I'm not sure that 'news' has ever been anything other than what we see today. The only exception is the breadth of journalism and news. Look at the roots of y

I'm not sure that 'news' has ever been anything other than what we see today. The only exception is the breadth of journalism and news. Look at the roots of yellow journalism [0]. The issues about headlines over substance are the exact same issues that we have toady with Twitter and the like. Only now, there isn't a fold to worry about. Look at the Jefferson v Adams 1800 election [1]. It was nasty. The mudslinging, theft, and accusations feel right at home with today's political press. Such 'news' isn't much different than today, maybe with the exceptions of Benjamin Franklin running the presses. Look at Cicero after the Social War [2]. He took on explicitly political cases and his life was on the line for doing so. Roman politics is cut-throat, for sure, but this just shows how humans do or do not change. The rumors, oration, and 'news' of those pre-printing press times sure sounds a lot like any talking-head cable news show. Though I imagine that the Latin is somewhat lost in translation. The point is: News and journalism has always been like this. The technology is sure a lot different. You can get endless front-pages from every hamlet on the globe. But the underlying mechanism, that of yellow-journalism, rage, emotion, etc. That is an underlying part of us and is likely to remain so. One book I love about the deep-down mechanics is John Quincy Adam's Rhetoric and Oratory [3]. It's a great dive into the nuts and bolts of getting an audience to listen to you. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1800_United_States_presidentia... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Public_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Public_career [3] https://archive.org/details/lecturesonrheto02adamgoog/page/n6/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/lecturesonrheto02adamgoog/page/n...