Journalists not quite understanding this market stuff

This would be just terrible if it were true:

What 2,000 job cuts tell us: the free market kills digital journalism

We can’t quite see that ourselves. Following those job cuts we can still see a plethora of sources of news available to us on this ‘ere internet thing. For something dead it seems in remarkable health.

The future of journalism will generally be smaller and more challenging in the short term and remains uncertain in the long term. However, the problem now is so clear that even the most advanced digital thinkers can see it: a digital free market for journalism doesn’t work.

What the market is actually doing is its job. Which is to sort through the available and possible plans for doing something and telling us which do work. The value to us all of this service being greatest when technological change is happening - the technological change being what presents the new available and possible plans which need to be sorted through.

That we’re getting a lot of shouting about journalism in crisis is because it’s the professional shouters, the journalists, who are being sorted through, nothing more than that.

But then the author here, Emily Bell, has been involved in running the Observer and Guardian for some decades. Just the institutions we’d go to for advice on profit in journalism, aren’t they?