Having lost their traditional business to the internet, the news media are forced to sell ‘something else’. But selling something else, not content or ads, makes them sellers of something else, not the news media. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). Years ago, resort photographers had…

By the end of the 20thcentury, the business model of the media took its last and most optimal form: the media sold news downwards whilst simultaneously selling the audience upwards, to advertisers, creating a “supportive selling environment” (Herman) or agenda. Advertising dominated the business model, providing 70% of revenue and…

Fake news is not the principal problem in the new media environment. The impact of fake news is already mitigated by the users’ growing immunity and also by the growing noise that diminishes the potency of fake news’ impact. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). The…

The news validation within a certain value system is the only remaining function of news business that might have relative use-value for readers. The need for the business to survive forces the media to shift its operational emphasis from news to values. …

Herman and Chomsky thought that government and corporate bureaucracies subsidized the media by supplying news, as it was rather expensive to have correspondents everywhere. And they were right. But now it costs almost nothing to get evidence from wherever you need it using the internet and social media. As a…

The topics and discourses that do not support polarization will not circulate in the media for long or will be completely ignored. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). The polarization of stances requires the commonality of topics, in which the stances have to be polarized. In…

The commercial motives behind the media coverage of Trump remain unrevealed to the public. Business stimuli for the media to cover Trump’s every move contributed to a media environment favorable to Trumpism. Meantime, the media themselves became more and more politicized and contributed to the surge of polarization in society…

Increasingly, the product of journalism will be paid for not by those who consume it but by those who want it to be delivered to others. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). In the media markets of the developed countries, a peculiar phenomenon has emerged, whereby…

Radio and television returned vocal signals and gestures into communicating socially significant content. The postmodernist replacement of feelings with intensities goes hand in hand with the replacement of literacy by orality and the retribalization of culture by electronic media. A chapter from “Postjournalism and the death of newspapers” (2020). Electronic…