[ajsharp]

> News today is literally just this: “<big name person> did/said <dumb thing>!”, “<group> protests against <bad thing>!”, and so on.

> News is entertainment. Quick gratification that lasts a day, at max.

I would say an important qualifier here is that most news is entertainment, but the very long-tail of what we might call news -- actual high-quality journalism (investigative or not) -- is critically important.

I agree here that the majority of news media is infotainment. But there is an important place for high-quality long-form journalism, which effectively exists in society to do hard thinking and investigating that's basically impossible without the resources, infrastructure and support of a news organization.

Yes, "news" is trash, and some "journalism" is too, but the very long-tail, the 1% of the really high-quality stuff, is critically important, and a free and open society probably collapses without it.