Book Review - The Men Who Killed the News
📖 Another book review – The Men Who Killed the News 🤓
To be honest, a lot of it went over my head 🫠
Eric Beecher packs the book with deep historical context and industry insight. He’s clearly a sharp, experienced journalist with decades in the field, which made it a challenge for me to absorb all the detail. He covers 150+ years of (mostly Western) media history and weaves in some wild stories, like getting sued by Lachlan Murdoch, or the time a plane crash was buried because “Don’t you know we own half an airline?”. It’s a very interesting insight into the workings of a newsroom.
To help myself grasp the bigger picture, I (the bot and I) built a few simple visualisations:
📊 Timeline – hard to believe The New York Times was founded in 1851.
📊 Ownership – a quick look at who owns what.
📊 Audience size – stark contrast between traditional and new media platforms.
Beyond the drama and power plays involving political leaders, Beecher makes a strong case that the news business model is broken and is undergoing massive change.
The following quote perhaps demonstrates the business model of the news industry for the last century.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” - John Wanamaker
Which isn’t the problem anymore with digital media. The last chart says it all: platforms like Facebook and Instagram now dominate attention and distribution, vastly outpacing traditional outlets in audience size. That’s how many people get their “news” today.
A lot more freedom and choice is given to the reader today. But with freedom, comes … responsibility 🕷️ And trustable journalism needs to continue to evolve and find ways to fund itself.
Eric also delves deeper philosophical dilemma: what is objective journalism and how do to it ethically in a system where commercial incentives often pull in the opposite direction? And in what cases do the means justify the end? The individuals and the industry as a whole is constantly wrestling with these trade-offs.
🔧 Btw, the visualisation isn’t meant to be comprehensive. So got suggestions? Spot an error? Want to add an outlet? Feel free to open an issue or make a pull request 😄
🖱️ You can play around with it here