Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry (yahoo.com)

There isn’t much self introspection to ask if what the news media peddles might be a factor too. Easier to blame others.

The comments to that story say much the same – noting that news has turned into speculative opinion with click-bait titles, and is often inaccurate or exaggerated.

The big problem is there is way too much content chasing way too many viewers. Some of us remember growing up with half a dozen over the air TV stations and a local newspaper.

Today, there are infinite number of channels – from “professional” services to user generated content like Youtube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. There are not enough eyeballs to go around for everyone to be successful.

A side effect was the creation of click-bait and emotionally laden headlines, opinion pieces masquerading as news, and stories written for search engine optimization.

Regarding that last point, there is today an entire industry of content mills creating stories as fast as possible for online distribution. Their goal, in some cases, is to sell just $100 worth of ads – enough to cover the cheap costs of production. I have compiled a list of over 100 content mills – and there are today probably over 1,000. They have a stable of freelance writers with degrees in English lit and creative writing, generating formula stories as fast as possible. Some major news sites have begun to distribute these fluff pieces as well as the news industry continues in a race to the bottom.

The traditional press might no longer be a viable – or even useful – business model. It may be that social media items shared by qualified individuals (actual experts in say medicine, computing, or physics, rather than BA’s in English lit who call themselves “Science writers”) might be the future, coupled with Twitter’s “community notes”-like feature to provide context and corrections.