> professional audience, not the general public.

Yeah but that doesn't help when the entire purpose, when what we need, is an informed general populace.

Keep in mind, our parents (age specific) and/or their parents parents paid for news and didn't question that setup. Advertisors then went there because that's where the eyeballs were. What we're seeing is that left to their own devices and lacking a war or famine to force behavior change people would rather cut their news source in favor of fluff.

It's not something the market will solve. The post 1940's US Media landscape was a direct reaction to multiple, non-contained wars in short succession. The political class doesn't feel they've "lost" control in a long time hence no urgency to fix it.

In a lot of cases we're seeing Advertising warp and destroy the industries they provide money to. It's not evil, just that industries start to invert whether the people or the advertisors matter.

Sadly, I fully expect to see the cover price of The Economist reach twice the federal minimum wage.

If the Fed goes back to cutting rates, it could be soon.

Access to information is not a solution to that. You can’t educate people who refuse to learn.