It seems to me that the only mainstream newspaper to figure out a workable solution so far is NYT. And their solution was games. One of these days that will be all that remains and people will forget what the NYT acronym stands for aside from Wordle.
Keep in mind, our parents (age specific) and/or their parents parents paid for news and didn't question that setup. Advertisors then went there because that's where the eyeballs were. What we're seeing is that left to their own devices and lacking a war or famine to force behavior change people would rather cut their news source in favor of fluff.
It's not something the market will solve. The post 1940's US Media landscape was a direct reaction to multiple, non-contained wars in short succession. The political class doesn't feel they've "lost" control in a long time hence no urgency to fix it.
In a lot of cases we're seeing Advertising warp and destroy the industries they provide money to. It's not evil, just that industries start to invert whether the people or the advertisors matter.
> Keep in mind, our parents (age specific) and/or their parents parents paid for news and didn't question that setup
I don't think this is quite right. Our parents paid for the newspaper but the newspaper was basically the internet of their time. That is where they got sports scores, movie/tv listings, etc. The fact that this was bundled with hard news was mostly a side-effect.
Financial Times has shocked me many times over on the quality of its reporting compared to other outlets. Even media critic Noam Chomsky says FT is often an exception in western biases
Yes, Chomsky, the propaganda theorist, 8th most cited academic of all time, author of over 100 books, and person who misjudged the character of Epstein—as many did.
Chomsky the propaganda theorist, 8th most cited academic of all time, author of over 100 books, and person who misjudged the character of Epstein—as many did.
You know you're taking that quote out of context. I don't defend Chomsky's misjudgements but I think it's important to state there's been zero evidence in the Epstein leaks of any sexual or illegal favors happening between the two
I don't think that's a useful model for a "paper of record" model like the NYT or formerly Washington Post. There's so much good to be had with a strong paper that isn't captured by it's ownership.
I agree regarding the audience, but for those on a more modest budget it is possible to get an affordable FT subscription to their digital version of the print newspaper.
Yeah I actually get a subscription as a part of my eBank membership. Although a couple years ago I paid full price for an annual paper delivery; that was nice to have a physical newspaper, but it was too expensive in the end.
The internet has provided tremendous access to news outside of the NYT. I have not seen the NYT editorial board doing anything to improve their status. Didn’t Paul Krugman leave the times for integrity reasons?
> That was more than 20 years ago. It's hardly relevant to the journalism landscape in 2026.
It is actually very relevant. If you read Chomsky & Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent', you'll get examples from the 1970s and 1980s, another 20 years earlier, and you will find that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
> It is actually very relevant. If you read Chomsky & Herman's 'Manufacturing Consent', you'll get examples from the 1970s and 1980s, another 20 years earlier, and you will find that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
You're stuck in the past, and letting the (non-existent) perfect be the enemy of the good. However imperfect the newspaper industry may have been, it was a whole hell of a lot better than the mix of social media and outright propaganda that's come to replace it.
Pretty soon you may have no place to find out what's going on in your city, country, or the world; except via the rumor mill and works similar to Melania. But I guess you think that's fine fine, because Chomsky & Herman said the NYT wasn't perfect?
What I mean by "stuck in the past" is you're stuck on old criticisms that seem more and more precious given how bad things are getting.
Sure, dwell on Manufacturing Consent in the 90s when journalism was strong and better resourced. But nowadays it seems quaint, like a picky review of a fancy 5-star restaurant when the restaurant industry is collapsing and people may not be able to afford food.
Journalism is collapsing, to be replaced by something worse, not better.
That is a REALLY wild take considering what the NYT functionally is.
It's also exactly the sort of take you'd see propagated by what the NYT functionally is, so I guess have fun with that? For me, seeing wild talk like that only underscores my complete, utter, earned distrust of the thing. All righty then, the New York Times is the only information, full stop. How nice for it.
Do you believe the NYT is the only source of news? Do you believe everyone should read the NYTs. What is this Soviet Russia? Who said the alternative to reading the NYTs is getting news from social media?
> Do you believe the NYT is the only source of news?
Not yet, but if you've looked at the trends, that's a real possibility. The New York Times doesn't have any problems not shared by other organizations like it, and I think it's important for such journalism organizations to exist.
How so? Growing up most of the time my family didn’t have a television. What are you saying I do read the NYT? I have no idea what point you are trying to make. My comment was in response to the comment about how the NYT had to resort to games for sustainability.
I don't understand the downvotes to your comment (and the few replies are grotesque...), but I definitely support the sentiment. If dropping the NYT over Iraq is not justified, then the concept of red lines loses its meaning.
You didn't lose much by the way, their handling of Gaza was equally despicable.
Which is, in and of itself, a problem: I feel like we're trending towards a US news landscape where the NYT and their editorial board are the only ones setting the tone and discourse of print media.
The Atlantic, WSJ, The Economist, Politico all come to mind as profitable.
I don’t think it’s anomalous to have a major national newspaper that’s profitable. And WaPo should have been absolutely primed for Trump II given its long time DC focus. They historically had the best political coverage of DC.
> They historically had the best political coverage of DC
And then Bezos replaced veteran leaders with ideological leaders from the Murdoch empire. Then Bezos put his thumb on the scale and vetoed the paper's presidential endorsement in 2024, and 250,000 subscribers cancelled. Then Bezos dictated that the paper's opinion section will censor any idea that does not support conservative/libertarian/free-market ideology and 75,000 more subscribers cancelled.
Maybe the ideological reorientation along with savage cuts to the newsroom has something to do the loss of subscribers and the dire financial straits used to justify even more cuts to the newsroom?
There is a market for quality, fact-checked journalism that you can't get on podcasts and social media. But when you force that journalism through a right-wing ideological filter, you destroy the intrinsic value of independent journalism.
If your claim is that the Post had a viable business available to it as a sort of GoFundMe project for the political opposition, this makes sense. Otherwise, it's hard to see how an org with 2500 employees but without much more national appeal than Politico or the Atlantic was going to compete long term.
I don't know how to quantify "national appeal", but the Post had about 2.5 million paid subscribers in 2023 and ~800 newsroom staff, while The Atlantic had about 1.1 million paid subscribers and ~200 newsroom staff.
Now the Post is down to ~2 million paid subscribers and 500 newsroom staff.
I don't think the Post was known as a slanted project for "the political opposition" during red or blue administrations, but it's got that reputation now.
My claim is that this new slant is responsible for the bulk of the paper's loss of paid subscribers. There's a market for rigorous, fact-checked reporting. Degrading that makes the business worse, not better.
What's the other national American newspaper --- not newsmagazine, 95% of what the Atlantic runs isn't reported --- besides the WSJ that's doing well right now?
Other than the NYT and WSJ, the only national example I can think of is The Guardian's US operation, but that one is supported by a trust plus recurring donations from readers.
There are some good regional examples that show people will still pay enough for rigorous, old-school, fact-checked journalism to make it sustainable.
Seattle Times: ~600 employees (not sure how many in the newsroom), marginally profitable after paying legacy pension obligations, nine Pulitzers.
Guardian US: ~110 editorial staff in the US, no subscribers but ~270,000 recurring and ~170,000 annual one-time donations, one Pulitzer but maybe that one should be shared with Snowden.
404media: tiny, 5 people, but solid investigative journalism, national distribution, and some pretty impressive scoops, and it makes a profit from subscriptions.
Seems false. The Atlantic Monthly, to take an example --- another publication I subscribe to --- is an order of magnitude smaller than the Post. If the Post wanted to run the Atlantic's business successfully, they could; they'd just have to lay almost everybody else in the company off.
That the Post's predicament is a consequence of Bezos partisan editorial decisions. I don't like those decisions either, but I don't think they get close to the core problem the Post faces.
Indeed. It's really, really something when I can even entertain the idea of 'I'll go to Wal-Mart, it's awful but at least it's a lot morally better than supporting Amazon'. Yikes!
The network effects. The strong get stronger and grow larger, creating a fly wheel. On X.com there are citizen journalists publishing and reposting tons of hyper local news, and I assume it also hits FB but I don’t use that. We don’t need as many proper media companies as we did decades ago. The Tier 3 media outlets died long ago, now WaPo tried to be tier 1 but it failed, and will die as a has-been slowly. Probably should switch to Washington DC gossip and scoops as its forte.
I don't want a world where we rely on citizen journalists. The value of the organizations is in providing credibility (or at least a predictable understanding of their bias). Just because some rando sounds convincing does not mean what he is presenting is any kind of credible representation of the truth
I wouldn't be surprised to learn their recipes also drive a decent amount of revenue too. Their physical cookbooks are top notch (big fan of their no recipe recipe cookbook).
> Basically tells you have to make various dishes saying without specific amounts and just going more on feel and what tastes good.
This is how my mom taught me to cook, and she decided (unilaterally I assume) that it was the definition of gourmet cooking. I went a lot of years thinking that was the literal definition, ha. Though in retrospect, it is not 100% wrong, and I don't think she was joking when she said it.
Yeah I'm hooked on it for the moment. The previous games are entertaining once a day, and we share results amongst our family for fun, but the Crossplay game is a lot of fun head-to-head.
Frequent flyer points are where they make their money. So much so that many airlines would run at a loss just flying passengers.
All their partners hand over real cash for points to give their customers, that often either expire or are never redeemed. I think it was the Economist that stated that airlines operate as unregulated banks. Flying people around is a secondary thing they do.
