In Reply to: When it comes to the entertainment and... posted by SagoBob on March 16, 2026 at 13:14:13
Pretty soon Donnie’s allies won’t need a stranglehold over what gets reported. The bigger issue is that less reporting will exist at all. We’re steadily pulling reporters out of the field.
Outlets like The Washington Post and CNN are being hollowed out, but in many ways this was inevitable. The economic model behind newspapers and television news has been collapsing for years. Increasingly, these organizations resemble charities: owners lose money while being attacked by both political sides no matter what they publish.
Even Fox News faces the same long-term structural problem. The median age of viewers at MSNBC is around 70, and Fox’s audience is close behind. Cable television itself is shrinking, which means the carriage fees that once funded cable news are disappearing as fewer households subscribe.
What journalism really needs is a new economic model that actually incentivizes reporting. Some of the most meaningful investigative work is now coming from smaller, independent outlets. For example, Pablo Torre, working with a relatively small podcast budget, has broken major stories or amplified investigative reporting that traditional outlets overlooked. Other journalists are experimenting with unconventional funding models, including investing before publishing investigations that expose wrongdoing.
In the end, there may soon be very little left to “control” in traditional cable news and newspapers. Their audiences are aging out, and the institutions themselves are shrinking along with them.
Something new will rise out of their ashes which will be much more efficient financially and have fewer gate keepers between the investigators and their audience.