Information fragments – whether sound bites on broadcast news or Twitter firestorms between news sources and media – now pass as news. The masses are headline-strong and knowledge-empty.
And it is a trend line cemented by the perfect storm raking over media this fall.
Add it up: With trust rates well below 10 percent in media polls, the Trump victory and how the media got it wrong, and finances trending as poorly as at the recession’s start, mainstream media is falling victim.
Expect dramatic shifts to begin early in 2017. National and metro newspapers, as well as smaller newspapers, will aggressively cut space for news to save costs. Print-publication frequency will reduce. The daily newspaper – as we know it today as something you hold in your hand and flip through pages – will fade.
Investigative and in-depth reporting will become even more scant. That will leave the door wide open for unprofessional, poorly resourced and purely biased media to produce shoddy, untrustworthy reporting disguised as legitimate and in-depth.
The truth will be harder to find.