MORNING GLORY: Legacy media is learning the hard way that free beats failed news

Readers will always read, and news junkies will always find and especially read news. Reading is faster than publishing, so news delivered by text will always have a market. However, this fact does not guarantee subscriber loyalty on any platform.

“Journalism is not a profession, it is a craft,” the late Michael Kelly used to say during the blessed years when he appeared as a weekly guest on my radio show. Kelly was the equal of all American journalists 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 in April 2003 while covering the American invasion of Iraq. His point was that anyone could become a “journalist” because there were no licenses in American journalism, unlike in professions such as medicine and law. Getting paid to “be a journalist” was the trick, and as the internet rapidly developed, so did the opportunities to work in the business.

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The craft survives and thrives in the United States like nowhere else in the world, thanks to the First Amendment. The ongoing, never-ending creative destruction of capitalism (thanks Joseph Schumpeter for that phrase) is the constant companion of every business, including journalism. The freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution makes the rise and fall of journalistic platforms particularly robust. With the end of federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, there are virtually no “state” media left, but the vast media universe and the “news media” within it continue to expand.

Following major layoffs at The Washington Post, there was an explosion of commentary on the newspaper’s decline in numbers and, often, its demise. But if you’re reading this, it’s probably caught your attention in ways other than subscribing to an old newspaper. And here, in one sentence, is the dilemma for old “news” and, indeed, any print product for which the reader has to pay: There is so much “free” content that it is very, very difficult for a high-cost text product that depends on subscriptions to succeed. By “succeeding,” I mean at least breaking even.

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For as long as I have been a broadcast and print journalist (which dates back to 1979, when I was first paid to write by a newspaper, and 1990, when I first broadcast over the airwaves) I have criticized the legacy media for being generally liberal and then left-wing biased. I tried to do this without being a burden to my former employers or colleagues. So this article is not specifically about The Washington Post, for which I wrote from February 2017 to October 2024.

The late Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, who hired me, was a wonderful editor and person; as did Ruth Marcus and David Shipley, who respectively moderated the Opinion pages after Fred’s death. All three of them have proven to be great people to work with, as have all my editors at the paper.

But after I left the Post, I stopped subscribing. This serves no purpose other than a statement of fact. Over the last five years I have also ended my subscriptions to most subscription-based products that existed as newspapers 20 years ago, with the exception of The Telegraph and Financial Times in the UK, as well as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. cleveland.com. (The Journal is owned by News Corp, a sister company of Fox News Media.)

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The Journal has excellent reporting on every major story covered by legacy media and cleveland.com It provides superb service to fans of the Cleveland Browns, Cavaliers and Guardians, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes.

The second subscription to a “legacy platform” (former Cleveland Plain Dealer) reveals an important point: Sports editor cleveland.comDavid Campbell has done a masterful job of creating an essential source of revenue for legacy “regional newspapers” who need a very large fan base to satisfy and even more deeply engage with their sports addiction. Available for a few bucks more or for free with a pop-up ad or two, podcast and text options offer a model for any struggling article to work from.

Following major layoffs at The Washington Post, there was an explosion of commentary on the newspaper’s decline in numbers and, often, its demise. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Campbell has trained a new generation of journalists serving each team’s “verticals,” while keeping Cleveland dean of sports analytics Terry Pluto working with a dozen veteran reporters and now publishing a podcast. I assume that successful platforms in every region blessed by sports are doing something similar, enabling many journalists outside the sports section to work, but I don’t know.

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I keep The Journal and the sports section cleveland.com as models of models that depend on subscription revenue but still work for primarily text-based products that compete for readers’ eyes with quality subscription-free text and audio-video.

First and foremost, quality is important, but superb service to niche readership comes a close second, especially in areas like sports news and views. In this age of abundance of free information, the profligacy that began with the rise of web-based blogs (later web-based newsletters without the sunk costs of the legacy platforms), followed by Substack and podcasts, was bound to take its toll on every legacy platform that owed its origins and former audiences to a now-defunct quasi-monopoly status and perpetual dependence on subscription revenue.

Writers and reporters can still get paid to write and report. Andrew Sullivan (arguably the most influential journalist of the last 50 years because, through sustained persuasion, he helped establish the institution of same-sex marriage while also pioneering the solo, single-author subscription model) is not alone among writer-reporter-columnists now working for themselves. In fact, such journalists are now legion. But they have to work for their readers, or the income will disappear.

The magazines and subscription websites that thrive or emerge in this era serve best with commitment to both quality and super service of the niches. Bylines have been a trademark for a long time and having some of them is also very useful. Developing new platforms and surviving old platforms need to receive subscriber support at least annually. They cannot alienate or alienate readers. It’s just business.

The abundance of the “free and the good” is fatal to “those who are not free, no matter how good”; and it is certainly fatal to “those who are not free and unnecessary” or worse, “those who are not free and simply evil.” Just as quality beats bad, free doesn’t always beat free.

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Text-only platforms still abound, and news distribution platforms are also many and varied. The number of working journalists has arguably increased since the advent of the internet. Merriam-Webster’s definition of a primary journalist is broad—”a person who works to gather, write, or report news for newspapers, magazines, radio, or television”—but not broad enough. Shorten the second half to bring the definition up to date: Anyone employed to gather, write, or report news is a journalist, even if employed directly by readers or viewers.

At least in America, the Golden Age of Journalism has begun: There are zero gatekeepers.

Hugh Hewitt, Fox News contributor and “The Hugh Hewitt Show” weekday afternoons from 3 to 6 p.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh takes Americans home to the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on more than 400 affiliates nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest of Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier on weekdays at 6 p.m. ET A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he started his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, written for all major American newspapers, and authored a dozen books. He has moderated multiple Republican candidate debates, most recently the 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in 2015-16. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians Today Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush.

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