[nemild]

I'm doubtful that most journalists actually want it to be that way. Those are just the economic and reader incentives in journalism today.

There are some great stats about just how much the number of professional journalists has shrunk in the social media era.

[bostik]

I know it's easy (and tempting) to put the blame on social media alone, but there's more than that. The rise of social media certainly accelerated the evisceration, gutting, and - as some might say, annihilation - of journalism but the tailspin trajectory has been in the making for quite a bit longer.

Here's a thread from January this year, where a journalism professor lays bare the facts about the decline of his domain: https://twitter.com/jeremylittau/status/1088503510184927233?...

If my memory serves me right, that thread was on the HN front page at the time. Essentially the expense of quality journalism was seen as frivolous in the 80's, got nixed, and by the mid-90's newspapers relied on their established captive audience to churn out reliable profits with little appetite for innovation. Who was going to compete with them, anyway?

Internet changed the landscape, and social media has been instrumental in hammering nails in the coffin. But the decline of journalism and destruction of quality newsrooms has been going on since before there was public internet.

[rhizome]

>in the social media era.

In this context I think it should be termed "now that there are no classified ads."

[catalogia]

The very premise of for-profit journalism seems questionable at best.