• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 26, 2024

You may not want to relive it, but with only days to go in 2024, it’s time to review what happened in publishing. 

There was plenty of bad news. On the world front, journalists were jailed and killed in shocking numbers. 

In the last few days alone, we have heard about two Haitian journalists being gunned down and five reporters killed in Gaza.  

The Guardian reports that 104 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024, more than half in Palestine. This is a dangerous profession.  

Then there are the institutional issues here at home. President Joe Biden pointed out in an interview that billionaires are buying newspapers.

These apparently include Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong who controls the Los Angeles Times. But many local periodicals are also owned by hedge funds and other such entities. Their game is cost control, often through layoffs.  

Strangely, the Gannetts and Alden Global Capitals may be better equipped to fight lawsuits against reporters and newspapers from other attacks on the First Amendment. Give them credit for that, although they’re also careful to not offend anyone by endorsing political candidates.

Also affecting publishers are the technocrats who run outfits like OpenAI and Perplexity. Both cut numerous deals with news organizations to license their content for use in building large language models. 

These companies, neither of which yet seems to be an unqualified success, carry disproportional weight in the technological opinion market. And while many publishers have signed deals with them, some haven’t, and this has contributed to a full court docket.  

Overall, sales seemed flat in 2024, especially on the print front. And news deserts abound. 

On top of all that, there was the sheer buffoonery accompanying the control of Sports Illustrated, and the question of whether The Onion can acquire Alex Jones’ Infowars. Then there are the often futile attempts to use generativeAI.  

As for layoffs, there were several mass firings that hurt people on both the editorial and business sides. 

Is there any hope? 

Some. For instance, journalists are putting their lives and careers on the line to get the truth out. And by striking (or threatening to), many news staffs have won labor contracts after years of fruitless negotiating.   

Nonprofits are also stepping up to battle the spread of news deserts, but they have a long way to go.  

On another front, programmatic technology has streamlined the advertising market.  

It’s still a glorious business.