Journalism in the Age of Clickbait
May 26, 2023/by Gregory M. Dickinson
https://thepricklypear.org/journalism-in...e-of-clickbait/
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Newspapers are the lifeblood of American democracy. At least they were. But the last three decades have seen a seismic shift, with storied and less-storied newspapers closing shop as Americans abandon traditional media in favor of more tailored, narrowly focused, and increasingly digital sources of news. More than half of Americans now rely on social media and other algorithm-curated news sources to help choose the articles they read. And only 16% continue to read newspapers and other print news sources, down from almost 50% as recently as 2013. Local newsrooms have been particularly hard hit, with nearly 1,800 newspapers having closed since 2004.

In her new book, Saving the News, Harvard Law School Professor Martha Minow warns that the shift to online news is no mere change to digital window dressing. It is a revolutionary departure that could prove catastrophic for the democratic engagement that news reporting nourishes. Most disruptive to the news industry, says Minow, has been the loss of the subscription revenues that newspapers rely on to fund newsgathering and investigative journalism.

The News We Read

Subscription revenues have been undermined in two ways. First, consumers have become so accustomed to free online content that newspapers have been forced to follow suit—offering up content for free and relying on advertising revenues to fund their operations. Like many businesses, newspapers have struggled to make the transition. A few marquee publications have successfully migrated their subscriber bases to an online format, but many more have been left scrambling, and largely failing, to attract online views.

Second, the online revolution has pressed newspapers to unbundle their content offerings. Like cable-television providers, newspapers long sold large bundles of content, lumping together everything from national politics to high-school athletics, weather forecasts, and crossword puzzles. Readers interested primarily in national politics and crossword puzzles subsidized local newsgathering and vice versa. Now, however, readers can play their daily word puzzle in one place, often for free, and find their political news elsewhere. With so many options available, readers see no need to get everything in one place. This puts newspapers in competition with more streamlined services for niche content and eliminates an important source of revenue.

It would be one thing if newspaper readers were exchanging their print newspapers for digital ones. But for most publications and for most readers, the shift has been more than a change in medium. Readers are not just receiving their old news sources digitally; they are consuming different genres of news altogether. At the heart of the shift, says Professor Minow, are platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix-- excerpt, rest at link above --