One argument is that pre-internet, journalists had a more reliable source of revenue, enabling them to do more investigative work, and the business model shift to online advertising meant they'd now have to produce popular pieces more frequently.

Throughout the 2000s media was still in some significant sense balkanized. People did not just consume stories, they visited story sources, and the sources were numerous. Everything from trusted websites associated with legacy media institutions like the New York Times to popular aggregators like Drudge and blogs like the Huffington Post thrived,... See more

Last year, the Guardian ran an entire advertising campaign with the tag line ‘Not For Sale’. It put up billboards in the streets pointing out it was ‘reader funded not billionaire backed’.

So, why would it seek to sell off a huge chunk of the organisation and 70+ journalists….to a financially precarious start-up financed by a bunch of VCs and... See more