[hammock]

Author's argument seems to be that the only profitable publishers are subscription-based, and therefore cater to the rich, because only the rich can afford subscriptions.

That seems to ignore...the entire history of publishing. Like how a newspaper used to cost a quarter and everyone read it.

[AlbertCory]

For my book, I did a ton of historical research, mainly the LA Times (via newspapers.com). You can get a free trial of that without paying, but the subscription price is pretty nominal. You can probably get a paper from where you grew up, too.

Anyway, it's pretty eye-opening to see how much of the paper in the late 70s was ads. Like, 3/4 of most pages in the front section, after the first three. The Sunday paper was 300+ pages. They were raking it in. They could afford to subsidize some foreign bureaus.

Why was that? There was no other good way to reach the Southern California audience. I got my job at Xerox by answering an ad in the Sunday Times.

So they had a monopoly, and now it's gone.

[xyzzyz]

The newspaper price was heavily subsidized by ad revenue. If the paper had to depend solely on the sales revenue, the price would have had been much higher than a quarter, and consequently, much fewer people would buy it regularly.

[ghaff]

This probably isn't exactly correct but, as I recall, the idea was that the subscription/newsstand revenues paid for the printing and distribution of the physical paper while advertising paid for the creation of the content.

[hammock]

Ad-supported business models are more prevalent and profitable now then at any other time in history. Why do you think publishing was left out?

[ohwellhere]

Newspapers were information and entertainment to many; the eyeballs coming for the latter subsidized the former. They lost the entertainment eyeballs -- now what happens to those who need reliable information?

This article is decrying the outcome of that, maybe.

[xyzzyz]

Same reason why horse drawn coaches were left out despite demand for transportation being higher than ever: newspaper ads lost to competition from other advertising venues, because they provided inferior product.