Gavin Ellis' lecture notes for the 'University of Auckland Winter Lectures 2010: The End(s) of Journalism?'
Imagine the scene: The placards proclaim The End of Journalism is Nigh and on the flipside they say it is too late to repent because serious journalism has already gone to hell.
Now stop imagining: Predictions of the demise of newspapers and the replacement of professional journalists by legions of empowered amateurs are exaggerated. They may also be avoidable.
The use of electronic readers such as the Kobo, Kindle or the iPad - for which the head of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch is an ebullient supporter (The Australian, Wall Street Journal and The Times are already available as iPad 'apps') - will be infectious. Over time we could see their use grow to the point where weekday edition of newspapers, plus many weekly magazines, are available only for digital readers. The weekend will become the preserve of printed newspaper edition. This growth will provide a subscription revenue base that is likely to be more acceptable than website pay walls, and it will offer huge savings in printing & distribution costs.
This is part of the reason why Rupert Murdoch continues to support the journalistic side of his widespread operations (there is also an element of sentimental attachment to newspapers). He sees a future for journalism delivered in new ways. "People are prepared to pay for high quality content, " he told an Australian-sponsored media and marketing breakfast earlier this month, "so long as we deliver it how and when they want it."
Leaving aside the darker aspects of Murdoch's power to influence and the gross excesses of Fox News, he honours his commitment to support his newspapers and The Australian, Wall Street Journal and The Times produce quality journalism. So, too, do other groups.
However, while the diversity of News Corporation and its annual revenue of around $US30 billion provides a degree of security for Rupert Murdoch, other newspaper groups are experiencing conditions that suggest the prophecies of doom are not without some substance.
The recession and the impact of the Internet on newspaper classified advertising are real, but countries do move out of recession and future developments in digital media offer opportunities for news media companies to build new subscription models. Yet this will not solve newspapers' problems. There are deep-seated faults that became embedded before either the Internet or the recession hit the industry. Many of these characteristics have also affected commercial broadcasting but they are most pronounced in newspaper companies.
They began, ironically, because newspapers became highly profitable. The four decades after the Second World War were golden years. Daily circulations were on a seemingly endless upward trajectory in Britain, North America, and Australia.
American combined circulations grew from 54 million to 60 million between 1950 and 1964 and, with some ups-and-downs during recessions, remained above 60 million for 30 years.
In New Zealand combined daily circulations jumped from 785,000 in 1957 to almost a million a decade later.
Advertising revenue displayed similar upward paths, with only minor recessionary blips. Between 1950 and 2000 print advertising revenue in the United States increased by 2251% and similar patterns in newspaper advertising growth were seen elsewhere.
The upward trajectories produced enviable cash flow and profits that attracted the attention of the share market. Stock exchange listing became an attractive proposition for owners who wanted to unlock some of this newfound wealth. Investors were attracted by promise of organic growth and very high profit margins as computer technology replaced manual production.
Profit margins of more than 20 per cent - and in one case as much as 40 per cent - became common, fuelling high shareholder expectations and outstripping many larger listed companies.
Equity raising also allowed newspaper companies to begin to grow by acquiring other publications. In 1930 there were almost 2000 daily newspapers in the United States and only 16% of them were held in chain ownership. The number of independently owned titles began to diminish as rapidly as the fortunes of the industry grew.
By the 1990s, 77% of the nation's newspapers had been consolidated into a diminishing number of increasingly powerful groups. In Britain, nine multinationals bought 200 newspapers between 1969 and 1986. Three-quarters of newspapers were chain-owned in Canada by 1980 and in New Zealand by 1985. By 1989 Rupert Murdoch's News Limited controlled 70% of Australia's total metropolitan circulation.
Then circulation began to slide. U.S. daily newspaper circulation in 1993 dipped below 60 million for the first time in 30 years, which marked the beginning of a year-on-year decline that continued unabated and which began to accelerate in the new millennium. There was a similar trend in Britain, and Australia. Likewise, New Zealand daily totals fell from the 1985 high of 1.06 million to 727,000 in 2005 -well below 1957's level.
In order to offset these declines, and to meet the demands of shareholders, newspaper-owning companies capitalised on their position - many were monopolies or duopolies - in print advertising. Newspapers continued to increase their advertising charges even though they delivered fewer potential customers, creating a service gap that would return to haunt them as alternative media became available.
You can see what I mean. An aggregation of the circulation and advertising revenue figures for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand shows that there has been a growing gap: declining sales and growing ad revenue.
Publishers produce readership - rather than circulation figures - to justify increased ad rates but these statistics are telling. Ireland was the only exception to the rule. In every other case, circulation dropped but ad revenue grew.
Year-on-year growth was vital in order to satisfy share market analysts and shareholders. The scale of acquisition grew, with larger and larger groups being absorbed to create even bigger fish. The reason: news media groups were operating in mature markets and saw little choice but to acquire the existing revenue streams of other groups ... rather than try to invest in elusive organic market growth. They trusted that size would bring with it a form of protection and were prepared to borrow huge amounts of money to finance acquisitions for which they paid inflated sums.
These large-scale takeovers occurred at a time when media stock prices were high and the expectation of shareholders in companies on the selling block was equally elevated. As a result, there was a gap between what was paid for a company and what it returned in profits. The most extreme case was arguably Rupert Murdoch's purchase of Dow Jones and its Wall Street Journal. News Corporation paid $US5 billion for a company with an operating income of $US100 million, although Murdoch would argue that it could - and would - be made more profitable.
The emphasis on growth and the bottom line was enhanced by the widespread practice of 'incentivising' senior executives. Bonuses were based on profit margins and year-on-year growth - both of which encouraged expansion and rigorous cost- containment.
Debt burdens grew alarmingly. By the middle of the present decade two of North America's largest 'acquirers', McClatchy and CanWest, had total debts of more than $US3 billion and $US3.5 billion respectively. The Australian group Fairfax Media, publisher of the Dominion-Post and Sunday Star-Times, had debts that tipped $US2 billion. Independent News & Media, the Dublin-based largest shareholder in APN (which publishes the New Zealand Herald) had debts that also peaked at over $US2 billion. APN's own debt peaked at about $US800 million.
The problem was that publishers thought they could escape gravity and assume that what went up did not come down. They practised a form of rocket science that was fuelled by year-on-year double-digit profit rises and a belief that acquisition meant the same thing as revenue growth. They believed it was a matter of expand or die. And the newspaper industry was stunned by the fact that business was getting better in spite of circulation's slow decline. Alex Jones, in a book published last year called Losing the News (1), said that for many newspaper publishers "...it has been like standing on the streets of Pompeii watching in trancelike denial as Vesuvius belched smoke before erupting."
Then came the worst international financial recession since the Great Depression and the ash began to fall.
United States newspaper advertising revenue fell by an estimated 43% between 2007 and 2009 and Britain, Canada and Australasia reported declines of more than 20%.
The international newspaper printing and publishing industry organisation WAN-IFRA reported that the global advertising market in 2009 shrank by almost 10% (2).
American media company profit margins that had averaged around 20% in 2005 dropped to an estimated 5.6% this year - if they made a profit at all. Six American newspaper publishers - including the publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times - filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. So, too, did Canada's largest media company, CanWest (former owner of New Zealand's MediaWorks). Eleven U.S. metropolitan dailies and more than 50 British regional newspapers closed, and the share price of Australian media companies (which control the bulk of our news media) fell by an average of 50% in 2008 alone.
The cost cutting saw many editorial budgets slashed to the bone. Newsrooms found that company accountants, who had been making their presence felt for more than a decade, had become sabre-wielding hussars. The picture was the same wherever one looked. In the United States, total newspaper employment has dropped to 1949 levels. The 2010 American State of the News Media report (3) estimated that the number of reporting and editing positions on American papers dropped by 27 per cent between 2007 and 2009. In Britain one group alone shed 2500 staff. In New Zealand, Fairfax, APN, TVNZ and MediaWorks cut staff including journalists. In Australia the number of fulltime journalists is estimated to have declined by 13 per cent between 2001 and 2008. The effect on journalism has become obvious.
There will be some recovery in advertising as the effects of recession diminish, and we've seen the beginnings of that already. In some markets, newspapers with large circulations will sustain themselves for some time to come. However, it does not signal a return to the good times. Most media companies will have to accept that the news model that sustained high profits and share market attraction has gone and will not return.
Media groups that maintain attractive profitability will do so from their other activities, such as entertainment products, not from news. At best, news media will return very average profit margins that will not make them particularly attractive to investors. For companies whose operations are largely in mainstream news media there will be no return to the market capitalisation they experienced at their peak. Modest profits will not support the continuation of expensive, highly leveraged mergers and acquisitions.
A.J. Liebling - best known for telling us that freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one - also said that the function of the press in society was to inform, but its role was to make money (4). When he made that observation in the 1960s, the two sides were reasonably in balance. The predicament in which the news media had found itself is because function and role are out of equilibrium. The way in which media companies are currently structured virtually requires that the emphasis on the moneymaking role is given precedence...and will continue to be the driving force.
There are a number of options:
* Listed companies could scale back their news operations even further, irrespective of the effect on quality, and move funding to more profitable parts of the business.
* They could try to sell their news outlets or simply close them altogether in favour of more lucrative activities.
* They could, like Rupert Murdoch, continue to subsidise loss-making news operations (to preserve content generation in the hope that digital initiatives will pay off) but this would risk shareholder wrath.
* They could pay down debt and scale back their overall business activities to a more manageable size - but, again, this risks angering shareholders looking for strong dividends.
None of the above augurs well for journalism in general, and serious journalism in particular. Yet society cannot simply allow journalism to wither. Alex Jones, in the book I mentioned earlier, speaks of the essential Iron Core of news. He says:
What goes into this cannonball is the daily aggregation of what is sometimes called "accountability news", because it is the form of news whose purpose is to hold government and those with power accountable. This is fact-based news, sometimes called the "news of verification" as opposed to the "news of assertion" that is mostly on display these days in prime time on cable channels and in blogs...Traditional journalists have long believed that this form of fact-based accountability news is the essential food supply of democracy and that without enough of this healthy nourishment, democracy will weaken, sicken, or even fail.
To my mind, it is self-evident that we would be unwise to leave the future of journalism to chance. It will need to be rethought and we will need to examine (and make provision for) other structures that may be better suited to the preservation of journalistic quality - structures in which the damaging effects of investor pressure and corporate aggrandisement do not play a part.
There are alternatives but we cannot rely on amateurs - even gifted amateurs- or solo professional journalists to carry the torch for serious journalism. I freely acknowledge that so-called citizen journalists and the enhanced information flows delivered by the Internet have a role to play in journalism's future. However, they will do so as adjuncts, not as replacements.
The press has been capable of providing Jones' Iron Core because it has been granted, or has appropriated, the status needed to serve it. It has
* access to information
* the ability to interpret and evaluate it
* and the means by which it can be disseminated to a broad and attentive audience.
The key to its power has been critical mass. Citizen journalists and bloggers lack the critical mass to influence the people whom they might wish to assume a watchdog role. Imagine each Internet contributor as a feather and each journalist as an ounce of lead. Many feathers are required to fill a large, fluffy one-tonne bag; far fewer units of lead are needed to form a one-tonne block. Both weigh the same but, when thrown, the impact of the former is far less than that of the latter.
The greater impact of the press is due to its density - a concentration of resource, content, audience and influence. It is this mass that allows it to assert its power and independence. The Internet, by contrast, has a dispersed structure and is, largely, a multiplicity of 'sole traders'.
We need, therefore, to find ways of preserving professional news organisations that have 'critical mass'.
There are no guarantees of salvation but the most compelling solution lies in formal structures that have high journalistic aims but which recognise the changing nature of the market by having modest profit expectations.
Modest profit is, of course, a clue to the solution not lying in public service broadcasting. Broadcasters like the BBC, ABC and Radio New Zealand are, of course, vital parts of the future of journalism. We need to ensure that they, too, are sustained.
However, there are dangers in placing total reliance on organisations whose financial well-being is in the hands of politicians whose power they are supposed to scrutinise and, if necessary, condemn. In a healthy democracy these public service broadcasters are matched by equally robust organisations in the private sector.
In the future these organisations may need to be sustained not by companies that are hostage to dividend-seeking investors but by organisations governed by trustees whose function is to preserve and promote journalism in the public interest.
There are already well-established examples in the newspaper world.
* The Scott Trust has administered Britain's Guardian since 1936.
* In Ireland, the Irish Times has been in trust ownership since 1974.
* There are several examples in the United States, the largest of which is Florida's Pulitzer-prizewinning St Petersburg Times, which has been controlled by the Poynter Institute since 1978.
* In Canada, Ontario law prevents the Toronto Star from being owned by a trust but its controlling shareholders have elected to ring-fence the newspaper and have operated it under a set of trust-like principles for 50 years.
In each case there is an over-riding imperative to produce good journalism in the interests of the community.
The Irish Times Trust Company's memorandum of association provides a good example of embedded imperatives. It requires the Irish Times to follow an editorial policy that promotes:
* Constitutional democracy expressed through freely-elected government
* Social justice and non-discrimination
* Arts, education, culture and recreation
* Christian values, free from all religious bias and discrimination
* Peace and opposition to all forms of violence and hatred
* International understanding
The memorandum also requires editorial content to be accurate and comprehensive; informed and responsible comment to be identifiable from facts; and that special consideration be given to the representation of minorities.
The Toronto Star operates under a set of six like-minded imperatives that include promoting "the rights of working people".
The St Petersburg Times is operated under what are known as the Poynter Principles - after the institute's founder and former owner of the newspaper, Nelson Poynter, who wrote them long before vesting the paper in the Poynter institute. This is the first principle: "Operating a news publication must be the honoring of a sacred trust. We cannot compromise with the integrity of the news. Neither can we forget that our privilege of freedom under the First Amendment burdens us with a companion responsibility to exercise it fairly, carefully and in the public interest."
In contrast, the Scott Trust's instruction to any incoming editor is to conduct the Guardian "in the future on the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore". It is exquisitely vague but successive editors have been guided by the writings of their most illustrious predecessor, C.P.Scott, who penned such sayings as "comment is free, but facts are sacred", "it is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair" and "nor must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong". The independence of the editor, currently Alan Rusbridger, is guaranteed.
These trusts need to be distinguished from newspaper family trusts - such as those operated by the Sulzberger family that controls the New York Times, the Graham family that controls the Washington Post, and the Harmsworth family that controls Britain's Daily Mail. In each of these cases the family has dedicated itself to preserving a journalistic legacy but the trusts exist essentially to administer family shareholdings. And the family's interests must come first: one day those interests may not be served by a commitment to serious journalism.
Let me come back to Rupert Murdoch to illustrate what I mean. He, too, has established trusts for the offspring of his three marriages but I don't wish to talk about that today because it is a game that has yet to play out. Rather I want to use the example of the Bancroft family who, through a two-tiered share system, controlled Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. The trusts that administered the holdings of various family members was described by Fortune magazine as a "Byzantine web" and the family played little part in the running of the company. They were said to regard it as a "quasi public trust" in which their contribution was ownership without interference. Along came a younger generation that regarded the status quo as counterproductive. Murdoch was able to capitalise on family disunity and, with the lure of a premium of almost 70% on the prevailing share price, bought the company in 2007 (5).
Somewhat prophetically, one of the Bancrofts, in a 1997 interview with New York magazine, said that the family should not be counted on to continue putting the Journal's interests above their own. When asked whether this meant the family might be willing to sell Dow Jones he replied: "Everything has its price" (6). A decade later we knew what that price was.... $US60 a share.
The dedicated media trust has the advantage of a clear commitment to the sustained operation of an organ dedicated to the public interest. It is not a charity - newspapers fall outside the legal definition of 'charitable purpose' - and must operate on commercially efficient lines. Its profits, however, are ploughed back.
For example, the role of the Scott trustees is "To secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to its liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner."
All other activities within the Guardian Media Group are expected to be consistent with the central objective. In other words, its other activities ultimately are there to ensure the future of the Guardian.
For many years the Guardian was sustained by profits from the Manchester Evening News, which was operated on the same profit-making lines as its contemporaries. The recession saw the M.E.N. group sold but the Guardian can turn to other parts of the normally profitable Guardian Media Group for support if it cannot cover its costs. In recessionary times the paper has been struggling with operating losses.
The Irish Times and the St Petersburg Times have also struggled during the recession but so have most other newspapers whose owners must not only cover costs but also return dividends to shareholders. In other words, there is financial pressure on trustee-led newspapers but lower kilopascals.
Like their contemporaries, trust-owned newspapers have been forced to make cuts. This has included cuts to news staff but the charter-like nature of their editorial operations have preserved key elements of coverage. While he has shed staff, the Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, has refused to make compulsory redundancies in the editorial department and has ring-fenced certain editorial operations against cuts.
There are other constraints that have served trust-owned papers. They are debt and risk averse. They are reluctant - and in some case unable - to raise large amounts of debt and their responsibility to maintain the legacy means they will not make high-risk decisions.
As a result, they have not been saddled with the crippling effects of debt servicing that have pitched some otherwise profitable newspapers into the red.
Recall the debt burdens mentioned earlier. In the same period, the Guardian Media Group had borrowed heavily to fund an acquisition but had immediately set about reducing the burden. When the recession struck its debt was only $US98 million. The Irish Times' debt was negligible - only $US5 million in 2008.
These trusts are not perfect. Each has its weaknesses. In the case of the Scott Trust it might be said to be the willingness to sacrifice all else to maintain the Guardian. For example, its stable mate, The Observer, has been a drain on resources and we have yet to see how its future unfolds. The Irish Times Trust was, for a time, dominated by its chairman and, according to an Irish historian, Mark O'Brien, has had other governance issues (7). The St Petersburg Times has a complex relationship with the Poynter Institute because of the latter's status as an educational institution. None, however, can be faulted on its dedication to journalism and editorial independence.
It is, of course, their journalism and independence that is worthy of preservation. If we look briefly at some examples, we can see the contribution that each of these newspapers makes to a democratic society.
The Guardian has a long-standing reputation for robust, liberal political coverage. One of its high-points - the exposure of the cash-for-questions scandal in the 1990s - led to one of the classic television exchanges of all time. Interviewer Jeremy Paxman asked Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger why he had published the front-page headline "A liar and a cheat" in reference to disgraced MP Neil Hamilton. "Because it's true" was Rusbridger's disarming reply.
However, perhaps a less titillating but more apposite example is the way in which the Guardian has combined print and the internet to significantly enhance the public's access to informative and opinion-forming factual information. The Data Blog is an extraordinary asset in understanding public affairs in Britain and abroad. By providing source data in accessible forms it allows citizens to drill down through the news to, for example, assess local impact. The data may relate to the impact of housing or education policy or, as it has done recently, analysed and contextualised the 90,000 pages on documents on the Afghan War.
The Irish Times example is more broadly based. The Dublin newspaper is something of an exemplar in its political coverage, devoting far larger amounts of space than many of its contemporaries. It is, for example, one of a very small number of newspapers that continue to publish long-form accounts of parliamentary debates. Mark O'Brien noted in his account of the newspapers history that "Any list of the stories that shook up Irish society would have a high concentration of Irish Times exclusives on it."
The St Petersburg Times has a similarly strong commitment to coverage of local, state and national politics. It is also innovative. It has initiated a system by which political statements are scrutinised for accuracy. Reporters and researchers analyse the statements and, on the basis of their findings, determine that that statement is true, mostly true, half true, barely true, false or "pants on fire". The last category undoubtedly spells problems for the relevant politician. Politifact also tracks 500 individual promises made by the Obama presidential campaign and periodically updates their status as:
* No action
* In the works
* Stalled
* Promise broken
* Compromise
* Promise kept.
The St Petersburg Times also tests the consistency of public officials' positions, awarding them the status of "no flip", "half flip" and "full flop".
Politifact monitors national politics and political activities in five states. Its state coverage is in conjunction with other newspapers: the Miami Herald (Florida), the Atlanta Constitution-Journal (Georgia), the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Ohio), the Providence Journal (Rhode island), and the Austin American-Statesman (Texas).
The approach may be populist - or American - but Politifact is an excellent example of media scrutiny and public official accountability.
Other newspapers - corporately-owned newspapers - exhibit commendable examples of insightful and important political coverage. The Daily Telegraph's exposure of British MPs expenses is a good example. The three examples I have cited, however, are in fulfilment of a well-embedded and well-understood obligation. Their charters, for that is what their various trust-like statements constitute, require them to provide coverage of this sort.
There are, at present, a very small number of newspapers that operate under such governance. However, they are not the only examples of trust-like news organisations . The latest are start-ups dedicated to investigative journalism. The Center for Investigative Reporting began in California in 1977 [SLIDE8] but the most prominent current example is ProPublica, a Manhattan-based non-profit (philanthropically funded) newsroom with a staff of 32 journalists. It was started in 2008 by a former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Steiger, and often works in collaboration with newspapers. In 2010 it won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. Other investigative units in the United States and, latterly, in Britain, are linked to university journalism schools.
On the horizon is the use of a special type of company structure recognised in a number of U.S. states and which may get federal support.
Called Low-profit Limited Liability Companies or L3Cs, they sit between non-profit and commercial enterprises and receive tax concessions for putting social purposes ahead of profit (8). The L3C is being suggested as an alternative for news media but may require legislative change to make 'the news' a social purpose.
The L3C structure serves two worthwhile purposes. First, it provides a governance structure that is an appropriate recipient of tax concessions that contribute to viability and, secondly, it overcomes potential legal issues associated with establishing media organisations as charitable bodies. Disseminating the news is not a charitable purpose - yet.
The L3C movement is in relative infancy in the United States. That should not diminish the worth of exploring it as a governance model elsewhere. We could see its use spread. But could we see L3Cs and media trusts in New Zealand?
In the short term, it is unlikely that corporate owners will hand our metropolitan newspapers to trusts. However, if the right tax incentives are made available, conglomerates may be persuaded to ring-fence their news organs in trust-run subsidiaries - akin to the Toronto Star - in order that the company can retain the kudos of a masthead without trashing the annual accounts. They may also see trust-ownership as a way of divesting themselves of smaller, poor-profit regional and community newspapers or magazines.
Within current mainstream New Zealand media, a trust structure could be a solution to issues facing the national news agency, the New Zealand Press Association. NZPA has faced continuing problems since overseas owners bought the two dominant newspaper groups and became the agency's largest shareholders. They dismantled the cooperative news exchange that had existed for 125 years and expected NZPA to operate on a commercial model. For a variety of reasons it has struggled to do so. Vesting NZPA in an independent trust, charged sustaining it as a national news agency, may be a way of ensuring that it has a future.
There are a number of precedents, an example of which is the Press Trust of India. It was established in 1949 as a nonprofit cooperative news agency that now serves more than 450 Indian newspapers. It has a staff of about 2,000 journalists.
This, of course, is journalism on a grand scale. And scale makes many things possible. It will, for example, continue to sustain profitable large-circulation newspapers for longer than their smaller, less-fortunate brethren. On the other hand, lack of scale makes some things more difficult. In New Zealand, scale is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to sustain.
Therefore, a more likely genesis for trust-like structures in the New Zealand news media is through small start-up trusts established to provide civic-minded professional journalism, say, for a local area. Initially, their purpose will be to act as an adjunct to existing news media but, from small beginnings, they could grow to fill spaces left by a shrinking commitment to newsgathering by profit-driven companies.
It is likely that they would forego printing presses - the cost of which has been a major contributor to the exclusiveness of the newspaper-owning club. However, they could deliver print-quality journalism in a digital form to audiences large enough to attract political attention. But is there a large enough audience willing to pay the piper?
Much as democracy relies on the small percentage of the population that becomes actively involved in party politics and government, journalism may depend in the future on a relatively small proportion of the population who are prepared to fund it.
For this reason the scale and structure of the news media will change and society needs to start considering the alternatives because, without appropriate watchdogs, democracy is in jeopardy.
If the placards no longer proclaim The End of Journalism is Nigh; if the replacement slogan is Journalism is Dead, the flipside will read: Too late to repent: Democracy has gone to hell.
References:
(1) Jones, A., 2009. Losing the News: The future of the news that feeds democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
(2) WAN-IFRA Business Report 2009. www.wan-ifra.org.
(3) Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2010. State of the News Media 2010. www.stateofthemedia.org.
(4) Liebling, A.J., 1964. The Press. New York: Ballantine Books.
(5) Wolff, M., 2008. The Man Who Owns the News. Sydney: Random House; Ellison, S., 2010. War at the Wall Street Journal. Melbourne: Text Publishing Company.
(6) Mitchell, C., 1997. 'Beating the Dow'. New York Magazine, Vol. 30 No. 6.
(7) O'Brien, M., 2008. The Irish Times: A history. Dublin: Four Courts Press.
(8) See www.americansforcommunitydevelopment.org
