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
The Coming CBS News Cuts
News Status ·Why is the Washington Post cratering so spectacularly?
News commentary The Guardian - Media ·Inside Will Lewis’s tumultuous two years as publisher of the Washington Post
News The Guardian - Media ·Snow news day: The challenge of climate reporting as newsrooms cut back
News University of Colorado Boulder ·Washington Post editor acknowledges ‘genuine trauma’ over mass layoffs
News Media | The Guardian ·Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to
News Nieman Lab ·A copyright expert’s big idea: Force Google and other AI companies to pay news publishers
News Media Nation ·‘We Still Have a Sports Section for a Few Days, and Readers Need Me to Tell a Story’
News Columbia Journalism Review ·SquashTV Aims to Hit It Big
News Columbia Journalism Review ·Few say Americans have a responsibility to pay for news
News Pew Research Center ·Bafflement with Bezos
News commentary tinabrown.substack.com ·When Bezos Questioned His Will
News Status ·We need the Washington Post too much to give up on it entirely
News commentary Press Watch ·'Terribly frustrating': After USPS changes, more newspapers aren’t reaching subscribers on time
News Nieman Lab ·Many people who live in 'local news deserts' don’t feel deprived of local news, study finds
News Nieman Lab ·New York Magazine revives classified ads with a modern twist
News Audience & Social – Nieman Lab ·As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, five regional papers chart a course for survival
News Media Nation ·I Had a Dream Journalism Job. Here's Why I Quit.
News commentary thewesternedge.media ·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