Traditional newspapers never sold news; they sold an audience to advertisers....
The digital age exploded this business model. Advertisers fled to online platforms, never to return....
...Today, nobody under 85 would look for news in a newspaper. Under such circumstances, what commodity could be offered for sale?
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Times stumbled onto a possible answer. It entailed a wrenching pivot from a journalism of fact to a “post-journalism” of opinion.... Post-journalism “mixes open ideological intentions.... Its language aimed to commodify polarization and threat: journalists had to “scare the audience to make it donate.”...
...Objectivity was discarded in favor of an “oppositional” stance....
The old media had needed happy customers. The goal of post-journalism, according to Mir, is to “produce angry citizens.”...
A cynic (or a conservative) might argue that objectivity in political reporting was more an empty boast than a professional standard and that the newspaper, in pandering to its audience, had long favored an urban agenda, liberal causes, and Democratic candidates. This interpretation misses the transformation in the depths that post-journalism involved. The flagship American newspaper had turned in a direction that came close to propaganda....