The Media is Complicit for the Political Mess We Are In, But There Is A Way Out
I love journalism and the function journalists play in society. At its best, journalism is the search for truth as part of the media ecosystem. In a hypothetical world, that is enough. But in the real world, there are other dynamics that also play a role. As someone who has worked in digital media and advertising for a long time, I’ve seen it first-hand: slim margins, the quest for virality, the desire for speed, and the push for ever-greater monetization. Thanks for reading MEDIATE by Todd Lombardo! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The business model of media is straightforward: content is created. It gets monetized by ads, subscriptions, purchases, or some combination of all three. This is the model for all of it now: news, books, movies, YouTube, TikTok (the discussion around whether social platforms are technology or media companies can be had another day). It took a long time to get here. America Online and others debuted their portals in the early 1990s and ushered in a new digital era. We are still navigating the dynamics of this generational shift (see the streaming industry circa 2023). And yet the need for journalism — for truth — hasn’t changed. And this is true whether covering news, world affairs, technology, culture, or politics.
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