I’ve been in media a long, LONG time.
In 1980, I got a paper route. That meant, I got up stupidly early (6am), assembled the paper (this is the story), walked around (no bike), and dropped news on people’s door step (think in-app notifications).
Media hasn’t changed much. It’s hard work. It needs to be put together. People want it delivered. That, and the business model is exactly the same.
Section 1: Sections.
News came in sections.
The main section was for furled-brow important stuff that parents read (or pretended to read).
Sports was what was really read. Up front were stories about local teams the rest of the pages were filled with standings, leaderboards, and box scores. The statistical filler weighed me down as walked my ‘hood.
Business. A blend of main and sports. A quick skim for readers and page of closing stock prices. A little because there was nowhere else to get those. Really, it just meant more pages.
Home. That had stuff for real people. Happy stories. TV listings for all seven channels. Oh, and Comics, crosswords, horoscopes, want-ads, and other classifieds. You can read every after “Happy stories” as syndicated filler.
Do you know what syndicated filler costs? Not much.
Section 2: How pre-Internet ads worked
How does all the filler help?
Ads.
The people who paid for ads put their ads near the stuff people would actually read. Which was – really – the filler. Car ads near box scores. Movie ads near listings. Home goods near crosswords.
Like I said, not much has changed.
The weekends were weighed down with even more sections. Cars. Opinion. And, a weekly wrap up magazine. That’s where you’d find a Jimmy Breslin, David Shribman, or Dave Barry.
Lots more stuff in the paper drove up the number of readers. Which meant those same ads cost more on weekends because more people saw them.
Section 3: The real business of media.
The deep, dark secret of news *media* hasn’t changed a pixel. The paper didn’t make it’s money making news. It made its money selling ads …around filler.
Think about it.
A smoke filled early 1980s newsroom… chock full of people. If you can’t picture it, think of Lou Grant or All the President’s Men. All being paid – union wages. Reimbursed for driving around town getting scoops. Running up phone bills – when we paid for phone calls. Teams of people produced a few dozen stories a day.
Yeah, some people glanced at those important, timely stories: politicians who suck, inflation, war, and rust belt layoffs. Some.
But, mostly, people spent their time pouring over TV listings. Scanning box scores to see how their SS, Bill Mazeroski, did in the west coast double-header. Seeing if their ten shares of IBM went up a ¼ (pre-decimal trades; love the spreads). And, laughing at the funnies.
The stuff that cost little ran the most ads.
If the paper was lucky, the costly stuff won Pulitzers and local area media awards. Maybe the erudite stuff got a few more people to subscribe. Plus, pictures of awards look nice on the sides of busses.
Section 4: Chase to the cuts
So why did newspapers die?
Because the internet delivers better filler faster and cheaper. ESPN for box scores. CNBC for stock quotes. Google for flight details. TikTok for fun. Car sites for car stuff. Food sites for recipes. Angi’s list for classified. Tinder for personals. TheLadders for a job. It goes on and on.
TV listings? Hah. If I hadn’t cut my cable cord, my TV would tell me what’s on. As it is, I tell it what I want to watch. Paradigm. Shifted.
With every lost section, costs went up, readers were lost, and ad dollars went down. You don’t need degrees in math and business to know that doesn’t work.
If you remember nothing else about this story, remember this…
Ad -supported media makes money when it puts ads near cheap content.
Today, we give social media their content for free. Shit, I write this Substack for no money to satisfy five Substack subs – three of whom won’t open this.
Google ingests all content; and pays nothing for it. Yeah, I see you Steven Guilbeault waving Bill C-18 angrily from the front row of the House of Commons, six seats to Justin’s right.
Meta and Google are *today’s* newspapers. More sophisticated, sure. But filled with grist ideally geared for the biggest ad mills.
Section 5: What’s the next cut?
People wax nostalgic about the papers of yore. I don’t. Today, people think that journalism had import or gravitas. Nah. It was front matter to look good.
AI will create a nearly infinite number of good enough stories. Google will put ads all over your site. The business of online media *absolutely* has to go this way.
Because all ad-supported media needs content to be cheap. Or, the model doesn’t work.
People don’t value “content.” It’s there to carry ads. I say this as guy who woke up early and put news on people’s doorstep – that they glanced at and threw it away.