State of the business model
The traditional journalism business model has long since collapsed, and news organizations have shrunk or disappeared entirely. While a number of promising experiments are under way, the public has not shown a willingness to buy what news organizations are selling.
The Latest
Why Economic Independence Is Not Enough
News Columbia Journalism Review ·A new global push would make AI companies pay for news
News Poynter ·Creator journalism comes to campus
News Student Press Report ·Can AI Kill the Venture Capitalist?
News Wired ·Evidence Grows That Google's AI Overviews Have Eviscerated the Media Industry
News futurism.com ·Nexstarving for Trump’s Approval
News Status ·HBO’s Next Cliffhanger
News Status ·Journalism Funding Partners Selected by Google as Third-Party Administrator for California Civic Media Program
News release jfp-local.org ·Local doesn’t scale: How community publishers can survive and thrive in the AI era
News Media Nation ·How The Atlantic won ‘tortoise and hare’ race versus digital news start-ups
News Press Gazette ·In a world of lies, we need the BBC more than ever. This week could be our last chance to save it.
News commentary The Guardian - Media ·Washington Post signs content licensing, archiving agreement with Veritone
News thedesk.net ·Ellison’s CNN Platitudes
News Status ·With Washington Post Local diminished, other news sites step up their D.C. coverage
News Nieman Lab ·To Survive the AI Age, Publishers Are Finally Working Together
News Columbia Journalism Review ·It’s time for local news funders to pick winners, scale up, and force mergers, a new report argues
News Nieman Lab ·Learning from the Press Forward Infrastructure Proposals: A Conversation with Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro
News Second Rough Draft ·in brief
CBS News gets a new leader, with an ideological agenda
If there’s nothing in Bari Weiss’s journalism resume that remotely qualifies her to be editor-in-chief of CBS News, there are plenty of clues as to what she likely plans to do with this opportunity. Weiss in July 2020 loudly left her job as a junior editor in the Times’s opinion section, decrying legacy media and claiming “constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views” in her resignation letter to Times Publisher AG Sulzberger. A letter she, naturally, released to the public.
Oct. 16, 2025
The web hurt the news business. Will AI hurt it more?
Who owns the future?
Some 30 years after the arrival of the first modern web browser — an initial, small crack in the economic foundation of the news business — the widespread availability of artificial intelligence services make urgent the question once again. The press of a different future, the question of ownership, is being felt keenly in any information business: data, news, entertainment, art. AI will create wealth, people are betting, but how will that wealth be distributed?
July 9, 2025
Editorial decisions are now business decisions, and it’s not going well
News and information have a bedrock role in supporting democracy, but that’s not the business model we’ve chosen for newsrooms.
May 30, 2024
Wanted (needed): a new model for news
What if the problem with the news business is the news itself? For all the hand-wringing and lamentations, the unavoidable truth is that many people have stopped buying news products. Half of all newspaper subscribers have vanished in the past 15 years.
Sept. 14, 2021
What if the press delivered the news people actually need?
Despite the recent election-driven revenue gains for the largest organizations, the landscape facing the news media remains perilous. Saddled with a teetering business model, a skeptical public and a hostile president, the press is groping for a clear path to the future.
Feb. 17, 2017