The One Weird Trick: What Can We Do With It?

Part IV of a V-part series

The International News Superhighway

Now let’s return to one of the most morbid and perplexing problems in the annals of the deterioration of American liberal democracy: the death of journalism.

Just as most Americans don’t fully grasp what Google has achieved, neither do they realize the degree to which quality journalism has deteriorated. Polled by Pew, seven in ten Americans agree that the news media are doing “somewhat” or “very well” financially.

The reality is that the Fourth Estate is all but gone, at least in the form that current-day adults have known it. The tech giants have strip-mined journalism.

Written journalism once supplied the bulk of original reporting to the American market. It was financed, mainly, by classified advertising and by cross-subsidization from other, more popular parts of the newspaper (sports, gossip, comics). This advertising has migrated en masse online, especially to Google Search. The shift of distribution and advertising revenues to Google and Fac…