The Fifth Estate: The New Economics of Journalism

Dan Perry Nov 6th, 2025, 2:37 pm

Photo by Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images/Sipa via AP

Something curious happened while we were mourning journalism’s decline: it was quietly reinventing itself. Not through grand reforms or billion-dollar bailouts, nor through scribes deciding to all just “pivot to video,” but through the slow, almost invisible coalescing of individuals. What first looked like atomization — countless isolated voices scattering across the digital plain — is now beginning to resemble the early formation of something else: a lighter, more nimble kind of institution.

For years, the story of journalism was told as tragedy. Once-majestic news organizations — Hearst, Gannett, McClatchy, and indeed my own Associated Press — decl

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