Groupthink

We're well onto the backside of the "digital revolution" in mass media now with all its attendant benefits and disadvantages. 

On the plus side, news is more immediately available now. Also, despite a recent trend away from it, reader interaction still carries more weight than it did before everything began to move online.  

On the minus side, we've reached the point where "social media" has become its own profession in a way that much more resembles the world of advertising and PR than it does that of journalism or activism.  But that's probably inevitable.  No matter what it is people are into, money finds a way to crowd out people's organic influence over that activity eventually.

Despite all of these shifts in the landscape, the number one problem with professional media remains groupthink.

I used to spend some time trying to figure this out. Those of us who were against it were against it, in part, because it didn't make any fucking sense at all. The nation was gaslighted by the Very Serious People who had no idea why the fuck they thought this was a glorious adventure. 

And so the need for honest independent feedback and discussion still exists. For a while, we kind of had some of that.  But now that professional media, social media and the ad business have blended to become.. whatever this new thing is...  we're starting to lose that little bit.