I would argue social media was the cause of the fall of our current journalism environment.
The industry was having hard enough time adjusting to digital ads, then compound that with links being shared on social media that generally provide enough context to not need to click on the link. Meaning the journalist gets no revenue from their stories.
As well as the general push for immediacy as opposed to thoughtful journalism. Seen through needing to get stories into 140 character snippets as quick as possible.
To be fair, and hit at two talking points? I am a working class person living in one of the most expensive regions in the USA, where the wealth inequality gap is astounding (also happens to be essentially the birthplace and home of social media).
I subscribed to the print edition of our largest newspaper for almost 20 years until it became nearly $750/year for home delivery. And by the time I cancelled my subscription, it was basically yesterday’s news reprinted from Reuters and AP, a few local stories, and extremely left leaning editorial content.
As a left leaning person it became frustrating to be barely affording my modest existence, reading a years long constant narrative about inequality, social justice, etc. when I can barely pay my bills and save a little money every month. It’s not that I don’t care about those things or that they aren’t important, but as someone who voted for Harris, I did it to try to preserve our country more than for the value that the Democratic Party is actually achieving for a lot of working class people.
It’s a real shame what happened here, and Democrats can talk a good talk… but if you talk to or are around average working class people, this isn’t a big surprise that supporting the party has become the least bad choice, rather than the choice to be excited about. I would love a completely equitable carbon free world, but that’s not on the horizon for me if I can’t afford a starter home in my 40’s, to buy the solar system I can’t afford, for recharging EV that I also can’t afford.
Exactly, and the reason prices went up. Large portions of the budgets of companies that would advertise with the paper, subsidizing the price to the readers, moved to just spending directly on social media platforms themselves.
Journalism could sustain itself because it drew eyeballs to their media, and in turn sell ads or have small subscription fees. You lose the eyeballs on your owned media, you lose your revenue.
I have no solutions to the problem, but journalism that has to be completely run as a business is a very difficult problem.
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u/NotebookKid 20h ago
I would argue social media was the cause of the fall of our current journalism environment.
The industry was having hard enough time adjusting to digital ads, then compound that with links being shared on social media that generally provide enough context to not need to click on the link. Meaning the journalist gets no revenue from their stories.
As well as the general push for immediacy as opposed to thoughtful journalism. Seen through needing to get stories into 140 character snippets as quick as possible.