Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek says he and (at least some) of his colleagues have changed their old perceptions of the news business:
[M]ostly we blissfully ignored the proposition that newspapers aimed to make money. We condescendingly thought that the moneymaking people?advertising salesmen, managers?toiled so that we could pursue our higher purpose, which was to inform the public. We were snobs.
Disabused of those notions, Samuelson notes, traditional media outlets still complain about the changing world:
What I think is occurring is that we news types are mourning our lost autonomy and power. We’re angry that, like everyone else, we’re subject to business and financial pressures.
Whenever you have to allocate scarce resources with alternative uses, that pesky economics is bound to rear its ugly head.
