Media is in crisis: newsrooms all over the world are shuttering and the very profession of journalism is under sustained ideological and physical assault. Freedom of the press is a hollow doctrine if the only news media is written or published by independently wealthy individuals who don’t need to get paid for their labor.
Where did the media’s money go? It’s complicated.
How News Companies Shot Themselves in the Face
Let’s start with the news outlets themselves. Right around the time that personal computers were finding their way into home offices and kids’ bedrooms, news media underwent an orgy of consolidation, starting with the Reagan administration’s deregulation of the financial markets and, later the Clinton administration’s Telecommunications Act, which stripped away the already weak restrictions on media consolidation.
As media outlets across the country merged, national chains took over from family proprietors. They raised prices and fired reporters, turning to wire services and chain-wide correspondents for subjects of national interest. They also fired locally focused salespeople, consolidating classified and display ad-sales to national call-centers. They sold off their buildings and presses and logistics networks, leasing them back. These cuts yielded dividends to the chains’ investors, dividends that were augmented by liquidating the papers’ cash reserves and “rainy day” funds.
Thus the papers were already hollowed out and brittle when online advertising c
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