1. News never made money, and is unlikely to
Sometime in the mid-1990s, the Web began to peel from
the daily American newspaper bundle its most commercial elements, essentially the editorial
sections against which advertisements could be reliably sold. Coverage of sports, business and
market news, entertainment and culture, gossip, shopping, and travel still ran in daily newspapers,
but the audience steadily shifted to Web sources for this sort of news. Broadcasters had dented
newspaper hegemony decades ago, absconding with breaking news and weather coverage, and
inventing new audience pleasers, such as traffic reports and talk. But it was the Web that completed
the disintegration of the newspaper bundle that dominated the news media market for more than a
century. In addition to pinching the most commercial coverage from newspapers, the Web has also
made off with the institution's lucrative classified ads market, simultaneously reducing its status as
the premier venue for content and advertising.
This isn't to say newspapers deserted the commercial news categories. Newspapers have maintained
their presence in the sports-weather-business-entertainment-culture departments to attract readers
who attract advertisers. Even so, circulation has eroded and ad revenues have fallen to below 1950
levels in real dollars. The units of the newspaper bundle not yet ransacked by the Web --
international, national, state, local, and political coverage - have (to paraphrase Frank Zappa) little-
to-no commercial potential. Traditionally, newspapers have struggled selling space to advertisers by
invoking these news varieties unless the news is absolutely spectacular or sensationalized. As the
bundle fragments, it becomes more difficult for publishers to support non-commercial news.
Outlets such as Politico (a child of the Web) and the Bureau of National Affairs (a pre-Web entity,
now owned by Bloomberg), which were designed to commercialize news about politics, the federal
government, regulatory affairs, political campaigns, law, and lobbying, have succeeded in targeting
an elite Washington, D.C., audience with this kind of news. But those successes don't subtract from
the fact that Washington news is a loss leader for most mainstream newspapers. The same is largely
true of international and national news. No mass audience is willing to directly pay for such news
outside of the one already served by the New York Times (combined daily print and digital
circulation, 1,865,318). Even At the Times, subscribers now contribute more revenues than
advertisers, indicating that they value its mission more than Madison Avenue does.
This discussion would be incomplete without crediting the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press,
and the home team at Reuters for chasing news that can't be directly monetized. A semblance of the
traditional news bundle survives at these places for legacy reasons and because the Web hasn't
usurped their positions in the journalistic order. The day may come, however, that falling revenues
force them to redefine their editorial missions, too. That day may close on USA Today, a frequent
purveyor of noncommercial news, sooner than later.
2. Were harder forms of news ever commercial? Gerald J. Baldasty's book, The Commercialization of
News in the Nineteenth Century, makes a case clear as spring water that hard news has almost
never been a mass commercial enterprise. The American newspapers of the 1820s and early 1830s
were creatures of political parties, edited by zealots. Essentially propaganda sheets, these
newspapers were "devoted to winning elections," as Baldasty wrote well before (1992) the Web
invasion. Without newspapers, top political organizer Martin Van Buren once said, "we might as well
hang our harps on willows."
Political parties supported the papers financially, and when editors strayed from the party line into
independence, the parties would dump their newspapers. For instance, Andrew Jackson's supporters
helped start the Washington Globe after the editor of the U.S. Telegraph, a Jackson loyalist, was
thought to have betrayed their cause. Political office-holders steered printing contracts and
payments for official notices their way. In those years, members of Congress used their franking
privilege to send newspapers at no cost through the postal system and doled out patronage jobs,
typically postmaster positions, to their favorite newspaper editors. "Many subscribers simply did not
pay for their newspapers," Baldasty wrote. "In 1832, one North Carolina editor estimated that only
10 percent of his 600 subscribers had paid for the paper."
Changes in technology -- faster, cheaper presses; and more important, the telegraph, the Internet of
its day -- throttled the monopoly power Washington newspapers held over federal news. By the late
1840s, the hinterlands no longer had to wait days or weeks for federal, national, and international
news to be freighted in from outside. Timely news now came over the wire and could be printed
contemporaneously with events. All this helped newspapers declare independence from the parties,
and as they did many enlisted a new patron, the advertiser, who "preferred news free from
unpleasantness," in Baldasty's nice construction.
These editors deliberately softened and commercialized the news, frequently censoring it on behalf
of advertisers. "Half the content of antebellum metropolitan newspapers dealt with politics, whereas
postbellum newspapers devoted proportionately much less attention to politics and much more
attention to crime and courts, accidents, society and women, and leisure activities." (Women were
thought more susceptible to the appeals of advertising.) Puff pieces about advertisers and "reading
notices," the sponsored content of its day, proliferated. Throughout the 20th century, newspapers
got the upper-hand in the struggle, and at places like the Chandler's Los Angeles Times, the
Graham's Washington Post, the Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, laudable chains like Knight-
Ridder, and elsewhere, publishers showcased and promoted hard news in their fat bundles.
Most of today's publishers and editors aren't as solicitous of advertisers as late 19th century ones,
but I doubt that backsliding would help newspaper bottom lines. I also doubt that dramatic
improvements in their commercial coverage would do the trick, either. Readers and advertisers have
already flown their one-way migration route. The only place this isn't true is at some small town
newspapers -- the sort Warren Buffett likes to buy - where the bundle prevails.
Obviously, serious journalism still gets done at many conventional outlets, but it's telling that the
most enthusiastic creators of non-commercial news hail from not-for-profit precincts, such as
ProPublica, Texas Tribune, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity,
the Fiscal Times, the Investigative Reporting Workshop, Frontline, the Wisconsin Center for
Investigative Reporting, the Schuster Center for Investigative Reporting, Stateline.org, Voice of San
Diego, MinnPost.com, NPR (still feasting on Joan "McDonald's" Kroc's $235 million donation), other
organizations and various non-profit magazines and non-profit broadcasters. (No offense meant if I
left your outfit off this list.) Meanwhile, grant-makers at foundations like the Alicia Patterson
Fellowship, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Open Society Foundations' media wing, the
3. Nation Institute, the Pulitzer Center, the Harvard Fellowships, the John Simon Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, and elsewhere have supported serious journalists.
As philanthropists take the seat in the story room once held by politicians, we should be glad. But
not too glad, because there will never be enough philanthropists to restore the status quo ante. Nor
will the market create enough billionaires like Jeff Bezos who are willing to rescue drowning
newspapers like the Washington Post. Wishful thinkers -- I'm one -- can hope for media giants like
Bloomberg and ESPN, now the most valuable media property in the United States, to be persuaded
to add noncommercial news to their bundles. (Perhaps ABC News, which is owned by one of ESPN's
co-owners, could be repositioned as the noncommercial face of ESPN.)
If summoning additional philanthropists doesn't work, can we stomach asking the political parties to
re-enter the journalism business? To a limited extent, they already have, with the establishment of
Fox News Channel and the retooling of MSNBC. As for me, I'm counting on the winds of technology
to blow a fresh miracle through the news business. A Hyperloop for journalism!
******
Send schematics for a Journalism Hyperloop to Shafer.Reuters@gmail.com. Pedestrians will always
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http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/08/15/news-never-made-money-and-is-unlikely-to/
