemes in Peru, it is the written investigation that tends to inform policy, spur enforcement, or empower communities. The format matters. Lawmakers, prosecutors, and Indigenous leaders usually cite or circulate the article itself—the words, the data, the documentation. Rarely is it the video alone that prompts action.

That does not mean video is irrelevant. It can capture attention, spark emotion, and reach audiences who may never read a 2,000-word feature. A short documentary or explainer may help keep a story visible in the public imagination after publication. We have produced videos that complement our reporting—profiles of Indigenous forest defenders, footage of illegal airstrips in the Amazon, explainers on destructive fishing practices. At their best, these pieces extend reach and bring new audiences into conversation with our journalism.

But Marriott’s reminder is that video and print are not equivalents. They operate differently. A video may persuade through images and sound; a written story persuades through evidence and reasoning. The former can ignite attention; the latter is more likely to withstand scrutiny, to be cited in a courtroom, to shape a policy draft, to endure.

The distinction matters for how we think about impact. Our theory of change is simple: informed people make better decisions. To enable that, we invest in explanatory reporting, investigative depth, and solutions journalism that shows what is working as well as what is failing. Impact is not measured by views or clicks but by whether a story influences a decision: a government canceling a destructive concession in Suriname, a community in Peru terminating a fraudulent contract, a parliament in Europe closing a subsidy loophole. In most cases, the chain of influence begins with words on a page.

Still, to pit print against video is to miss the point. They are different tools. Text is the backbone of accountability; video can play a supporting role. Text may convince a policymaker; video may rally a public. Text creates the record that can be cited in a lawsuit; video provides the imagery that lingers in memory. Each has a place in the information ecosystem, but they are not interchangeable.

For journalism more broadly, the lesson is one of balance. Written reporting remains indispensable for accountability because it creates the durable record that policymakers, courts, and communities can cite. Video, meanwhile, can at times act as a force multiplier. It may broaden reach, draw in new audiences, or help keep stories alive in the public imagination. The two formats are not interchangeable, but they can be complementary: words build the case, while images carry it farther.

Marriott ends with the bleak possibility that democracy itself may falter if literacy declines too far. He may be right. But his essay also underscores why journalism still matters. Independent reporting, whether written or filmed, is one of the last bulwarks against disinformation and distraction. In a world of proliferating screens, the discipline of the written word is more important than ever—and so is the creativity of finding ways to carry those words into the feeds and formats where people now spend their time.

At Mongabay, we measure success not by the size of our audience but by what our stories enable: better governance, empowered communities, the spread of innovations, and more resilient ecosystems. To get there, we need both the patient architecture of sentences and the immediacy of images. Words build the case; video broadens the circle. The challenge is not to choose between them, but to keep them aligned to the same north star: journalism that contributes to meaningful change.