A broad question to consider: What, actually, is the purpose of journalism? Is it to inform? To entertain? To pressure? Or, in a sense, to extort the powerful? Yes, I think we’re getting closer.
When popular opinion is a walled city, secured with towering inattention, those who control the one path to the city gate control nearly all. However, the peer-to-peer model, the many voices, the emerging age of airborne information conquest has the powerful in a waning paradigm calling for a dome. A last-ditch defensive offensive.
Let us proclaim: only that which is worth rereading is worth reading even once! Oh, Dante, your words from 725 years ago still ring true today, while last week’s headlines, monetized speculative conjecture, are already hopelessly dated. No deep clean of time is needed. The gentle breeze of a week or less wipes it all away almost every time. The current thing is tomorrow’s nothing.