Major newspapers and even local ones (if they still exist) have been so dumbed down in the past few decades. I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level. Worse, news often seems to be written to elicit outrage or fear (probably because "engagement").

I can't access the article, so I don't know which newspaper they were subscribed to. But, given the wording of "the leading national newspaper", I can assume it would be "Le Monde".

The audience for the written paper is not less-than-high-school educated. Do you think the wording is at this level ?

Eg: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/09/08/pisa-202...

> I would estimate that many are now written to target a less-than-high-school literacy level.

I would have imagined they would have been targeting less than high school literacy since their inception. At least the ones intended to be read by the masses. I'd actually expect that they target somewhere in the 4th-6th grade literacy range.

Your first point is true, unequivocally so. I watched it happen ... from inside the newsroom for almost two decades.

We were actually taught in journalism school to write straight-up news for a Grade 5 level audience. You could get fancy if you chose in opinion pieces.

To your second point, if it bleeds it leads. That's always been the case. Journalism is, and always has been, a business. A sensational news story of yesteryear is today's viral content. It's the same thing — both are desirable because they sell.

It’s admittedly been a long time since I looked at a local newspaper, but I do seem them occasionally. Kinda seems like the local ones are just the local news segment in text format. Fine, but I can read that on my phone or watch it on the TV with much more convenience. Maybe there’s some interesting stuff left in classified ads or whatnot, but a lot of that shit so on marketplace now.

In Germany, there was a survey around 2009/2010, depicting that more than 60% of the audience of the major national daily newsshow do not understand the words used by the moderators

(it was about "Tagesschau", a major news outlet by the public broadcasting system)

Yeah, it's really sad, but it's a nail in the coffin of democracy. And prosperity. The news papers here seem to be written for 30/40 yr old, middle class women with just enough spare time to feel guilty about other people's behavior.

fair. plausibly tested what's easy enough to do and still seems like a win. we need a separate treatment for increasing informativeness of news.

They've been dumbed down for a reason...

Back in the mid-1990's, I took training as a literacy tutor. Our instructor noted that region's major newspapers (Detroit, USA) were written to a 6th-grade reading level. Except for the sports section, which was more like 3rd grade level.

I will agree that the Attention Economy has replaced most of the traditional "news" with angry click-bait.

[flagged]