Can the Media Survive? Big tech, feckless owners, cord-cutters, restive staff, smaller audiences … and the return of print?
When this magazine revived the annual “Power Issue” last year, we assembled a list of secretly powerful New Yorkers in an effort to explain how the city actually works. This year, we were curious to understand how the news media is surviving in a time of imploding business models and record public distrust. We gathered 57 of the most powerful people in media — and rather than simply anoint them, we put them to work. What follows is a tour through the state of journalism, assembled from dozens of hours of extremely candid conversations.
Some executives we spoke to are in the business of keeping legacy institutions like the New York Times or the Washington Post viable; some are trying to build new media companies like Puck, The Ankler, or The Free Press; some are sole proprietors of their own brands via newsletters or audio. We focused largely on the news media: the organizations and individuals responsible for producing and distributing information to the public, whether it concerns politics or fashion or sports. And because news organizations are obviously no longer the only places — or, in some cases, even the main places — people get their news today, we didn’t look just at traditional news outlets. We also included people like Neal Mohan, head of YouTube, the platform where zoomers are increasingly likely to get their news, and Lauren Kern, head of Apple News, essentially the world’s largest newsstand.