Abstract

The business of journalism is an uncomfortable subject for many journalists and one they prefer to disregard whenever possible. Because the news industry enjoyed a rising tide of funding as advertising expenditures increased decade-by-decade during in the twentieth century, the question of how journalism could be funded did not arise for them, allowing most journalists to ignore the business aspects of news provision. The swelling revenue from advertising allowed journalists to disregard the fact that the news they produced was also being sold to consumers in a market transaction, but that its price was well below the cost of gathering, preparing, copying, and distributing the news product. Considered in revenue terms, the primary business of newspaper publishing in the twentieth century was advertising not news.