Is it possible to make journalism pay? The question has loomed over a miserable few days for news organisations, with hundreds of journalists losing their jobs at BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and Gannett — the newspaper group that owns USA Today. The prosperous online future that was supposed to save a once-profitable industry has not materialised, and highly valued digital upstarts have proved to be worth substantially less than thought.
There are bright spots. Appetite for news remains healthy: ask anyone who has devoured coverage about the latest Brexit negotiations or the travails of Donald Trump. The quality of investigative reporting on these sagas bears comparison with the best journalism of recent decades.
Yet despite the journalistic achievements of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, which is owned by Verizon, the US telecoms group, their struggles show that companies dependent on digital advertising are on shaky ground.