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Time will sort out this discrepancy, which I have no intention of refereeing. But if the story bears out in any of its particulars, it could portend a retrenchment in pay for the stars of cable news. A source at Fox News said, “Talent costs are certainly being looked at given the entire business model is changing.”

That would be a pity — and not because I relish subsidizing Sean Hannity’s private-jet trips or Rachel Maddow’s ice-fishing excursions. It’s deeper than that.

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Barbara Walters made history in 1976 when she signed a five-year contract for $5 million with ABC, making her the first news anchor in broadcast history to clear the million-dollar annual threshold. That red-letter contract preceded the founding of CNN — the world’s first 24-hour news channel — by four years, and cable-news pay took its time in catching up to the salary scales of the major networks.

Things have changed, however, in recent decades. In a 2022 arbitration demand over his firing from CNN, Chris Cuomo revealed that his base salary for 19 months of work was $14,406,250. Former host Don Lemon recently agreed to a separation agreement that paid him $24.5 million, an amount that covers the 3.5 years on his contract from the date of his gaffe-filled departure. Salaries for other notables — CNN’s Cooper and Fox News’s Hannity, for instance — have been reported in the eight-figure ballpark. Before Fox News woke up to the fact that Tucker Carlson wasn’t worth a penny, he was in their league. MSNBC’s Maddow reportedly pulls $30 million annually for one scheduled night per week, plus some enterprise projects on the side.

Outrageous, all of it. The excess carries on while adjacent industry sectors enter a free fall even more precipitous than the tough times they sustained in decades past. The Post, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, BuzzFeed, Time, National Geographic, the Messenger and many others — all of them have either reduced staff or shut down altogether in recent months, contributing to a circumstance addressed by a provocative headline in an Atlantic piece by former Post reporter Paul Farhi: “Is American Journalism Headed Toward an ‘Extinction-Level Event’?”

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What’s more, it’s these dying outfits that serve as a fodder rack for the cable news airwaves. Sure, cable news outfits have their own reporting platoons who occasionally break news — yet they also have way too much airtime to fill, and so they aggregate the best offerings of the print sector. Take it from MSNBC host Katy Tur. “Allow me just to add something,” Tur said last June after handing out honors to several print outlets at the Mirror Awards, which recognize the work of journalists who shine a light on their own industry. “A big thank you from people like me who work in cable news. You guys produce a lot of the content that we get to chew over on our shows every day. And it’s remarkable reporting, and we — I — would not have a job without you,” she said.

What could struggling news organizations do with a cable news host’s salary? In the 2000s, I edited the Washington City Paper, which produced political reporting, arts coverage, investigations, features, a food column, original photography and, I........

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