A Newsroom Subsidized? Minds Reel

[Commentary] We're facing a paperless recovery wherein old-line content companies need to continue to slash in order to stay ahead of what looks to be a broad secular decline. Former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr and Michael Schudson, a professor at the Columbia University Journalism School, were commissioned by Nicholas B. Lemann, the dean of the journalism school, to write a report on the future of news and the newsroom. It was Mr. Downie who came up with the insight a few years back that the most important fight is not for newspapers, but for the newsrooms they support. The report's title, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," telegraphs its sober intent, a realpolitik way of thinking that is reflected in the opening words of the report: "Fewer journalists are reporting less news in fewer pages, and the hegemony that near-monopoly metropolitan newspapers enjoyed during the last third of the 20th century, even as their primary audience eroded, is ending." In other words, the current advertising model won't continue to support so-called accountability journalism.