(04-04-2018 07:53 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(04-04-2018 03:10 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  The problem is:
1. Media outlets have to make money.
2. People increasingly want infotainment and to hear their own opinions reinforced.

I think you can finish that syllogism easily.

I want you to be wrong. I don't think you are.

I think Almond entered newspapers about the same time I did, and at the same age. So much of that story's familiar; he does leave out the sex and alcohol.

Number 1 above is almost right, but there's a key qualifier: media outlets made plenty of money, a steady 15 percent return in the 1980's (I was a union officer, so I got to see the financials). But the corporate overlords wanted more, and so you got cost-cutting in newsrooms (layoffs, attrition, senseless penny-pinching (we were always told to abandon a story rather than accrue overtime)), emphasis on what Almond calls "news you can use" (in our chain it was "what does it mean to me?" - with "me" assumed to be a drooling moron), and lots and lots of blood and gore. The city editor would demand that we get photos of young white chicks who got killed (strangled strippers, stabbed waitresses and such - from the families, before they got killed, not dead body shots), take them into his office and masturbate. He's famous now is about all I should write about that.

But regardless of corporate greed, that world wasn't going to survive the coming of 24-hour social media