The field being taken over by 20 year olds is a consequence of the field's revenue being eaten by tech. There's not enough money to make a decent living on now, so those filling the void will be more ideologically motivated.

The change in journalism is one of the most important developments in recent decades. While always a business the economic incentives have completely changed and thus the product has been reshaped to best profit from the new environment. Things like accuracy and objectivity are now counterproductive both increasing costs and losing revenue.

Taibbi’s book does a good job of explaining these changes but the situation is still evolving and the definitive analysis has yet to be written. Much like the news today the story has to be pieced together from multiple sources with varying biases including outright misinformation.

I’m starting to think that this is the actual “normal” information situation. It’s everyone’s responsibility to determine the truth for themselves by comparing multiple sources, getting primary information and thinking hard about what’s going on.

It's about hiring people that will blindly follow orders, hence young and impressionable 20 year olds. Same thing that's been happening in Silicon Valley for years now.

> The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds.

Is ageism really a valid critique on professional journalism?

Another part of the problem of journalism/advocacy is cancel culture. Some people want to deny that it exists, or that it's problem, even if it does. But it's precisely the reason that you felt the need to virtue-signal that you didn't like Taibbi (whoever he/she is; I don't know). Everyone feels the need to "take sides" in whatever is being discussed. All of this tribalism is part and parcel to the problem you're decrying. It's the thing that's blurring the line. The twenty-somethings have been raised in this culture, and it is a normal function of society to them. Only people in middle age or better can readily remember what the world looked like before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and opened the gates for pure advocacy. We're all living in Rush Limbaugh's media world now, and Twitter just gives everyone a platform, and takes it to the extreme.

It is super weird to read a comment about the difference between advocates and journalists holding Matt Taibbi out as a "real journalist". Taibbi is the apotheosis of the journaladvocate you're talking about. He's also a lot of other things that you don't like about journalism; for instance, see his coverage of financial engineering topics during the "sucking blood funnel days" of the 2008 crisis, for some Crichton Amnesia Effect fodder.

As always I'll point out that the real controlling law for all this stuff --- the quality of journalism, the quality of advocacy, the quality of software engineering, law, medicine, whatever --- is Sturgeon's.

I tried paying money for it. I fought with one newspaper's website for an hour to figure out how to buy one year of access without recurring charges to my credit card. When I finally figured out that I needed to buy a gift subscription for myself it turns out their credit card form only has the next four years as expiration date options (my credit card expires six years from now).

The media isn't interested in financial support from their readership. Too many of us to deal with. They prefer a few powerful interests and a small number of big checks written.

having watched the media landscape over the past two decades, the market for real journalism is apparently small and shrinking. there's not enough such money available to support it at its desired size.

"real news" loses to social media because it can't compete on the novelty dopamine feedback loop (otherwise known as popularity): being the first to bring up new info or make a novel comment about it, getting a dopamine hit (esteem), then going back to the trough for more. old journalism is comparatively too slow and sparse at this.

so traditional news, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to join the fray instead of being crowded out. this won't change until good journalism can compete for (enough) attention without being subsumed by the social novelty feedback loop.

it's not so much about value or even actualizing journalists' activist stances (as others seem to be arguing), but the competitive dynamics of the market they're in.

The idea of free journalism sounds great until it's all ad driven and click bait-y. A digital news subscription cost less than $1 daily and it's still a challenge to convince people to commit to one. I'm glad some long form journalists are moving to substack.

We need to consider that some things are a public good that must be paid for as such, not as merely a commodity. Public broadcasting is the model that works best and achieves the correct balance between public good and market forces.It can be neither entirely one (state controlled media) nor the other (click bait drivel).

They don't want this. Most of today's journalists are activists and they want the widest audience possible, whether it pays handsomely or not.