Readers will always read, and news junkies will always find and, above all, read news. Reading is simply faster than broadcasting, so news delivered via text will always have a market. However, that reality does not guarantee a subscriber’s loyalty for any platform.
“Journalism is a craft, not a profession,” the late Michael Kelly said routinely in those blessed years when he was a weekly guest on my radio show. Kelly was the equal of any American journalist of his generation, having worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Atlantic.
Michael was killed while covering the US invasion of Iraq in April 2003. The point he was making was that anyone could be a ‘journalist’ because American journalism does not require a license, as does professions such as medicine and law. Getting paid to ‘be a journalist’ – that was the trick, and as the internet exploded, so did the opportunities to work in the profession.
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The craft survives and thrives in the United States, unlike anywhere else in the world, thanks to the First Amendment. The constant, never-ending creative destruction of capitalism (thanks for the phrase, Joseph Schumpeter) is the constant companion of every business, including journalism. Freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the Constitution, makes the rise and fall of journalism platforms particularly robust. There are hardly any “state media” left after the loss of federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the vast universe of media continues to expand, and the “news media” within it.
In the wake of the major layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been an explosion of commentary—once again—about the decline and often death of newspapers. But if you are reading this, it came to your attention in some other way than through a subscription to an old newspaper. And there, in one sentence, lies the dilemma for old “news,” and really for any written product that a reader has to pay for: there’s so much “free” content that it’s very, very difficult for a high-overhead text product that relies on subscriptions to succeed. By “success” I mean at least breaking even.
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For as long as I have been a radio and print journalist – dating back to 1979, when I was first paid to write by a newspaper, and 1990, when I first broadcast over the air – I have been a critic of the traditional media in general for their liberal and then left-wing biases. I have tried to do this without dumping former employers or colleagues. This column is therefore not specifically about The Washington Post, for which I wrote columns from February 2017 to October 2024.
The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC on Wednesday, January 14, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)
The late Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor who hired me, was an outstanding editor and person, as were Ruth Marcus and David Shipley, who in turn oversaw the op-ed pages after Fred’s death. All three turned out to be great people to work for and with, as did all my editors at the paper.
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The Journal has excellent coverage of every major story covered in traditional media cleveland.com is a must-watch for any fan of Cleveland’s Browns, Cavaliers and Guardians, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes.
That second subscription to a “legacy platform” (the former Cleveland Plain Dealer) makes an important point: the sports editor for cleveland.comDavid Campbell has done a masterful job of cultivating the absolutely essential source of income for any formerly ‘regional newspaper’ that needs a wide fan base to be satisfied – and even more deeply connected – to its sports addictions. The podcast and text options, available for a few dollars more, or free with a few short ads, offer a model that could be studied by any struggling newspaper.
In the wake of the major layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been an explosion of commentary—once again—about the decline and often death of newspapers. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
Campbell has kept Cleveland Sports Analysis Dean Terry Pluto working – and now podcasting – along with a dozen veteran reporters, while developing a new generation of journalists to serve each team’s “industries.” I assume, but don’t know, that successful platforms in every region blessed by sports have done something similar – and in doing so, kept many journalists employed outside the sports department.
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I hold up The Journal and the sports section cleveland.com as a model for what still works for primarily text-based products that rely on subscription revenue but compete for readers’ attention with high-quality text and audio-video without a subscription.
Quality is most important, but super service for niche readers, especially in sports news and polls, comes second. In this age of abundant free information, it was inevitable that the sifting that began with the rise of web-based blogs (and then web-based newsletters without the sunk costs of older platforms) and then Substack and podcasts would take their toll on each legacy platform that owed its origins and legacy audience to a now-extinct quasi-monopoly status and continued dependence on subscription revenue.
Writers and reporters can still get paid to write and report. Andrew Sullivan—perhaps the most influential journalist of the past fifty years because he helped bring about gay marriage through a sustained effort to persuade while pioneering the standalone single-writer subscription model—is no longer alone among writer-reporter-columnists working for themselves. In fact, such journalists are now legion. But they have to work for their readers, otherwise the revenue disappears.
The magazines and subscription websites that are flourishing or have emerged in this era are best served by a commitment to both quality and niche super service. Bylines have been brands for a long time, and it is very useful to have some of them too. The new platforms that have flourished, and the old ones that have survived, should earn subscriber support at least annually. They cannot alienate or drive away readers. It’s just the business.
The abundance of “free and good” is fatal for those who are “not free, no matter how good” – and certainly for those who are “not free and redundant,” or worse, for those who are “not free and just bad.” Free beats aren’t always free, just like quality beats dwindle.
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There are still many text-only platforms, and news delivery platforms are many and varied. The number of working journalists has probably increased since the advent of the Internet. Merriam-Webster’s primary definition of a journalist is broad – “one employed to gather, write or report news for newspapers, magazines, radio or television” – but not broad enough. Cut out the second half to make the definition current: anyone engaged in gathering, writing, or reporting news is a journalist, even if directly employed by readers or viewers.
In any case, the Golden Age of journalism has begun in America: there are zero gatekeepers.
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