2024 continues to be one of the worst years in recent memory for the legacy media. After a spring of job losses and cutbacks throughout the industry, including at venerable brands such as NBC, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, and Time magazine, the media business continues to experience a free fall as publishers turn toward the latter half of the year.
The new CEO of the Washington Post, Will Lewis, recently told staffers that the newspaper lost $77 million in 2023 and has shed half its audience since 2020. In other words, as Lewis put it to Washington Post journalists: “People are not reading your stuff.”
Many theories exist to explain the continued collapse of the legacy media. Publishers and media analysts have preferred to lay the blame outside of the newsroom, suggesting that the cause could be changing tastes among American news consumers, disruptions in the digital advertising market, the rise of social media, or even the economy itself.
At the same time, some on the Left are now promoting a misguided approach to “save” American journalism: “direct and muscular government intervention.” One journalist recently called for a “Marshall Plan for public media.” Another prominent member of the media argued that journalism is “critical infrastructure” and that news organizations should be treated more like libraries, highways, and museums rather than the private companies they traditionally have been.
This could all be easily dismissed as the latest fashionable cause among progressives. However, the unfortunate fact is that blue state politicians have taken cues from their media allies and are beginning to implement these deeply flawed ideas. Just last month, the Illinois legislature passed new legislation that will provide $25 million out of the state budget to incentivize news outlets to hire and retain reporters. Another measure will dedicate 50% of state advertising to local news outlets and enact new rules that restrict which entities can own Illinois newspapers.
New York arguably fired the first salvo in providing so-called “public policy solutions” to save journalism. Earlier this year, the state’s 2024 budget set aside $90 million to subsidize local news via a series of refundable tax credits that local news organizations can receive through hiring journalists.
California is now considering legislation that would tax American tech companies, to the tune of potentially $500 million a year, and set aside the proceeds for “employment tax credits” to help newspapers cover wages for local journalists.
In fact, more than a dozen states across the country are considering similar legislation to support “sustainability” in journalism. And while most of these proposals are limited to local or state media, advocates are also pushing to “save journalism” at the national level. Reading between the lines, if liberals have their way we could see the day when the federal budget includes credits, rebates, and other financial incentives for the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, and other massive, global media brands.
It’s important to understand how we got here. The digital world has certainly lessened the demand for newspapers as a one-stop shop source of information and advertising, severely damaging their traditional business models. However, newspapers have also been mostly unresponsive to their consumers in the market. A series of self-inflicted errors by media organizations and an attendant decline in the public’s trust in the media are far more responsible for the troubles facing journalism today.
Shielding newspapers from market forces and competition in the name of “public policy solutions” while at the same time making them more beholden to the government would only exacerbate their challenges. The more that the media is seen to be in hock to the powers that be, the more people will continue to recoil from it.
Ultimately, the news isn’t a highway or critical infrastructure. It’s always been and should continue to be a business. If news organizations are losing money, they should do what companies in the free market do when faced with challenges: Develop new business models, find additional markets, invest in the future, cut back to the essentials, or create products that customers want. Seeking a publicly funded bailout isn’t the answer.
People need a free, fair, and functioning press. But they don’t need their government to step in and “save” it. Public policy solutions to fix journalism aren’t solutions at all — they would simply dig an even deeper hole for America’s news organizations to climb out from.
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Roger Ream is the president of the Fund for American Studies, a nonprofit educational organization that works with students and young leaders to promote the principles of free market economics, limited government, and honorable leadership. He is also the host of the Liberty + Leadership podcast.