> So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the highest bidder.

Accurate. Agreed. And a completely fair business decision. We all have bill to pay.

Unfortunately, they (wrongly) continue to sell this new version of their craft (?) as journalism. The masses buy in - confirmation bias is a powerful force - and we are today exactly where we should be: Truth is fluid. Editorial is journalism. Everyone - blue, red or orange - gets hammer their facts into their echo chamber. Etc.

It's important to realize that there is no democracy or democratic process without a health and proper Fouth Estate.

Btw, Tali Sharot's "The Influential Mind" is a great read on the subject on influence.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

Edit: their to there. with to without.

The current state of social media is a symptom; it's a mirror. To blame the mirror for who and what is staring into it doesn't help solve the problem(s). True, social media (as it stands today) is an enabler. It helps the symptoms (e.g., confirmation bias) exists and persist, but ultimately it's still not the tools' fault.

In the USA, I'd be more ready to place more blame on the binary political parties, as well as the mainstream media. The internet will eventually greatly reduce the power and influence of all three of these. What we're witnessing now first-hand is these three power-holders collapsing and screaming "But...But...we're still very relevant. Look! Look!! You need us to protect you from 'them'" (with 'them' being one of the other power-losing enties). All three have become terribly efficient at using hype, hyperbole and divisiveness as means to "proving" they still matter.

For more info on these concepts see "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

While she doesn't do a direct take down of media, social media and politics, it doesn't take a genius to read between the lines a bit and extrapolate her science onto the current state of things.

Best of luck. We need it!

That said, I'd like to suggest a book. "The Influential Mind." Long to short, there's more to influence than objective facts.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

If anyone would like to explore the topic a bit further try "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot. It was on FT's short list for best of 2017. It's a quick easy read. Gladwell-esque. The difference iis, she is an actual scientest who works in that field. Tho' perhaps that makes her bias? ;)

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

Two things to add:

1) You might be interested in the book The Influential Mind. While she doesn't come out and say it directly, the bizarre state of our digital lives (i.e., social media) has quite a bit of reasonable (scientific) explanation.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

2) The irony of the homogenized "wisdom" is that these same entities are personalizing so much that the shared / collective experience is being diminished. Perhaps it's easier to build mono-minded on top of a disheveled and disorganized foundation?