Originally, newspapers were very profitable, because they were the only mass media other than books. As representative democracy emerged in the UK, they became very politically significant, and so politicians were eager to hand out viscountcies to anyone who owned a paper in order to curry editorial favour. The legacy of this is that there are now too many national newspapers in the UK, and so they all - even the supposedly sober broadsheets - feel a need to sensationalise their reporting to attract and hold paying readers.

▲

gruez a day ago | parent | next [-]

>The legacy of this is that there are now too many national newspapers in the UK, and so they all - even the supposedly sober broadsheets - feel a need to sensationalise their reporting to attract and hold paying readers.

This doesn't feel like a good explanation. Don't all newspapers want to increase their readership numbers?

▲

cjs_ac a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, but all the British newspapers are loss-making. You don't take ownership of one to make money, you buy one to buy political influence.

▲

gruez a day ago | parent [-]

How does that change the reporting compared to newspapers that exist solely to make money? In other words, what's the difference between

"sensationalise their reporting to attract and hold paying readers [so you can buy political influence]" (UK)

and

"sensationalise their reporting to attract and hold paying readers [so you can make money off subscriptions/ads]" (US)

	▲	cjs_ac a day ago \| parent [-]
		Desperation, and consequently, the extent of sensationalisation.

▲

lo_zamoyski a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Originally, newspapers were very profitable

That’s news to me. And without advertising, sales and subscriptions have never covered the cost, and advertising has a strong effect on what is published, or more often, what is not. Belloc describes this in his book “The Free Press” [0].

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18018