The JJW Blog

That testimony is worth reading in its entirety. But here is what editors refer to as “the nut graf”—the section that explains the point of the broader story:

Wall Street and free-market logic, having been a destructive force in journalism over the last few decades, are not now suddenly the answer. Raw, unencumbered capitalism is never the answer when a public trust or public mission is at issue. If the last quarter century has taught us anything—and admittedly, with too many of us, I doubt it has—it’s that free-market capitalism, absent social imperatives and responsible regulatory oversight, can produce durable goods and services, glorious profits, and little of lasting social value. Airlines, manufacturing, banking, real estate—is there a sector of the American economy where laissez-faire theories have not burned the poor, the middle class and the consumer, while bloating the rich and mortgaging the very future of the industry, if not the country itself? I’m pressed to think of one.

There will be time for the debate about solutions. For now, it is not just useful but necessary to be clear about the cause of the crisis in American journalism. On this point, what Simon says is spot on.

It wasn’t the Internet.

It wasn’t the current economic downtown.

It was a lousy newspaper ownership model that saw civic and democratic values replaced by the rapacious greed and commercial calculations of big media companies.