Freedom of the press for those who own one (or a search engine or a social network)

A renowned media critic sounded the alarm in 1960 about corporate takeovers of newspapers and layoffs of hundreds of journalists. He worried that the power of the press was being concentrated in too few hands.

Liebling, from Slate.com

(Versión en español)

It was in his column in the New Yorker, The Wayward Press, that A.J. Liebling tossed off one of his most memorable lines in a parenthetical aside:

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" (New Yorker, May 14, 1960, p. 109, paywall). 

What is still true today is that corporate owners of newspapers are focused on maintaining their profit margins and are laying off journalists to do so. The newspaper and magazine industries have lost 54,000 journalism jobs since 2003.

But it is no longer true that newspapers monopolize production and distribution of news. The Internet has given everyone with a computer and Internet access their own printing press. You do not have to be a mogul to publish your opinions. The big question is can you get anyone to listen.

How I ran my newspaper monopoly (and Warren Buffett ran his)

Back in the 1960s, before baseball had a designated hitter, I had a paper route. This was a job formerly given to 12-year-olds but now has been taken over by adults.

It was a measure of the daily newspaper's market dominance that a kid who wanted a paper route had to buy it from another kid. Having a paper route was the pre-teen equivalent of owning an NFL franchise, an enviably profitable protected monopoly. Mine was a particular block on a particular street. The price to buy it was equal to one week's collections -- in my case about $40.

In the grand old days of newspaper monopolies, people had only a few places they could get the news -- either a daily newspaper, the nightly TV news or radio. If you wanted to know if the local major league team won and hadn't listened to the game on the radio, you had to stay up till 11 o'clock and wait until the announcer gave the score. Or you waited until the next morning's newspaper arrived.