How to save the news business

There may be a way to save journalism after all.

I realized this the other day after reading that Party City Holdco was closing all its stores because it was losing too much money. This was preceded by similar stories about Big Lots and The Container Store.

Just like news outlets, specialized businesses are not doing well.

What is doing well?

Extremely unspecialized businesses like Walmart and Amazon.

Now consider The New York Times. It’s one of the few major news outlets that’s doing just fine. Good reporting is part of the reason, but if you subscribe, you also get games, The Athletic, recipes, podcasts, product reviews, restaurant reviews, movie reviews and a whole lot of opinions.

It’s the Walmart/Amazon of the news business.

When you think about it, you realize that journalism has always been financed by non-journalism. When I started in the business an extremely long time ago, classified ads, not readers, paid most of my salary (such as it was). The internet stole the classifieds and other advertising, so newspapers need something else.

The answer, clearly, is finding a variety of other stuff to sell.

The NYT is a great example, but there are all sorts of alternatives.

For example, imagine the audience for a package subscription to, say, the Los Angeles Times and OnlyFans. Reporters could expose corruption and then expose themselves.

Or how about a news outlet that offers monthly chocolate and cheese boxes?

How about comedy news? There’s no reason news has to be serious. Yeah, there are wars, and hurricanes and famine and crime, but is that a reason to be glum? If you want people to pay attention to what’s going on, you need to lighten up.

There are lots of people out there — maybe you’re one of them since you’re reading this — who get their news from outlets like The Daily Show or The Late Show. There’s an audience out there that will tune in for entertainment and enlightenment.

Or, say, Chicago Tribune Prime — you get free delivery and access to movies and exciting original programming. With some clever writing, you could even include some educational news analysis in an addictive soap opera.

The possibilities are endless.

(Side hopeful note: Journalism may have a decent shot at winning the Kentucky Derby this year.)

Holiday jeer. Hope you all had a great holiday. I want to say Happy New Year but I don’t really mean it.

New Year’s Eve/Day has always been my least favorite holiday. I don’t understand why it’s a holiday at all. All we’re doing is changing calendars. Nothing else changes. There are no clean slates.

I’ve tried to get into the spirit of the thing, but it never seems to work. I always seem to have a disappointing experience. There was even one year in a Chicago neighborhood that I waited with a crowd for the countdown — and then nothing happened. I don’t think there was a new year that year.

And then there was the year I spent the so-called holiday in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Don’t ask. I don’t want to have to remember.

Worst of all, there are no New Year’s presents.

So bah humbug New Year — but I hope you have a good time, if you can.