I reckon the death of marginally medium-to-highbrow low-profitability journalism and the emergence of clickbait only appear to be connected. Clickbait will app

I reckon the death of marginally medium-to-highbrow low-profitability journalism and the emergence of clickbait only appear to be connected. Clickbait will appeal to population, spring up new clickbait ventures, and descend down a spiral you describe. Best clickbaiters will emerge victorious, worse clickbaiters will crawl back with their tails between their legs. The first will be profitable, but not excessively so. The latter will have been hopefully funded by rational venture capitalists, not taken on any unreasonable personal risk and carry on with their careers. Nobody will have lost anything, except all the people reading their content. Medium-to-highbrow journalism is struggling to get by - but that is mostly because it's readership doesn't care enough - or enough of it's readership doesn't care - which is to say their quality wasn't great. It may have cared before, but now there are better options. Some of them are better in the sense that people are lazy and passive entertainment has gained their favour. Others are better options, because they are of even better quality. It's unfortunate, but the thriving high-brow media sector shows that there is a market for quality publications. Maybe I'm in a delusional bubble, since I live in a country where the average person gets 3-4 long form periodical publications (weeklies/ monthlies) and 20-30% of the population gets their daily newspaper delivered every morning before sunrise. > which is not what humans generally want it to. "Which is not what you think humans generally want it to." is softer form of the same statement :)