Can News Be Made Into a Sustainable Business?

This article is part of our special section on the DealBook Summit that included business and policy leaders from around the world.

Moderator: Marc Lacey, managing editor, The New York Times. Participants: Sarah Alvarez, editor in chief, Outlier Media; Edward Felsenthal, editor in chief and executive chairman, Time; Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief, The Atlantic; Errin Haines, editor at large, The 19th; Stephen Hayes, chief executive and editor, The Dispatch; Sara Just, senior executive producer, “PBS NewsHour”; William Kristol, director, The Bulwark; David Remnick, editor, The New Yorker; Danielle Weisberg, co-founder and co-chief executive, theSkimm; Lauren Williams, chief executive and co-founder, Capital B.

“The media” pops up on your smartphone and is thrown onto your front porch. It is transmitted on television sets and is featured in glossy magazines. It’s so varied in so many ways but is similar in one respect: Many Americans don’t trust it.

According to a recent Gallup poll, trust in mass media has hit a near record low: Only 34 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media, while 38 percent of Americans have none at all.

There is, however, a stark partisan divide: A robust 70 percent of Democrats trust the media, while just 27 percent of independents and a mere 14 percent of Republicans say the same.

In a discussion led by Marc Lacey, managing editor of The New York Times, a group of news media leaders gathered at a DealBook conference in New York last week to discuss not only the state of their business but their ever-evolving relationship with the politically divided public they serve.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/dealbook/media-business-model.html