Lesson from a Low-Margin Industry

A recent piece in Puck by Dylan Byers comments on an essay by veteran journalist Norm Pearlstine in the Columbia Journalism Review, which criticizes billionaire media owners like Jeff Bezos (The Washington Post) and Patrick Soon-Shiong (The Los Angeles Times) for their apparent accommodation of American President-Elect Donald Trump, and Mark Zuckerberg for his seeming rightward turn at Meta. The essay, which received supportive responses from other industry veterans, argues that billionaires have proven to be poor stewards of media and that journalists must work harder to expose threats to democracy.  

The article then delves deeper into the current state of the Post, examining how its business model and editorial direction have changed under Bezos and new CEO Will Lewis. It notes that while many industry veterans are concerned about these changes, which include staff layoffs and the departure of prominent journalists, the real threat to journalism may not be political accommodation but rather the declining business models of legacy media organizations. The piece concludes by questioning whether billionaire ownership, despite its drawbacks, might be the only viable model for supporting journalism at present, as these wealthy owners can sustain years of losses while the industry adapts to changing times. 

Are there parallels here for the not-for-profit education sector? To paraphrase the Pearlstine quote repeated by Jonathan Kaufman in Byer's article, maybe we need to choose our billionaires donors wisely, too.