Privatization of Print Media
Chloe Hild ‘26
We’ve all been here before:
You’re plowing through research for an upcoming assignment. It’s a convoluted topic, and it’s difficult to find comprehensive research that’s actually helpful.
You scour JSTOR, the library, you’re on page 10 of your Google search. Then finally, you see it. The title lays out the information and it’s exactly what you’re looking for! The answer to all of your questions lies within this document! You click on it, and…
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The privatization of print media is a limiting yet somewhat necessary paradox. Newspapers and research publications need to make money somehow, but how can we, the American people, engage with the freedom of the press if we almost always have to pay for it?
In a time where educating yourself and access to information is so imperative to the health of our country, it has never been more unavailable to us.
College students, like ourselves, and middle/lower class Americans often do not have the funds to pay a monthly or yearly fee to multiple news sites in order to get the most comprehensive information. So we turn to what is free - Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook - all breeding grounds for mis-and disinformation.
“I’ve done my research! Educate yourself!” Are now battle cries we hear on both the left and right of the American political field. But how “educated” can everyday people be if the information they actually have access to is subpar?
We have Freedom of the Press, it’s right there in the First Amendment! It should be our right to engage with it.
Unfortunately, the news has never been free. The first publication in the U.S. was printed before we were even the U.S. “Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick” (yes, that’s how it is spelled) was published in the colonies by Benjamin Harris for the first time in Boston on Sept. 25, 1690. It cost one shilling (British penny) per issue, about $9.76 today.
To give us a more modern perspective, Andrea Browne Taylor wrote from Kiplinger Personal Finance in 2018, “the New York Times sold on newsstands for pocket change -- just 40 cents per copy -- in 1985. That's the equivalent of 94 cents in 2018.” Today, one physical copy of a New York Times paper is $7.00.
Yes, inflation is the bulk of the problem. But there has to be a better solution than a $25/month cost for the New York Times after your first year - granted, there are more bells and whistles now, there’s games, recipes, podcasts, of which you get access to all under this subscription model. But many of the podcasts are free to access with a free Spotify or Apple Music account, and many of the games are free to play in the games’ separate app. So why don’t we have access to even a small subset of the articles?
The real shift from pay-per-print news to paywalled digital news happened after the economic crisis of 2008, this was due to a few things. George Manteau from FT Strategies accredits this to, “three key shifts: the downfall of print revenues, the increased consumer adoption of digital, and the shrinking share of the advertising market by news publishers.”
There are a few different kinds of existing paywall options, some of the most popular are: Hard Paywall, where you have to pay to access anything, Freemium, where there is a permanent subset of free content but there’s a broader version for a price and Metered, where you get a limited number of free articles before you have to start paying.
This environment makes it harder for independent grassroots reporting to achieve any kind of commercial success - they want to open their content up to the public to garner a reputation, but because there’s no revenue they struggle to enter the market to gain that reputation. The problem of revenue does not just affect the little guy, it’s dealt body blows to well-respected publications as well. BuzzFeed News closed its doors in 2023, Vice Media filed for bankruptcy protection in 2023, and Vox has reported financial struggles. They were simply losing money.
But my fundamental question is this: If the freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment, shouldn’t it be our right as Americans to engage with it?
The freedom of the press as defined by Merriam-Webster is, “the right of newspapers, magazines, etc., to report news without being controlled by the government.” Report to whom? The public. Okay, so the government doesn’t have the right to control what is presented in the media. Awesome! But because there’s a price, not all of the public can see it. Why is there a price? Because news publications are companies, companies have owners. Who owns the companies? The richest in America have opinions on what the government does, since the Government can tax them more. Because they are rich and powerful, they want a say. Enter: Jeff Bezos.
Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. This past election cycle, the newspaper with the tagline “Democracy Dies in Darkness” refused to endorse a presidential candidate in the weeks leading up to the election. At the time of writing this, over 250,000 people canceled their subscription. Former Executive Editor Marty Baron said this to NPR, "If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would've been fine. It's a certainly reasonable decision. But this was made within a couple of weeks of the election, and there was no substantive serious deliberation with the editorial board of the paper. It was clearly made for other reasons, not for reasons of high principle." Bezos has since commented that it was simply unfortunate timing, and nothing nefarious was meant by it. Sure, Jeff. I’m sure you and your $230 Billion just made an unfortunately timed decision. Side note - Bezos didn’t take much of an active role in the Post until 2023. Until then, he was mostly letting it run on autopilot. Timing doesn’t seem to be his strong suit, if his intentions truly aren’t tawdry.
Following the decision, a number of employees resigned. The Post does phenomenal reporting, frequently calls out Trump for his authoritarian leanings, makes an effort to be realistic without fear-mongering and often offers solutions. These people broke Watergate for crying out loud, but they’re not the ones driving the bus.
When Bezos first purchased The Post, a subscription was included with an Amazon Prime membership for only an additional $3.99/month, today that cost is $12.99.
So we turn to what is free. Social media. We’re on it all the time, we have it in our hands 24 hours a day. As of September 2024, the Pew Research Center reports that 54% of adults get at least some of their news from social media - that’s more than half. According to the U.S. Pirg, it’s the most common news source among 18-29 year olds.
Social media is where the public goes to town hall about what’s happening in broader society, those discussions need context, so news naturally is brought into this sphere of internet usage for social purposes. We all have society in common, so when something happens, we all want to talk about it.
It’s the way I remember learning about the biggest news stories since when I was in middle school. The first being when we successfully executed Osama Bin Laden back in 2011, one iPhone 4S was passed around on the bleachers during a volleyball game. That’s how I found out the United States assassinated the orchestrator of 9/11, through Twitter. It was news to be sure, but the Times didn’t tell me, Twitter did.
That’s how I remember finding out about basically every major news event in the last 15 years. Obama’s reelection, Robin Williams’ passing, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, all three of the assassination attempts on Trump. It shouldn’t be something to be looked down on, it’s so aggressively normal.
Unfortunately, however, there is very little in place protecting the spread of mis and disinformation on social media. The community notes on X, formerly Twitter, while sometimes hilarious, have actually been helpful in certain scenarios, but it doesn’t always stop the snowball effect.
Something we have to accept is we are a nation of convenience. We invented the Drive-Thru, the microwave, and self-rocking baby carriers. If there’s something we can do to cut a corner, we will. So it’s only natural this would be where we go to get our news. We’re already on Instagram, I might as well stay here. Unfortunately, these spaces push content based on engagement, and the best way to get people to engage is to get them pissed off.
This leads to a quagmire of mediocre cowboy journalists (and I’m not calling myself a maestro by any means) doing half-baked research with no ethics board or editor to ensnare the bullshit, or the misleading shit, or just the shit. So anyone with access to a ‘for-you page’ gets an onslaught of the most outrageous and aggressive headlines about people having after-birth abortions (which don’t exist) and that vaccines cause autism (they don’t). It’s just Becky from accounting exercising her hobby, but I highly doubt she’s paying for 10 newspaper subscriptions either!
So, don’t be so quick to scoff when someone says, “I saw it on TikTok,” because you’ve probably said that too.
At the end of the day, I don’t have an answer for what is to be done about this. All I know is that we should start having this conversation. Federalizing it is obviously not the answer, you do that and the First Amendment goes straight out the window. Fascism is breaking down the door, and if we do that we may as well have let it in. The baby step right now is to find ways to make it cheaper. Just a little bit cheaper. The future of America depends on education. If the Department of Education dies, which it very well might, our newspapers and magazines will be more important than ever.