4 ms·

Isnt that what newspapers and morning TV shows have been selling for 100 years?

• nkozyra 7y ago
  They've sold an entertainment/advertisement product, one that required almost no change in formula for hundreds of years. In journalism school you learn early on the history of newspapers in New York. The consequence was more competition lead to drastic price wars and a race to the bottom. By many accounts it culminated in yellow journalism. That all found a natural equilibrium and things remained mostly unchanged until television. With that, competition for short, snippet journalism increased and newspapers moved to longer, more in depth journalism and larger shelved the very long form because the audience was gone. Cable news had a similarly tectonic force on network news, which changed its drab, almost newspaper-y style to compete. Each of these forces fundamentally changed the nature of these long lived formulas. Twitter shoved another dagger in newspaper journalism by forcing them to compete on social media, eliminating journalist standards for interaction with the public. The gatekeepers react based on what audiences do. Audiences are not discerning. Each one of these events puts a dent in the integrity of its former self. It's all a race to the bottom for advertisement, something a lack of competition previously kept slow enough to seem at bay.