When Tycoons Own the Press

Guest: Rodney Benson, PhD, Department Chair, Professor, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University  The story of journalism’s financial decline is no longer front page news. It’s just a fact of life. Many national magazines and newspapers are now digital-only, because the web is where the ad money is these days. Local papers are laying off reporters, merging or closing shop. So when a billionaire like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post or Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs becomes a majority owner of “The Atlantic” magazine, hooray for the press! At least someone is willing to invest in journalism, right? Well, maybe.