Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier discusses the Washington Post announcing sweeping layoffs and the elimination of their sports department on ‘Special Report.’

Readers will always read, and news junkies will always find and especially read news. Reading is simply faster than broadcast, so news delivered by text is always going to have a market. That reality does not, however, guarantee any platform the loyalty of a subscriber.

"Journalism is a craft, not a profession," the late Michael Kelly would routinely state in the blessed years when he was a weekly guest on my radio program. Kelly was the equal of any American journalist of his generation, having worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Atlantic. 

Michael was killed covering the American invasion of Iraq in April 2003. The point he was making was that anyone could be a "journalist," as there is no licensing involved in American journalism as there is with professions such as medicine and law. Getting paid to "be a journalist" — that was the trick, and as the internet exploded, so did the opportunities to work in the craft.

WASHINGTON POST CEO STEPS DOWN AMID ONSLAUGHT OF BACKLASH FOLLOWING MASS LAYOFFS

The craft survives and thrives in the United States unlike anywhere else in the world because of the First Amendment. The ongoing, never-ending creative destruction of capitalism (thank you for the phrase, Joseph Schumpeter) is the constant companion of every business, including journalism. Freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the Constitution, makes the rise and fall of platforms for journalism particularly robust. There is hardly any "state" media left with the demise of federal funding for National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but the vast universe of media continues to expand, and the "news media" within it.

In the aftermath of the big layoffs at The Washington Post, there has been an explosion of commentary — again — about the decline and often the death of newspapers. But if you are reading this, it came to your attention via some means other than a subscription to a legacy newspaper. And there, in a sentence, is the dilemma for legacy "news," and indeed any written product for which a reader has to pay: There is so much "free" content that it is very, very difficult for a high-overhead text product that depends on........

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