Hamilton Holt's 1909 book,
Commercialism and Journalism, tells the story of the incredible growth of the publishing industry, fueled by six factors, but to which Holt (a publisher himself) credited advertising for virtually all of it. And to which he had extreme and justified concerns. He quotes another journalist (anonymously, though from elsewhere, this is John Swinton):
There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
This from a lecture series at the University of California, Berkeley, on the Morals of Trade.
Selling news has been a tricky busines from the start.
Circulation has been falling consistently for a while now:
https://cdn.opendemocracy.net/files/Figure2.png
