"Something curious happened while we were mourning journalism's decline: it was quietly reinventing itself. Not through grand reforms or billion-dollar bailouts, nor through scribes deciding to all just pivot to video, but through the slow, almost invisible coalescing of individuals. What first looked like atomization countless isolated voices scattering across the digital plain is now beginning to resemble the early formation of something else: a lighter, more nimble kind of institution."
"For years, the story of journalism was told as tragedy. Once-majestic news organizations Hearst, Gannett, McClatchy, and indeed my own Associated Press declined steadily, bled dry by digital disruption and managerial hubris. Their demise was taken as proof that the public no longer cared for serious reporting, that the algorithm had conquered reason. But perhaps the rot ran deeper. Perhaps these empires fell not only to technological change but to their own bulk to inefficiency, middle-management bloat, and a certain exhaustion."
"When social media first became the global public square, its promise was intoxicating. Anyone could publish, anyone could be heard. The result, inevitably, was cacophony: a million cat photos, duck faces, and screaming polemics. We were, as a society, probably unprepared for the democratization of attention. The first wave of the creator economy produced visibility but not necessarily value. Yet beneath the noise, the tools matured. Platforms emerged that were not built for virality but for connection platforms like Substack, Patreon, Medium, Beehive,"
Legacy news organizations declined under digital disruption, managerial hubris, inefficiency, middle-management bloat, and exhaustion. Their collapse created space for smaller, more agile forms of reporting to emerge. Social media democratized publishing, producing noise, visibility, and fragmented attention rather than consistent value. New platforms focused on connection rather than pure virality, enabling creators to build direct relationships with audiences. Platforms such as Substack, Patreon, Medium, Beehive, and YouTube helped mature the tools and the business models that align creators' incentives with platform success, enabling sustainable, creator-driven journalism to grow.
Read at www.mediaite.com
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