Why media layoffs keep happening
This is ridiculous. &quot;Greed&quot; didn&#x27;t kill newspapers. You think the classified business would be any better today off if newspapers had artificially held ad. and sub. prices down in the 80s and 90s? $0 is $0, and that&#x27;s what people will pay for classifieds now.<p>&quot;Hedge Funds&quot;, everyone&#x27;s favorite bogeyman. &quot;Lack of Innovation&quot;, as if the Chicago Tribune was going to save itself by opening a geocities page in 1996.<p>The &#x27;news&#x27; business is a zombie because it sells a product that is basically free to produce and free to consume. That&#x27;s it! You don&#x27;t really need a newsroom to give you &quot;the news&quot; anymore, and so the market for a product whose main feature is a professional, standing writing staff that simply yesterday&#x27;s events no longer meaningfully exists. No amount of investment in technology by media companies in the 90s was going to do anything but _hasten_ that shift.<p>But, there&#x27;s plenty of great media out there. You can sell good writing if it is actually good; you can monetize your opinions if people will actually pay attention to them; you can sell your access if you actually have it; these are media business models with staying power. They might not be billion-dollar properties and they might not report &quot;the news&quot; per se but they provide value and they will be fine. My household subscribes to The Athletic, Foreign Affairs, Tablet, The New Yorker, and The Information, to name a few. All great.