It is said that when there is only one lawyer in a town, he will go broke. When there are two lawyers they both get rich.
Same with newspapers. With one newspaper, it presents just one point of view. A second newspaper can balance out that view and they keep each other honest.
Driving competition out is not always the best business decision.
Today you can pick up a newspaper from anywhere in the nation and they will all speak with one voice. Owners of newspapers told over half their potential customer we don’t want you as a customer and so their customers found other sources for their news.
I think the legal profession is the only one where the law of supply and demand doesn’t apply.
What could possibly explain this? My take:People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)All that remains is to explain how people of the trade of journalism meet together - and once seen, the answer cannot be unseen: the wire services. The AP in particular, but all have the same tendency to unite the papers ideologically.Why are they leftist? I put it to you that the proper definition of “socialism” is, “cynicism directed at society, resulting in (or motivated by) naiveté towards government.” Journalism is about bad news, which calls the virtue of society into question - and that suggests the virtue of more government. Empowered by its “conspiracy against the public,” journalism calls itself “objective” - knowing that in fact journalism is negative. Calling negativity “objectivity” is cynicism, neat.