Newspapers missed chances to slow their decline

Originally written December 2010, updated September 2025, with additional context added January 2026.

In Costly Mistakes for the American Journalism Review, former newspaper reporter turned industry analyst John Morton argues that many of the steps U.S. publishers took to counter falling advertising revenues in the run-up to the recession only made things worse. His analysis is sharp and remains a must-read for anyone following the newspaper industry.

High margins, short horizons

Morton points out that corporate publishers demanded margins of 20 percent or more from their papers. This was unsustainable. The pursuit of these returns meant cutting the very things that made newspapers valuable—experienced staff, institutional knowledge, deep local coverage.

Family-owned papers had traditionally worked on closer to 10 percent margins, still a healthy return that brought owners influence and prestige along with profit. Owning a paper was lucrative, but the greater rewards were power and status.

Corporations, however, chased higher returns. To keep margins fat, they cut investment and hollowed out editorial quality. By the time the internet arrived, publishers assumed they could leverage their media assets into digital businesses and keep the money flowing.

They were wrong. The technology solutions publishers hoped for—the iPad, apps, digital editions—never materialised as saviors.

Online struggles

As print declined, newspapers looked to the web for salvation. But online performance lagged badly. Research from NAA Nielsen found U.S. newspapers accounted for less than one percent of the time users spent online.

While huge numbers of readers visited newspaper websites, few stayed long or read deeply. Publishers struggled to understand that digital and print required different approaches, not just digital versions of print strategies.

Writing for Nieman Journalism Lab, Martin Langeveld said publishers needed to grow their online market share rather than erecting barriers. He argued that paywalls and fights with aggregators risked driving audiences away, further shrinking relevance.

Paying for loyalty

Paywalls may strengthen ties with a small core of loyal readers, but at the cost of scale. The risk is that newspapers swap mass reach for narrow influence, losing their role as central public forums.

The industry’s obsession with margins in print and its missteps online meant publishers missed opportunities to adapt. By prioritising short-term profit over long-term sustainability, newspapers undermined both their business model and their place in society.

What could have worked differently

Looking back from 2026, some alternative paths become clear:

Build reader relationships early: Publishers who invested in email newsletters, membership models and direct reader engagement in the early 2000s—before social media dominated—built sustainable audiences. Those who learned to use journalism tools to build communities fared better than those who treated websites as digital print editions.

Invest in quality over scale: The papers that survived weren't those with the highest traffic, but those with the most devoted readers. Language mattered too—publishers who talked about "subscriptions" and "membership" rather than "paywalls" built better relationships.

Preserve institutional knowledge: Cutting newspaper librarians and experienced staff seemed like smart cost-cutting. It proved disastrous. New reporters couldn't learn from veterans and investigative capacity evaporated.

Avoid the subscription trap alone: Subscription models worked for elite publications but created a second digital divide. A mix of approaches—freemium, micropayments, memberships—might have served democracy better.

None of these guaranteed survival, but they offered better odds than chasing unsustainable margins while hollowing out the product.

The loss of control wasn't just about business model failures. As newspapers struggled, tech platforms like Google and Facebook became the primary distributors of news, treating journalism as content to drive engagement rather than as a public service.

This shift fundamentally changed who controls what news people see and how they see it. Meanwhile, local journalism withered in many markets, and ad-blocking further undermined remaining revenue streams.

More on journalism and media:

This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, industry decline and missed opportunities:

• Digital subscription spending hits the wall
• Why I'm a technology and business writer, not a geek
• Journalists too mean to tech companies
• Old school journalism writing habits are powerful tools
• IndieWeb offers independence to journalists
• Does online media fill the gap left by newspapers