Press Weakens, So What
As the Press Weakens, So Does Democracy
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/opinion/media-newspapers-democracy.html
Axe-grinding has conquered even handed journalism, especially proclamations of the decline of alleged noble public service.
Money and subscriptions and paywalls have followed the entertainews ideological combat with talking heads and keyboards and pods and ditzy features of food, health, love, kids, up the kazoo mewlings requiring no more reflection by readers than the junk being stuffed into mouths.
Disaster, homicide, rape, corruption, celebrity abuse, are now joined with tearful accounts of the press losing its majestic role in telling the public what journos and editors and publishers and especially advertisers want them to see, hear, and buy.
OK, so what, that downfall into low status is how the press began, and there should be no doubt it will climb out of the gutter of business above all and come up with material that is genuinely appealing rather than squealing about the glory days of heroic journalism.
Retire Pultizer and Polk, for example, shut up about award-winning this or that, minimize opinionating blabber or best just junk it as waste of text. Put the lifestyle dreck off on its own, that's not news worthy, its only puerile advertizing.
Some slack may be due the stalwarts, NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Reuters, AP, but don't insult consumers with belaboring Fox, Substack, SM, the partisan mags and rags and subsidized monothematic NGOs.
Samizdats have a shot at credibility if they don't get bribed into monotheized propaganda waving the banner of 1A hegemony.