I feel like the current political situation in the US is going to accelerate the demise of traditional media. They have not been able to adapt to a changing information landscape and were stuck on models that worked in the past, like "both sides"ing issues sort of reflexively. That works great with a lot of things like "how much should we tax companies?", but not so much for some more fundamental questions like whether someone supports democracy.
I'm not sure what will emerge in its place. It's a big problem, and has hit hardest and first among local newspapers which are increasingly hollowed out husks of their former selves. This has a real cost to society that's actually quantifiable in dollars and cents:
Things like social media don't really take the place of people paid to do the hard work of, say, sitting through local city council meetings and making sense of what's happening there. A friend of mine tried doing that for fun and it lasted a few years, but he got burned out because of the tremendous amount of work.
I'm not sure what will emerge in its place. It's a big problem, and has hit hardest and first among local newspapers which are increasingly hollowed out husks of their former selves. This has a real cost to society that's actually quantifiable in dollars and cents:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-closures-of-local-new...
Things like social media don't really take the place of people paid to do the hard work of, say, sitting through local city council meetings and making sense of what's happening there. A friend of mine tried doing that for fun and it lasted a few years, but he got burned out because of the tremendous amount of work.