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Take the profit motive out of news
The recent Washington Post debacle of attempting to sell access to political elites via "salons" at the home of the paper's publisher offers a startling glimpse at how low commercial media have stooped. Yet we shouldn't be surprised. This is what happens when commercial news organisations are desperate for increasingly elusive profits. Such machinations will likely only get worse.
As newspaper revenue and circulation plummets, the commercial press grasps for creative new ways to turn a buck. Many papers have begun running ads on their front pages–a space once deemed off-limits–most egregiously exemplified by the Los Angeles Times running one indistinguishable from a news story. Other papers are laying off reporters and editors, dismantling foreign and statehouse bureaus or literally shrinking the size of their publications to stay afloat. And others have simply closed the doors forever.
How bad do things have to get before we recognise the need for a structural overhaul of our media system?