Since I was in school for journalism in 2007 I’ve been saying the same thing — instead of continuing to produce episodic articles, the news media could have shifted to providing context that helps people keep track of long-running processes that affect them. I do that for my friends, because I listen to the news all the time, and I can explain how events in the news today are part of much longer series of events. They find it very valuable. But if the news media ever does this, they tuck it in to existing article formats, but unless you are very attentive over years, its not possible, easily, to keep track of why something is happening or what led to it.

Hypertext and databases were made for this, but the news media can’t see it. I tried, for years, in school, at conferences and in various journalism jobs, to get people to see how this could make journalism more useful and powerful, but here in 2024, we’re still doing “articles, except on the internet”. And I can’t afford to keep working in the news media long enough to be in a position to try it out. Nobody can, unless their actual livelihood is coming from somewhere else.

So here we are, in total context collapse, and a dying news media whose slow disappearance, especially at the local level, is actively hurting people, and our democracy.

It’s bad, and its going to get a lot worse as AI makes it cheaper and cheaper to lie convincingly. But what can anyone do?