This idea of which way the wind is blowing is accurate for me as well. I used to read the FT and Economist for a similar reason which was 'this is what people w

This idea of which way the wind is blowing is accurate for me as well. I used to read the FT and Economist for a similar reason which was 'this is what people who make business decisions use as their level of understanding.' What changed is that the views in them no longer had any durable meaning or predictive power. The necessary ingredient in news has always been conflict, this is what makes a story a story, but when you can fabricate infinite conflict by applying a hyperbolic (ideological) lens to some second hand facts, it (cheaply) produces an approximation of news, but without any importance or value because the conflict is manufactured. So-called "fake news," was less about fabricated events so much as it was about fake conflict. Net-net, dropping mainstream news some years ago has improved my overall quality of life tremendously.