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 read news in private. Reading is simply faster than streaming, so news delivered via text will always have a market. However, this reality does not guarantee subscriber loyalty to any platform.

“Journalism is a craft, not a profession,” the late Michael Kelly routinely said in the 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 in it New York TimesThe 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 can become a ‘journalist’, as there is no license to practice American journalism as there is in professions such as medicine and law. Getting paid to “become a journalist” was the trick, and with the spread of the Internet, so too did job opportunities in the profession.

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This craft continues and thrives in the United States unlike anywhere else in the world because First Amendment. Capitalism’s constant, never-ending creative destruction (thank you for that 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 press platforms particularly powerful. There is no longer any “state” media with the disappearance of federal funding for NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the wide world of media continues to expand, and the “news media” within it.

in the wake of Big layoffs at the Washington PostThere has been an explosion of comments – once again – about the decline and often death of newspapers. But if you’re reading this, I’ve caught your attention in some ways other than subscribing to an old newspaper. And there, in short, is the age-old dilemma of “news” and, indeed, any written product for which a reader should pay: there is so much “free” content that it is very, very difficult for a high-cost, subscription-based text product to succeed. By “success” I mean at least breaking even.

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Throughout my time as a broadcast and print journalist — going back to 1979, when I was first paid to write for a newspaper, and 1990, when I first broadcast over the airwaves — I have been critical of legacy media in general for its liberal and then leftist bias. I tried to do this without getting rid of previous employers or colleagues. So this column is not specifically about the Washington Post, which is what I’m talking about Column books 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 Washington Post’s editorial page editor, who hired me, was a wonderful editor and person, as were Ruth Marcus and David Shipley, who also ran the opinion pages after Fred’s death. The three proved to be great people to work with and for, as did all the editors at the paper.

But after I left the newspaper, I also stopped subscribing to it. This is not intended to be anything other than a statement of fact. Over the past five years, I’ve also retired subscriptions to The Telegraph and Financial Times in the UK, as well as The New York Times and most subscription-based products that, other than The Wall Street Journal and The Wall Street Journal, have been around for 20 years as newspapers. cleveland.com. (The magazine is owned by News Corp, the sister company of Fox News Media.)

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The magazine contains excellent reporting on every major story covered by the legacy media, and cleveland.com Superbly caters to any fan Cleveland BrownsCavaliers and Guardian, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes.

This second subscription to the “old stand” (former Cleveland Plain agent) makes a key point: sports editor for cleveland.comDavid Campbell has done a masterful job of growing the revenue engine that is so essential that any former ‘regional newspaper’ needs a far-reaching fan base to be satisfied – and indeed more deeply connected – to its sporting addiction. Available for a few extra dollars, or for free with a quick ad or two, the podcast and text options provide a model that can be studied by any struggling paper.

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’s dean of sports analysis, Terry Pluto, working — and now podcasting — alongside dozens of veteran reporters, while developing a new generation of journalists who serve each team’s “segments.” I assume, but don’t know, that successful platforms in every region blessed with sports did something similar – and thus kept many journalists outside the sports section employed.

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I carry the magazine and the sports section cleveland.com As examples of what are still viable are primarily text-based products that rely on subscription revenue but compete for readers’ attention with high-quality text, audio, and video without a subscription.

Quality is more important than anything else, but superior service is for specialist readers, especially in areas such as Sports news and opinionin second place. In this age of abundant free information, it was inevitable that the sifting that began with the rise of Internet-based blogs — then online newsletters without the exorbitant costs of legacy platforms — and then Substack and podcasts, would negatively impact every legacy platform that owed its origins and legacy audiences to a now-extinct near-monopoly status and continued reliance 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 he helped create the institution of same-sex marriage through a sustained effort of persuasion, while also pioneering independent marriage, Subscription model for one writer – He is no longer alone among freelance writers, reporters and columnists. In fact, these journalists have now become a large legion. But they have to work for their readers, or the revenue will disappear.

The magazines and subscription sites that have flourished or arrived in this era are best served by the commitment to quality and superior service of niche outlets. Bylines have been trademarks for a long time, and it’s very useful to have some of those as well. New platforms that thrive, and old ones that survive, must gain subscriber support at least annually. They cannot alienate or drive readers away. It’s just business.

The abundance of “the free and the good” is deadly to the “unfree, however good”—and certainly to the “unfree and the superfluous,” or worse still, the “unfree and the wicked only.” Free tunes aren’t free every time, just as quality trumps regression.

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Text-only platforms are still plentiful, 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 basic definition of a journalist is broad—”a person employed to gather, write, or report news for newspapers, magazines, radio, or television”—but it is not broad enough. Omit the second half to make the definition common: Anyone employed to gather, write, or report news is a journalist, even if they are employed directly by readers or viewers.

In America, at least, the golden age of journalism has begun: there are no gatekeepers.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News Channel contributor and hostThe Hugh Hewitt ShowHe is heard weekday afternoons from 3pm-6pm ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and lunches on the West Coast in more than 400 affiliates across the country, and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel News Roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. He is an Ohio native and alumnus Harvard College and at the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler Law School since 1996 where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on every major national television news network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major U.S. newspaper, authored dozens of books and moderated a number of Republican candidate debates, most recently in November 2023 GOP presidential debate in Miami and four GOP presidential debates in the 2015-2016 cycle Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics, and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over 40 years of broadcasting today.

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