📰 + 🎓 Two Institutions, One Collapse
For decades, we grew up with two quiet assumptions:
- The newsroom was a watchdog.
- The university was an engine of opportunity.
Think of them as the “twin towers” of the liberal establishment. Both were supposed to stand tall, projecting authority and stability. Today, in 2025, both towers are listing dangerously. Newsrooms bleed billions. Universities post deficits that would have been unthinkable just ten years ago.
“The twin towers of public trust are crumbling, and we are left to wonder what will rise in their place.”
📊 A Landscape of Deficits
UK Press – operating losses, 2023–24
- Daily Mail Group: –£44 m
- Channel 4: record losses on falling ad revenue
- The Guardian: multimillion-pound shortfall, voluntary buy-outs
- The Telegraph: –£245 m (questionable loans)
- ITV: pre-tax profit down 60%
- Sky UK: –£224 m
US Universities – operating deficits, 2023–24
- University of Chicago: –$239 m
- University of Arizona: –$177 m
- Penn State system: –$140 m
- SUNY (all campuses): –$400 m
- University of Wisconsin: –$145 m
- Connecticut State Colleges: –$70 m
👉 These are not outliers. They are the landmarks.
💸 Where the Money Went
Journalism:
- Classified ads migrated to Google and Facebook.
- Retail advertising moved to Amazon.
- Newsrooms pivoted to celebrity gossip and viral outrage.
- Volume couldn’t replace lost revenue.
Universities:
- Tuition soared for 20 years.
- Square meters skyrocketed faster: luxury dorms, athletics centers, administrative palaces.
- Chinese students: once the golden goose of higher education, now disappearing fast
🧾 Both sectors bet on a single revenue stream and assumed endless growth. The market disagreed.
The natural reaction is to ask how elite University stewards of finance could fail at balancing revenues and expenses.
The short answer is that they believed a story, in this case, that raising education prices would always increase revenue and that any drop in domestic applicants could be offset by international students who pay full freight. Both assumptions turned out to be fragile.
⚖️ The Choice in Front of Us
For fifty years, these towers held a “license” of trust:
- The press could speak with authority.
- The university could certify with authority.
The reckoning now underway may hurt cherished institutions, but it also offers an overdue correction that rewards transparency and genuine civic outcomes
