Newspapers are in decline because of economic and technological factors, but their life span is measured by demographic factors. They will exist as an industrial product for no longer than the mid-2030s. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of… Read More ›
Future of journalism
Ownership of the media: it is not what you think it must be
Traditional media owners may still control the news media, but they no longer control the news. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). Under the idea of ownership as a filter of the Propaganda model, Herman and… Read More ›
Membership as a new business model and the failure of “The Correspondent”
The news has broken that the Correspondent (De Correspondent’s English-language site), is shutting down on December 31.[1] The case of The/De Correspondent was the biggest, after the Guardian, example of the membership model. And while the surrogates of membership that… Read More ›
Advertising-driven media: merchants of happiness
Digital advertising tools have simply and candidly exposed what was known in the industry long ago: advertising does not like the news because the news is often bad news. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). On… Read More ›
Negativity bias takes the lead when news is paid by readers, not advertisers
Bad news plus good crowd makes good engagement. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). A teaser on the main page of the New York Times’ website on May 14, 2020 read: Almost 3 million U.S. workers… Read More ›
Journalism in search of a cute little monkey
Having lost their traditional business to the internet, the news media are forced to sell ‘something else’. But selling something else, not content or ads, makes them sellers of something else, not the news media. A chapter from “Postjournalism and… Read More ›
Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers on Podcast “Worker & Parasite”
On the podcast this week, Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers: The Media After Trump by Andrey Mir. Next time: Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann and Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid,… Read More ›
Postjournalism: from the world-as-it-is to the world-as-it-should-be
Advertising dominated the business of the news media, providing 70% of revenue and more. Ad revenue was so plentiful that it made media organizations the largest and richest corporations of the late capitalist period, on par with banks or oil… Read More ›
Polarization studies are media studies
Fake news is not the principal problem in the new media environment. The impact of fake news is already mitigated by the users’ growing immunity and also by the growing noise that diminishes the potency of fake news’ impact. A… Read More ›
The New York Times: from “We are not American Idol” to “We are not resistance” (which is gone, too).
The news validation within a certain value system is the only remaining function of news business that might have relative use-value for readers. The need for the business to survive forces the media to shift its operational emphasis from news… Read More ›