204 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬JACOB WEISBERG is CEO of Pushkin
Industries, which produces podcasts. He
teaches a course on the ethics of journalism at
Yale University and is former Editor of Slate.Bad News
Can Democracy Survive
I the Media Fail?Jacob Weisberg
On Press: The Liberal Values That Shaped
the News
BY MATTHEW PRESSMAN. Harvard
University Press, 2018, 336 pp.Breaking News: The Remaking of
Journalism and Why It Matters Now
BY ALAN RUSBRIDGER. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2018, 464 pp.Merchants of Truth: The Business of News
and the Fight for Facts
BY JILL ABRAMSON. Simon & Schuster,
2019, 544 pp.I
n 2004—an ordinary, healthy year for
the newspaper business—The Wash-
ington Post earned $143 million in
pro¿t. Five years later, in 2009, the paper
lost $164 million amid a shift from paid
print to free digital consumption, the
erosion o its classi¿ed and local advertis-
ing businesses, and the global ¿nancial
crisis. The collapse o its business model
forced round after round o cutbacks, sta
buyouts, and layos. That year, the Post shut
all its domestic reporting bureaus outside
the Washington area, including those
in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York.The Post’s position was typical o the
country’s healthiest papers. That same
year, The New York Times, facing pos-
sible bankruptcy, sold most o the new
headquarters building into which it had
just moved and arranged a $250 million
high-interest loan from the Mexican
billionaire Carlos Slim. Around the
country, more vulnerable papers closed
down or put themselves up for sale.
With few exceptions, the great family-
owned franchises were being gobbled
up by private equity ¿rms with little
sense o civic obligation and even less
understanding o journalism.
In the years since, the profession o
journalism has contracted and grown
ever more precarious. Between 2008
and 2017, employment among newspa-
per journalists fell by nearly half. In
2018, the Pew Research Center reported
that the median annual income o
newsroom employees with a college
degree was around $51,000—about 14
percent less than the median for all
other college-educated workers.
Twenty years ago, public relations
specialists outnumbered journalists by
a ratio o less than two to one. Today,
the ratio is more than six to one.
According to Fortune, the only profes-
sions losing jobs more rapidly than
newspaper reporter are letter carrier,
farmer, and meter reader.
Those who remain at media organi-
zations feel themselves losing status and
credibility. Last year, a Gallup–Knight
Foundation survey found that 69
percent o Americans had lost trust in
the news media over the previous
decade. For Republicans, the ¿gure was
94 percent. Journalists covering the
big story in Washington recognize the
importance o what they are doing.Return to Table of Contents