Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization

Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers may be the most profound analysis of the subject since the last time Marshall McLuhan wrote about it. Mir describes a universe in which the news now chases the reader rather than the other way around. Everything is told in a wonderful epigrammatic style you will be digging up quotes from it for years. Martin Gurri, author of The Revolt of the Public. The most important book in media theory that has been written in 40 years. Paul Levinson, author of Digital McLuhan. Andrey Mirs Postjournalism offers a powerful, sweeping narrative of how news media have evolved over the centuries. Arnold Kling, economist, author of Crisis of Abundance and Invisible Wealth. In his book Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers, Mir is here partly to praise newspapers, partly to bury them, but mostly to explain why their death is (a) inevitable and (b) a very big deal. He communicates this with a history of news media and a blizzard of concepts and neologisms. Danyl Mclauchlan, The Spinoff, New Zealand. As Mir argues, this change in the economic structure of the news media has quietly transformed journalism from a theoretically neutral means of manufacturing consent into a political cause that people are rallied into supporting, usually by inciting them to some form of outrage. Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept. ...Hundreds of thousands of todays students have never even touched a newspaper. The market is already ready to drop newspapers, but society is not yet. The last newspaper generation's habits will preserve at least some demand for newspapers for a while. Newspapers will exist as an industrial product for no longer than the mid-2030s. Some vintage use of newspapers may remain afterwards, but it will be a matter of arts, not industry. The least obvious and yet most shocking aspect of the newspapers decline is the fact that it reflects the fate of journalism, not just a carrier. This is neither a cyclical crisis nor a matter of transition; this is the end of an era. Postjournalism and the death of newspapers unveils the economic and cultural mechanisms of agenda-setting in the news media at the final stage of their historical existence. As advertising has fled to the internet and was absorbed there almost entirely by the Google-Facebook duopoly, the news media have been forced to switch to another source of funding selling content to readers. However, they cannot sell news because news is already known to people from social media newsfeeds. Instead, the media offers the validation of already-known news within a certain value system and the delivery of the right news to others. This business necessity forces the media to relocate the gravity of their operation from news to values. Media outlets are increasingly soliciting subscriptions as donations to a cause. To attract donations, they have to focus on pressing social issues. The need to pursue reader revenue and therefore the dependence on the audience, with the news no longer being a commodity, is pushing journalism to mutate into postjournalism. Journalism wants its picture to match the world; postjournalism wants the world to match its picture. The ad-driven media manufactured consent. The reader-driven media manufacture anger. The former served consumerism. The latter serve polarization. The author explores polarization as a media effect. Andrey Mir (Andrey Miroshnichenko) is a media expert and journalist with twenty years in the print media. He is the author of Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship (2014) and a number of books on media and politics. Twitter: @Andrey4Mir. Introduction: The Great Pivot from advertising to reader revenue 1. Scheduling the extinction of newspapers When newspapers die Accelerators and decelerators of newspaper extinction It is already on its way Old media and COVID-19: news demand surged, business crumbled 2. The Trump bump: commodifighting Trump Trump-addicted Few succeed, many fall Media impact and impact on media Who got trumped more, Fox News or the New York Times? 3. Why did journalism even appear? The printing press released a tidal wave of literacy man-hours Venetian avvisi From avvisi to gazettes The press: inception The influencers of the early Modern era Siblings: journalism and the public sphere 4. How society used to pay for journalism The two types of journalism: paid from below and paid from above The eternal failure of selling news Lenin’s Iskra: the first attempt at the membership model Advertising distortions of the media: the audience as commodity 5. Business of old media: the monopoly is gone Watchdogs prefer the paywalled garden 2014: advertising hit rock bottom and punctured it Journalism in search of a cute little monkey In the meantime: marketing turns into journalism 6. Materiality of old media: the medium was the message From journalism of fact to opinion journalism Everything is a policy statements when headlines are clickbait Factoid. Validation by dissemination From factoid to fake news The quantum theory of media The quantum leap to the hamsterization of journalism and cannibalism of news teasers 7. Who will pay for journalism? No future for paid content. Except for paid from above Money talks When concerned billionaires and Big Tech care about journalism Philanthropy funding: paying for the pushing of pressing issues The Guardian and the genesis of the membership model Membership as a new business model Membership and the donating audience: paying for others to read 8. Why subscription mutates into membership The media as a notary service: news validation instead of news production Soliciting subscription as donation Does donscription work without Trump? 9. From making happy customers to making angry citizens: journalism follows money Ad-driven media: merchants of happiness Reader-driven media: negativity bias Inducing demand, the news media reshape the audience Subscription solicited as donation: a new and unexplored cause of media bias 10. Manufacturing anger. The post-‘propaganda model’ The moral of Lippmann’s elitism The Propaganda model: the basics Functions of media: an ongoing process of change The Propaganda model revised A new and weird reader revenue Flak Ideology of threat Sourcing: opinions’ supply Ownership of the media: it is not what you think it must be 11. Postjournalism: from the world-as-it-is to the world-as-it-should-be How did we get here? Donscription: subscription solicited as donation Impact for sale Negativity bias Activism Repudiation of standards Discourse concentration Post-truth: too good to be true Postmodernism unbound 12. Polarization: dividing, electrifying and uniting Polarization is a media effect Affective polarization Agenda-setting polarization Rebound agenda-setting polarization Ideological polarization 13. Understanding media effects: instrumental vs. environmental McLuhan’s Figure/Ground Analysis From instrumental to environmental Media literacy: against instrumental relativism 14. The residual needs for journalism and the desperate needs of journalism Newspapers as a discourse Holy Grail The really immortal qualities of good-old journalism – 30 – Conclusion: an ascent from the maelstrom Bibliography