The Future of Print Journalism

Print Media had a hay day between the invention of the printing press and the internet.   

There were so many advertisers that newspapers were designed beginning with the ads first.  The ads were laid out on the pages, then the editorial content filled in the gaps.  

“All the news that’s fit to print” was actually “All the news that fits the ads.”

Often, there were so many ads in the paper that Print Media couldn’t write enough content fast enough, so they bought content by subscribing to news wires.  Those news wires syndicated content to their subscribers, and Print Media made a killing.

While all this was happening, Print Media made money on both sides of the equation.  If you wanted to ingest their product (the news), you had to subscribe. 

The barriers for entry of building a newspaper business were high.  You needed people to create ideas for content, people to ask questions and investigate, people to write the content, people to sell the ads, machines to print the content, and people to deliver the content.  The economics, once established, were excellent.  People subscribe to read the news, and businesses pay to advertise in the news.

As someone in any part of the world that wasn’t Print Media, you stayed in your lane.  You worked with Print Media to distribute your message.  There was some transaction.  It could be that your content was an ad.  It could be that you gave them a favor, got an invitation for an event, or any other exchange of value.  As someone who was, say, a shop owner, you didn’t have means of distributing your own content reliably.

Times were good.  The money flowed, Print Media held those in power accountable, and journalism was a career for elites.  Print Media was a pillar industry.

Then, the internet came around, and the world changed forever for Print Media.

One of the big advantages Print Media had was that the cost to distribute their content was high.  In order to reliably distribute content, you needed the machines to print the paper as well as an army of delivery people to deliver the papers.  With the internet, the cost to distribute information became deflationary.

You could spin up a blog website for free. Because all you had invested was your time, you could offer your content for free.  

Two strengths of Print Media were eroding.  Distribution costs, a high barrier to entry, were deflationary.  Reader revenue, previously a paid subscription, was also becoming deflationary.

In the old world, everyone’s incentives were aligned. Businesses wanted to advertise, Print Media wanted to distribute information (their product), and people wanted to be in the know.  Because of the internet, there was an incentive mis-alignment. Businesses wanted to advertise, Print Media wanted to distribute information (their product), and people wanted to be in the know. That part stayed the same, but there was a new entrant into the “information distribution” space. Everyone Else.

Everyone Else used information distribution to accomplish a different objective.  Everyone’s objective was different.  A travel blog could be used to sell a vacation package or a travel agent service. A fashion blog could be used to sell clothes. A business blog could be used to sell consulting services.

For Print Media, information distribution was Product Distribution. For Everyone Else, information distribution was Top-of-Funnel Distribution.

Everyone Else could afford to give their content away for free because there was a bigger, better transaction deeper in their funnel. Everyone Else used information distribution as a hook. There wasn’t a direct monetization for their content because they built brands, thought leadership, and relationships that weren’t always transactional.  

While Print Media was making money on both sides of the equation, both sides of the equation were eliminating the middle man.  

The reality, however, was that the vast majority of Print Media ads (B2B) and subscriptions (B2C) remained unchanged so Print Media didn’t change. 

Then, laptops and computers became widely available.  

Services like Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube (all together, “Aggregator Services”) capitalized on the converging trends of the ease of spinning up a website, WiFi adoption, 3G, the shrinking of laptops, and, eventually, smartphones.

Big Problems Confront Print Media

The rise of the internet and the ease of posting information to multiple social media platforms created three giant problems for Print Media.

First, Aggregator Services aggregated Print Media and Everyone Else into the same feed.  No matter how an individual found the information, it didn’t matter if it was a conventional news source or a person in their basement, the Aggregator Services presented the articles equally.  Now, not only were the barriers to information distribution completely eliminated, but the barriers to building audience were eliminated.

Users of the Aggregator Services used the tools for free. In exchange, they were shown ads.  Those ads were highly targeted, but, even more importantly, trackable.

While Print Media was still hoping that newspapers, where the ads were laid out first – then the news filled in the gaps, would retain their value, Aggregator Services were reporting exactly how many people viewed and clicked on their ad while offering dynamic pricing based off demand and drastically lowering the advertiser’s cost per acquisition.  

There was more demand to run ads on the Aggregator Services than there was supply, so the Aggregator Services approached Print Media.  Herein lies the second problem.

For a revenue share, the Aggregator Services would show ads on the content created by Print Media.  On the outside, Print Media creates content, doesn’t do anything to sell the ad placements, and they receive revenue.  It’s a deal that’s too good to be true!

Which is exactly what it was. 

As more and more consumers turned to the Aggregator Services for their information consumption, the Aggregator Services blurred the lines between “verified news” and “a person with a blog in their basement.” 

The consumer experience got so good that consumers didn’t need a subscription to the newspaper because they got all their information digitally.  Turns out, the consumers don’t care if they get their information from the local media outlet or if they get it from a person in their basement, as long as the information is correct (or it’s what they want to believe … which is coming up).  

As consumers were discontinuing their Print Media subscriptions (B2C), the revenue share for Aggregator Services (B2B) tipped into the favor of the Aggregator Services.  The unit economics got worse at an exponential rate.

The third huge problem, that came from the advent of the Aggregator Services (and the apathy of the Print Media) was the definition of “Everyone Else” got much bigger.  

Now, Uncle Jim was a journalist. Cousin Tammy was a journalist. Anyone could use a post as journalism.  Even better, since consumers know Uncle Jim and Cousin Tammy, they inherently trust their kin more than they trust the news. So, if their immediate network says one thing and Print Media says another, who does the consumer most likely trust?

Their immediate network.

Some Aggregator Services also created a new metric for social capital. “Likes.”

Now, even more people were incentivized to write and post in exchange for “Likes.” With each person who posts, that’s even more competition for the Print Media.

Everyone Else also expanded to be not just businesses, but entrepreneurs and employees too.  

Venture Capitalists began using blogs, podcasts, and social media as a way to attract the best portfolio companies. CEOs used information distribution to attract the best talent for their organization.  

In this world, 1+1 can equal $1B. One great portfolio company or one great hire can equal a billion-dollar exit.

Companies started magazines, wrote books, and hired full-time “industry analysts” to write white-papers, blog posts, and more. All this content was published with the goal of accomplishing their own objective.

For Print Media, their objective was to sell ads (B2B) and sell subscriptions (B2C) all using information as the product.

For Everyone Else, their objective was to use information to sell whatever they wanted.

Print Media Responds to 3 Biggest Issues

So, how did Print Media respond to the biggest issues presented by social media and its myriad of free platforms?

Declining subscriptions meant a greater reliance on ads, particularly the ads that were fed to the Print Media sites through the revenue share. Optimizing the revenue share meant optimizing for the metrics set by the Aggregator Services, particularly pageviews, clicks, sessions, and pageviews/session.

Print Media began using these metrics as a way to “listen to their readers,” which really meant “publish more content that aligns with the content that best optimizes the metrics that matter.” This created a positive feedback loop. The content and viewpoints that best optimized the metrics were published more, and the content and viewpoints that didn’t optimize the metrics were cut.

The pivot turned from “All the news that’s fit to print” to “All the news that gets the clicks.”

Each Print Media company had its own metrics. So, each Print Media company developed its own slant.  The slants created clickbait. The clickbait drove pageviews. The pageviews drove ad revenue.  The ad revenue kept the business alive while subscriptions declined.

Aggregator Services didn’t kill Print Media alone, but they handed Print Media the final nail for its impending coffin. This scenario spurred decision-making that forced viewpoints to be slanted in a particular way, which eroded the trust of “neutral journalism.”

For some time, Print Media claimed “neutral journalism” while being anything-but-neutral, which created an environment where consumers trust Everyone Else more than Print Media.

Let’s log the pre-internet barriers to entry for Print Media against the post-Aggregator Services barriers to entry.

Print Media Barriers for EntryBarrier StatusPeople to create ideas for contentPartially eliminated. Everyone Else has their own ideas, but not everyone creates good ideas.People to ask questions and investigatePartially eliminated. Everyone Else can do their own research, but not everyone does good research.People to write the contentPartially eliminated. Everyone Else can write their own content, but not everyone is a good writer.People to sell the adsEliminated. Aggregator Services offered better ad distribution at lower costs.People to sell the subscriptionsEliminated. Everyone Else entering the information distribution market eliminated the need for subscriptions.Machines to print the contentEliminated. Almost all content is consumed digitally.People to deliver the contentEliminated. Almost all content is consumed digitally.

Now, Print Media is desperately trying to pivot back to subscriptions. Some companies only have their content behind a paywall. Some companies use a modified paywall, where consumers get a few articles for free, then need to pay for the rest. Some companies provide all their content for free, and provide additional value in return for a subscription. At the end of the day, though, the Print Media product has not changed. Its product is information.

There’s credence to the subscription model. Substack is proving that readers will pay for subscriptions for content that interests them. Casey Newton and Bari Weiss have huge followings and make tons of money through reader subscriptions on Substack. I’ve heard that Ben Thompson, the founder of Stratechery, is making far more than $1MM/year. In the political world, Ben Shapiro and Rachel Maddow are two of the biggest journalists in the world, and their brand transcends the companies they work for.

The fundamental business model of Print Media has not changed. Monetize off ads (B2B) and subscriptions (B2B). I’m not a newsroom revenue expert, so I don’t know if that will change, or, if it will, how it will.

I’m more interested in the newsroom of the future.

I’m more interested in answering the question, “How could a newsroom publish all the information their community needs while being so profitable that more Print Media outlets open each year than close?”

I believe it’s of enormous importance to preserve a free press. I’d argue that, currently, the press isn’t free. I’d argue that the press is beholden to the Aggregator Services for their livelihoods.

In fact, I think part of the reason the Substack authors of the world are so successful is because they are free. They either make money directly from their consumers (and write what their paid customers want to read) or they have alternative forms of monetization that allow them to say what they want.

But what do you do if you’re a newsroom that wants to have no paywall and wants to be profitable?

That’s where I think it’s beneficial to imagine the newsroom of the future.

Newsroom of the Future

Informational vs Editorial Content

The newsroom of the future will have a clear content bifurcation between editorial content (“Capital ‘J’ Journalism”) and informational content. 

Editorial content is content that changes minds. It calls “bullshit” on people in power and it’s the piece about the all-star basketball player who also is going to an Ivy League college. Editorial content is the content that wins awards or is recognized for excellence.

Informational content is just that. It’s information. It’s “Who won the soccer game last night?” And “What’s the weather tomorrow?”

It’s “What schools are closed?” And “What properties were bought and sold last month?”

No informational content is winning a Pulitzer.  It’s also not paying the bills.

Assume 1 full labor-hour is taken to write an article about “Who won the soccer game last night?”  Assume, also, that labor-hour costs $30. To recoup the salary investment off just programmatic ads, the article needs to get 5,000 clicks. That’s a lot of clicks for one soccer game. Now imagine that the reporter actually watches the game, drives to and from the game, and writes the article, so the full article takes 4 labor hours. It would take 20,000 clicks to recoup the salary investment.

Every parent wants to see their kid’s name in the paper, but those economics aren’t sustainable for Print Media.  

Sports, property transfers, crime, weather, school closings, and obituaries are all examples of informational content.

Informational content will be written, edited, and published by Artificial Intelligence. Readers will find the articles interesting. It’ll be SEO’d properly. It’ll all take place while the newsroom is asleep or otherwise on another assignment. The first sighting of these articles will not be on the editor’s desk, but instead be on the live website by members of the community. 

The unit economics of these articles will be spectacular. Hundreds or thousands of pieces of content will be published by the AI each month for an average cost of less than $1 per article. Assume a newsroom uses AI to publish 1,000 articles per month about weather, property transfers, sports, crime, and more.  Instead of needing 5,000 clicks, or (more realistically) 30,000 clicks to ROI on an individual article, a newsroom will need 166 clicks. That’s a full 180X decrease in cost per article published.

All this content will also be completely neutral because AI doesn’t have a slant. Not each article will serve thousands of people. Instead, each article will serve a small number of people who want an answer to a specific question. 

The informational content written by AI is not award-winning. It probably will not go viral. It probably will not change minds in the community. It will, however, deliver information in a succinct and interesting way.

Print Media will be forced to adopt this technology or will die because of the second transition for Print Media of the future.

The Path From Here to There

The Substack all-stars are signals amidst the noise. Right now, freelancers supported by subscriptions are the exception, not the norm. But they will become the norm.

Top-performing journalists will leave their newsroom jobs in search of more money, subscription revenue, editorial freedom, and personal branding opportunities. Even in small communities, the top journalists will discover the opportunities that exist by getting out from under the corporate branding and going solo.  

They may still write for their former outlet, but that will be in the form of op-eds or stringer pieces.

The good news for Print Media is the same tools and monetization mechanisms that will enable top-performers to go freelance will also enable more freelance journalists per market area than ever before. There will be an explosion of local Substacks, personal blogs, and citizen reporting. There will be more diversity in reporting in local communities than ever before. 

Because of the impending migration-out, Print Media will be forced to adopt more AI tools as fewer journalists are charged with writing more content.

AI will help journalists the way they want to be helped

AI tools will not help find great articles to write. There’s a shortage of great content as it is. AI will help journalists research, cite sources, and even write the first version of stories. Journalists will begin to revert to their former job descriptions. They will ask great questions, find great sources, and build great content pieces. The AI will make them more efficient on all fronts, transition their role from human-robot writer to savvy question-asker and editor.  

Automation will also help journalists and Print Media in back office roles. Support functions, who are already difficult to hire, will be filled by robots.

The silver lining in the first three themes of the newsroom of the not-so-distant future is that newsroom economics will improve. AI-generated content is 30X cheaper per unit delivered than a journalist.  Migration of staff reporters means less payroll and more on-demand reporting. AI making Print Media more efficient means more articles can be published at higher quality. That third component leads us into the fourth theme.

Newsroom monetization will revert to B2B and B2C

A decline in Facebook and Google ad targeting is causing an increase in programmatic ad prices that aren’t sustainable for some small businesses – particularly hyper-local small businesses.

As a small business interested in advertising in the high school sports section, would you rather advertise on all the high school sports content in your area for an entire year, or for content about just 5% of the games? An increase in content, particularly in informational areas, will lead to an increase in reach for ad sponsors for the corresponding content areas – particularly for hyper-local businesses.  

These two converging forces will make section sponsorships and higher-value ad deals much more advantageous than programmatic ads for location-based businesses like restaurants, funeral homes, and law firms.

Subscription-based business models are already making a comeback. Paywalls work, especially when the content behind the paywall is excellent. A more diverse and talented pool of freelancers will make up that subscription-only content. I expect that trend to continue or accelerate. The B2C segment of newsrooms will continue to become more lucrative.  

Google, Facebook, Knight Foundation, and many more organizations recognize the importance of Print Media. They’ll continue to support excellent journalism.

Lots of fantastic, award-winning journalism is written with grant funding. This will continue, and, if anything, increase. The world needs great journalism. 

These forces will converge

The newsroom of the future has lots of changes, but the changes will bring far less pain than Print Media has felt over the last decade. Journalism quality will stay the same, and it’ll be far more sustainable.  While the loss of top reporters will be challenging, they will still be available for contributions and more freelancers will emerge. The overall diversity in content published by a newsroom will increase, even though the makeup of the newsroom will be far different.

Grants, advertising partners, and subscriptions will fund journalism that is of the highest quality we have seen. AI and automation tools will increase the frequency at which articles are published by decreasing the time-to-publish.

The bifurcation of editorial and informational journalism will change the way Print Media economics work.

AI-published informational content will lead to stronger unit economics than Print Media have had in the past 30 years. More freelancers than ever before will lead to a more diverse pool of editorial talent, bringing with it more diverse stories than ever before. Those freelancers will also have their own audiences that they’ll bring to the Print Media outlet.

Stronger unit economics, a broader diversity of editorial talent, AI-published content, and AI assistants drastically lowering the time-to-publish will lead to even more capital flowing into journalism. The last 20 years have been challenging, but the best is yet to come.

AI assistants helping journalists drastically lower the time-to-print by doing research, citing sources, and writing the first version of stories, will lead to more, high-quality stories than ever before.

The convergence of AI-published content, a broader array of stories than ever before, and a vast increase in the number of articles published will slowly restore trust from the public.

The story of Print Media will be in three parts:

“All the news that’s fit to print.”

“All the news that drives the clicks.”

“All the news.”

Thanks to Larry Phillips and Jay Allred for reading drafts of this post.