Center for Health Communication
What motivates publishers?
“Engaging with the Press: A Guide for Perplexed Readers and Sources” was written by Dick Tofel for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication. It was inspired and informed by Dick’s Center for Health Communication class “Engaging with the Press: A Practical Look at Health Communication.”
When people used to complain about stories we had published at news organizations where I worked, the phrase that most easily garnered my silent contempt was that we had published the story “to sell newspapers” or later to “generate clicks.” That’s because this critique, which seemingly harks back to an image of the press shaped in the era of “Citizen Kane,” almost never reflects why stories are published, at least by quality news organizations. Even the tabloid headlines (“Headless Body in Topless Bar” is the classic) that once marked an entire class of publications have faded in both prevalence and significance as the physical newsstands on which they were designed to stand out have disappeared.
When considering the actual motivations of publishers (as distinct from editors), we need to broadly distinguish between those organized with the intention to make a profit and the (mostly) newer nonprofits.
At for-profits, which used to comprise almost the entirety of the press, but no longer do, the ostensible mission is to maximize profits over the long run. That almost always depends on attracting as many loyal readers as possible, either for sustainable subscription revenues or to in turn attract advertisers, or both. But note the words “long run” and “loyal.” Even those most committed to the profit motive will see their mission in terms of brand-building more than sensationalizing or scoring small “scoops” (unless sensation lies close to the heart of their brand, as at some tabloids, or when rapidity of publication is at the heart of the brand, as with all wire services and many business publications).
Nonprofit news organizations have a more coherent view of mission. But their missions differ more widely from one to another. Some seek to generally inform the community, others to engage it, others to elucidate a particular field (sometimes with eye to advocating for a point of view), yet others to reform society. Someone interacting with one of these newsrooms needs to understand the intentions of the organization, both as an aid to understanding what their interests are likely to be, and as a means of shaping the information a source can provide and the form in which it is provided.
All that said, nonprofits still need to be run as businesses, because they need, at the least, to break even– with current revenues, including any contributions from endowments or reserves, at least equaling current costs. Better-run nonprofits bear this in mind; those that do not generally fail to be sustainable.
When considering the actual motivations of publishers (as distinct from editors), we need to broadly distinguish between those organized with the intention to make a profit and the (mostly) newer nonprofits.
Because of these considerations, all news organizations need to be, and are, conscious of revenues, and both readers and sources will be well served by understanding the most important revenue streams that fuel the news. There are many such streams possible, but in the news business today, three are most significant, and each is worth considering in turn.
Advertising
For many legacy news organizations—most newspapers and almost all magazines in print, as well as broadcast television and radio—and for online for-profit sources without a paywall, the most significant source of revenue remains advertising. For nearly all other newsrooms, advertising is one source of revenue, even if not a focus.
This century’s business crisis of the press, in the simplest terms, was caused by the fact that the enormous scale of online platforms put them in a position to offer more targeted advertising at lower prices than publishers could hope to provide. Advertising was thus increasingly driven online, and away from news, with Facebook, Google and Amazon the winners, and news the loser. At the same time, some older forms of advertising, particularly print classified, were supplanted altogether by digital offerings such as Craigslist.
What remains of advertising sold by news organizations is heavily dependent on the number of readers the news products can attract. In print, that audience has been steadily shrinking throughout this century, and print advertising is in the process of disappearing—more quickly at the national level than locally, but steadily nonetheless, and more rapidly in times of economic distress.
This century’s business crisis of the press, in the simplest terms, was caused by the fact that the enormous scale of online platforms put them in a position to offer more targeted advertising at lower prices than publishers could hope to provide.
Online, advertising requires traffic to be effective, and the greatest pressure to amass a large audience is felt by those news organizations most heavily dependent on advertising (which may also be termed “sponsorship” or sometimes even “branded content”). Unfortunately, one common way to attract more traffic —“page views” or “unique visitors” to a site—is simply to produce more stories, which may leave reporters frequently rushed, as noted earlier. It is not uncommon for reporters in such newsrooms to feel and behave as if they are riding a hamster wheel.
Of course, not all traffic is created equal in advertising terms. Wealthier and more niche audiences (by interest or locale) may be more highly prized by advertisers, and news organizations for whom advertising remains a key revenue source will tend to focus as well on who their readers are, as well as on how many of them they have attracted. Understanding this pressure may be a part of realizing which readers a newsroom you are talking to (or reading) is trying to reach.
Having said all of that, advertising is declining as a source of revenue for newsrooms, and the most commercially successful depend on it far less than previously. At the New York Times Co., for instance, reader revenues were almost three times that from advertisers by 2022.
Readers
Revenue from readers and viewers has always been a staple for news organizations in print (subscriptions and single-copy sales) and on cable television (indirectly, through cable fees). But with the advent of the internet, reader revenue has become a much more important factor, in a number of ways.
First, after what I regard as significant business mistakes in the mid-1990’s when almost everyone rushed to give away online content, almost all for-profit news organizations have come to see that online subscription revenue is both an opportunity and a necessity, especially as advertising fades. In the case of the healthiest and highest quality newsrooms, subscription revenues have fairly quickly succeeded advertising as the leading revenue source. As noted earlier, subscription models put a premium on reader loyalty—and thus on the sorts of continuing coverage, and individual stories, that yield such loyalty.
Single copy sales, unfortunately, have all but disappeared with the newsstands that used to make them possible. This has had a particularly dramatic effect on most magazines, the covers and overall editorial design of which were intended, in significant part, to generate such sales.
Revenue from readers also intrinsically, I think, orients the press toward serving the wealthy (who can afford a subscription or a larger donation) and away from the poor (who cannot).
For nonprofit news organizations, of course, donations from readers comprise an important source of revenue. In most cases, the money brought in from larger donors—both wealthy people and institutional foundations—are a larger piece of the revenue pie, but reader contributions (often characterized as “membership”) are meaningful, especially because, like subscriptions, they tend to be recurring—and thus, again, to hinge on loyalty.
Revenue from readers also intrinsically, I think, orients the press toward serving the wealthy (who can afford a subscription or a larger donation) and away from the poor (who cannot). This is a consequence of the tendency, noted earlier, for journalists to write, over the long term, for the people who read them. The trend is evident, I believe, in coverage of culture, real estate, personal finance, even in the sorts of health concerns that receive the bulk of attention (more on diseases which plague the privileged, less on those concentrated among the poor or less well educated). All of this is a serious societal problem, in my view, and one not yet sufficiently recognized.
Events
Another source of revenue is based on the power of publications to convene communities with live “events.” This has proven important in recent years for such outlets as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and the Texas Tribune. Even so, the most successful events businesses (SXSW, the Aspen Ideas Festival, those produced by any number of industry shows, universities, and think tanks) are not journalistic, and successful newsrooms, such as the New York Times, have not been able to meaningfully establish a presence in the events business, despite concerted efforts. Within journalism, the most successful events initiatives have centered on business concerns, often in niche “verticals.”
For sources, events businesses hold out the prospect, and the complications, of potentially becoming, in an even more direct manner than heretofore, part of the “product” the press is selling access to. The resulting coziness can be useful and may provide some sources with additional leverage with news organizations covering them, even as the ethical considerations for journalists can be fraught.
Try very hard to resist the temptation to decry coverage you don’t like as resulting from a desire to sell advertising or subscriptions or curry favor with donors. Few things anger reporters and editors more, especially because the accusations are quite unlikely to be true.
Having said all of this, it is not only simplistic but also naïve and usually insulting to believe, and especially to assert, that reporters and editors bend their daily coverage to the economic interests of publishers. This rarely happens in practice and is strongly discouraged by the unusual ethic of news organizations that limits the influence of publishers on the work of newsrooms that nominally report to them. Try very hard to resist the temptation to decry coverage you don’t like as resulting from a desire to sell advertising or subscriptions or curry favor with donors. Few things anger reporters and editors more, especially because the accusations are quite unlikely to be true. When business pressures to behave this way occur, journalists have been known to quit, sometimes noisily.