The problem, however, is that news

The problem, however, is that news and information goods that lack effective
commercial demand will be underproduced in the media marketplace— unless
they are subsidized by advertising or some other form of subsidy (e.g. public
license fees for the BBC, access to spectrum and public rights-of-way, copyright).
The advertising-for-journalism quid pro quo has always been the bastard child
of free press theories because it expects commercial media to take on responsibilities
that they are ill-equipped, and often unwilling, to do, not least because by law ,
if not just by the laws of capitalism, they must maximize shareholder pro! ts
(Baker 2007: 100–21; Curran and Seaton 2003: 345–62; McChesney 2008).
McChesney and Nichols (2010) argue that the advertising-for-journalism model,
while always a thin reed to begin with, is on the verge of collapse as internet
companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Craigslist, and so on pick apart advertising
functions from news and journalism functions. The migration of advertising
revenue to the internet, coupled with the fact that companies such as Google
and Yahoo! create little original content of their own, means that the engine
of journalism in the United States is being gutted with no adequate replacement in sight. Add to this the unfolding of the global ! nancial crisis since 2007–8,
and these blows could be fatal (cf. Davis 2009; OECD 2010; Scherer 2010;
United Kingdom, House of Lords, Select Committee on Communications 2008
for related concerns in Europe and the United Kingdom).