Spot on. It used to be when the feedback cycles were quite long that newspapers were forced to use a shotgun approach, hitting all sorts of topics in the hopes

Spot on. It used to be when the feedback cycles were quite long that newspapers were forced to use a shotgun approach, hitting all sorts of topics in the hopes that one or two them would interest the reader. If they failed? No big deal. With instantaneous feedback, and click-based advertising? All that crap is out the window. (Although you can make a good argument that things got really out of hand with the rise of cable news and the 24-hour-news cycle.) It's all emotional manipulation now. Nothing else. It looks like for a lot of folks, it doesn't even matter if it's true or not. 50 years ago, if you didn't the paper, you were ignorant. Today, if you consume a bunch of online media, you're not ignorant, you're stupid: you are purposely filling your head with emotion-laden content in lieu of actually learning anything. If anything, you're most likely making yourself emotionally ill. The best source I have for learning what's going on is the opinion columns. The format drives more honest out. As an opinion-writer, you're expected to have a thesis, an argument, and supporting data. Your bias is direct and up-front. It's a much more tractable way of evaluating information sources.