For much of the last 150 years, newspapers in America have been, for better or worse and, arguably by definition, independent. Often that has meant that the voices of US journalism were controlled by wealthy eccentrics and their families whose political agendas and personal whims drove news coverage.
In 1936, Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, known as The Colonel for his days as a military officer in the first World War, insisted his newspaper sport the headline "Soviets Gather in Philadelphia" to describe the Democratic party convention which nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency.
Nowhere was the battle for readers and influence fiercer than New York in the 1890s. Two colossal egos in the form of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, owners respectively of the New York Journal and the New York World, had won huge circulation gains that dwarfed the city's two "respectable" papers, the Sun and the Herald. Those respectable papers began to try and compete with the "new" style of news coverage. The Sun, for instance, a serious paper, on August 18th, 1896 featured a story "Body Sent to Morgue" about a man who was nearly embalmed while alive, alongside a straight-faced news report headlined: "A Fish that plays the Piano."
That was the same day that a young man named Adolph Ochs took over as publisher of the city's least healthy serious newspaper, the New York Times, which had been founded in 1851 and was by then referred to as a picturesque old ruin among newspapers, losing the considerable sum of $1,000 each day.
Convinced that serious journalism could be successful, Mr Ochs published that day, under the simple headline "Business Announcement", the words that would become his legacy. It was his earnest aim, he wrote, "to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect or interests involved".
Newspapers around the country reprinted the statement. The model became influential, and by 1933, when Eugene Meyer bought the Washington Post, he too set forth certain principles: "In pursuit of the truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good."
The New York Times prospered of course, in part because Mr Ochs actually believed what he wrote and passed those values and integrity to the family members who owned the paper. (It must also be said that he cuts costs aggressively, tangled with the unions, and marketed the paper to advertisers shamelessly.) During his lifetime, Mr Ochs never took a salary of more than $25,000. Over the last 105 years, there were years when the New York Times annual profit was less than $100,000.
But a newspaper's credibility and integrity had become an essential aspect of what we would call today its market model in the US; if "citizens" - and I use the term citizens instead of consumers quite specifically here - did not trust the veracity and impartiality of a newspaper, they would simply be less likely to buy it.
By mid-century, most family-owned, financially successful newspapers realised they needed to become public companies and diversify beyond ownership of a single newspaper, largely in order to prevent takeovers. Times Mirror, owned and controlled by the Chandler family trust in Los Angeles, was the first to be traded on the New York Stock exchange in 1964.
The Washington Post went public in 1971. In his book The Powers That Be, David Halberstam quotes the Post's owner, Katherine Graham, as calling her friend Otis Chandler of Times Mirror and asking, "Otis, do I really have to make my salary public?"
Mr Halberstam also notes that legendary editor Ben Bradlee quit the Post's board of directors before the company went public, specifically so his reporters wouldn't learn that his salary was $100,000 a year.
Like the other companies, the New York Times was still controlled by the Ochs Trust until it self-terminated in 1967 and its shares were distributed to family members.
But the Ochs descendents by blood and marriage have retained control over the board. Like other family-owned papers that went public, two classes of stock were issued. Class-B shares are still not publicly traded and the Sulzberger family (descendents of Ochs) still own 18 percent of the New York Times Company. Other shares, which are traded on Wall Street, carry no voting rights.
Today almost every newspaper in America is part of a multimedia chain or group ownership. Ten companies own newspapers that distribute more than 51 per cent of the weekday circulation. And the companies are diversified beyond newspapers. The Washington Post Company owns Newsweek magazine. Gannet, the largest publisher, owns USA Today among 99 other papers; Knight Ridder owns everything from the Miami Herald to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
And the New York Times Company is well diversified; its holdings include 50 percent ownership in the International Herald Tribune, which it shares with the Washington Post, as well as 24 other papers, eight local television stations, two radio stations, and a minority interest in a Canadian paper products company.
Things, in other words, have changed. Of daily newspapers with circulation over 70,000, just a handful are privately owned: the St Petersburg Times in Florida, the Seattle Times, the Spokane-Review (Washington), and the Christian Science Monitor.
The trend then, is certainly toward public corporate ownership and the transparency that attends it. But there is little consistency in the kind of newspaper product that results from similar types of ownership. A number of American newspapers that are corporately owned have retained sterling reputations, even overcoming scandals.
They are in the minority: more publicly owned papers have succumbed to the short-term profit pressures brought on by Wall Street's demand for increased share price. It has compromised the quality and breadth of journalism here.
But why the difference in quality between papers of identical ownership structures? Inevitably it boils down to the integrity and values of the people running the enterprise, and their interpretation of their duties and public responsibilities.
When a Wall Street Journal (owned by the Dow Jones company) columnist was caught in insider stock trading in the 1980s, the paper rewrote its code of conduct stating: "The central premise of this code is that Dow Jones' reputation for quality and for the independence and integrity of our publications is the heart and soul of our enterprise."
In 1999, the Los Angeles Times and a local sports arena entered into a profit-sharing arrangement from an edition of the Sunday magazine. The arena owners sent letters to subcontractors insisting that adverts be bought, all the while that positive stories were appearing in the paper. The editorial side knew nothing of the arrangement. The scandal that ensued when all was revealed threatened the long-term credibility of the paper.
To the Times's credit, the paper assigned an experienced media reporter to cover the scandal, which he did while uncovering other ethical shenanigans. The paper published the investigative series, which won awards and helped repair the paper's reputation in the community.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are still marginally controlled by the individuals associated with the founding families, while they are both public companies with the usual market pressures. But the individuals who run those institutions are conscious of the burden and the legacy on their shoulders: the struggle to provide the best journalism possible.
They also know that without credibility, trust and transparency, the core of the business they run would be shattered.
In 1999, Edward Seaton, president of the American Society of Newspaper editors, gave a speech on how newspapers rebuild trust and credibility; "Explain yourself," he said. "As editors we have to lead. We have to state our values. When we have standards, we have something that we can explain to the public and our staffs, something that everyone can hear and understand.
"We must do much more and better than we have. Our emphasis has to be on serving citizens, not our bottom line or technology."
Elaine Lafferty is a US-based reporter for The Irish Times