Readers will always read, news junkies will always discover and especially read news. Reading is faster than broadcasting, so there will always be a market for news delivered via text. However, this reality does not guarantee that any platform will gain subscriber loyalty.

“Journalism is a craft, not a profession,” the late Michael Kelly often said in his happy years when he was a weekly guest on my radio show. Kelly, like any American journalist of his generation, worked for new york timesThe Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Michael was killed in April 2003 while covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq. His point is that anyone can be a “journalist” because American journalism does not require a license like professions like medicine and law. Get paid to “be a journalist”—that’s the trick, and as the Internet exploded, so did the opportunities for a career in this industry.

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Unlike the rest of the world, this craft survives and thrives in the United States because first amendment. The constant, never-ending creative destruction of capitalism (thank you Joseph Schumpeter for this quote) is a constant companion in every industry, including journalism. The rise and fall of news platforms is particularly strong under the constitutional guarantee of press freedom. As federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ended, there was little “national” media left, but the vast media landscape and the “news media” within it continued to expand.

after the incident Washington Post slashes layoffscomments about the decline or even demise of newspapers surged again. But if you’re reading this, you’ll know that it was brought to your attention through means other than a traditional newspaper subscription. In one sentence, this is the dilemma facing traditional “news” and indeed any written product for which readers must pay: there is so much “free” content that high-overhead text products that rely on subscriptions have a hard time succeeding. And by “successful” I mean at least breaking even.

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Since my days as a broadcast and print journalist—from my first hire as a newspaper writer in 1979 to my first radio broadcast in 1990—I have been critical of the liberal and left-wing bias of traditional media. I try to do this without attacking former employers or co-workers. Therefore, this column is not specifically about The Washington Post, so I write a column From February 2017 to October 2024.

Wednesday, January 14, 2026, at The Washington Post Headquarters in Washington, DC. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg)

Fred Hiatt, the late Washington Post editorial page editor who hired me, was a great editor and person, as were Ruth Marcus and David Shipley, who took turns overseeing the Opinion page after Fred’s death. All three proved to be great people to work with and work with, as did all of my editors at the paper.

However, after I left the Washington Post, I also stopped subscribing to it. This is just a statement of fact. Over the past five years I have also stopped subscribing to the UK’s Telegraph and Financial Times, as well as the New York Times and most subscription products that existed in newspaper form 20 years ago, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal. cleveland.com. (The Wall Street Journal is owned by Fox News Media’s sister company, News Corp.)

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The magazine has outstanding coverage of every major story covered by traditional media and cleveland.com Super service to any fan cleveland brownsCavaliers and Guardians, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Second subscription to ‘legacy platform’ (former Cleveland Plain Dealer) raises a key point: Sports Editor cleveland.comDavid Campbell has done an outstanding job developing an absolutely vital revenue driver for any previous ‘regional newspaper’ which required a broad fan base to satisfy its sports obsession and was actually more closely associated with sports addiction. For just a few dollars more, or a quick ad or two for free, podcast and text options can provide a research model for any struggling paper.

In the wake of massive layoffs at The Washington Post, comments about the newspaper’s decline or even death have surged again. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

Campbell put Cleveland’s dean of sports analytics, Terry Pluto, to work with a dozen seasoned veteran reporters now starting the podcast, while developing a new generation of reporters to serve each team’s “vertical.” I think, but I don’t know, that successful platforms in every sports-rich region have done something similar to keep a lot of journalists working outside of the sports department.

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I held up the sports pages of the Wall Street Journal and The Athletic cleveland.com Model as primarily text-based products that rely on subscription revenue but compete for readers’ eyeballs with high-quality non-subscription text and audio-visual content.

Quality is most important, but niche readers are super served, especially in the following areas Sports news and viewsfollowed closely. In this age of free information, the filtering that started with the rise of internet-based blogs, then internet-based newsletters without the sunk costs of traditional platforms, and then substacks and podcasts, will inevitably take a toll on each of the traditional platforms that owe their origins and traditional audiences to now-extinct quasi-monopolies and continued dependence on subscription revenue.

Writers and reporters can still get paid for writing and reporting. Andrew Sullivan – Arguably the most influential journalist of the past 50 years for his ongoing efforts to persuade the establishment of same-sex marriage while also pioneering its independent institution, Single author subscription model ——No longer alone among writers, reporters, and columnists who work for themselves. In fact, there are now many such journalists. But they have to serve their readers or the revenue disappears.

Journals and subscription sites that thrive or arrive in this era are best served by a commitment to quality and super service in their niche. Signatures have long been a brand, and having some of them can be very useful. New platforms that thrive and old ones that survive must win over subscribers at least annually. They cannot alienate or drive away readers. This is just business.

An abundance of “freedom and goodness” is fatal to “unfreedom, no matter how good”—certainly to “unfreedom and superfluity,” or worse, “unfreedom and badness.” Free beats aren’t free every time, just like high-quality beats.

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Text-only platforms remain abundant, and news delivery platforms are diverse. The number of working journalists has probably increased since the advent of the web. Merriam-Webster’s main definition of a journalist is broad—”a person employed to collect, write, or report news for a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television”—but not broad enough. Cutting out the second half to make the definition popular: Anyone employed to collect, write, or report news is a journalist, even if directly employed by readers or viewers.

At least in America, the golden age of journalism has begun: zero gatekeepers.

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor andThe Hugh Hewitt Show“Listen from 3 to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and on the West Coast for lunch at more than 400 affiliates across the country and on all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a regular guest on the Fox News Channel News Roundtable, moderated by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 PM ET. He is a son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard University and Hewitt has been a professor at the University of Michigan Law School since 1996 He has been a law professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared regularly on major national news television networks, has written for major U.S. newspapers, written more than a dozen books and moderated dozens of Republican candidate debates, most recently the 2023 Miami Republican Presidential Debate and the 2015-16 The cycle’s four Republican presidential debates focused on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and the Guardian. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests during his 40-year broadcasting career, from Democrat Hillary Clinton to Republican presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

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