[mean_jean]

The commodity information you get from social media is not the same thing as investigative reporting that takes months of research, public records requests, shoe leather reporting, data analysis and interviews to uncover corruption in government, abuses of power, regulatory loopholes etc. Twitter does not fill the role of the forth estate and society would not be better off without it. It's easy to take it for granted when you get all of the benefits without bearing any of the costs.

[sizzle]

My question is then, has society dumbed down so much from the ADD nature of the internet and ubiquitous computing, that traditional long-form sources of news media are no longer relevant for the ways people choose to consume them? e.g. news channels posting bite sized stories via snapchat stories feed, etc.

[mean_jean]

It's still relevant. Lots of people still want the traditional long form, it's just that the old business model for delivering it doesn't work anymore, and people (reasonably) don't understand why they should pay for something that used to be free. And yes, snapchat (etc) stories are an interesting delivery channel, and we're trying that too (although again, how to monetize that).