The Real Reason the Mainstream Media is Dying

Much has been said and written about how this was the “Podcast Election”. Undeniably, the long-predicted transition away from TV and newspapers towards podcasts and Substacks has now reached the point of no return. 

Many argue that this is the result of decay, corruption and ideological possession of the legacy media. And they’re not wrong: it is true that the formerly “mainstream” media are decaying, corrupt and have been so dominated by an ideological monoculture that their coverage of the election destroyed what was left of their credibility.

If you think I am exaggerating, look at this photograph which has received extensive commentary on social media in the last 24 hours:

Two weeks ago, the man in the middle claimed that the man on the left organised a Nazi rally in the heart of New York City. Many observed that this reflects the complete dishonesty of the entire Democratic Party machine which concocted lies about President Trump they themselves did not believe. Again, they’re right: if the man in the middle really thought the man on the left was Hitler, what would his behaviour in this photograph say about him?

But, the interesting point here is not that politicians lie to win elections. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is hardly the Democrats alone who exaggerate and embellish. Politics is the art of convincing the greatest possible number of people that you are on their side while knowing that you will inevitably have to disappoint a large proportion of them. You can’t please all of the people all of the time but you have to pretend to try.

The interesting point, instead, is what the media did when President Biden lied about the rally in Madison Square Garden, when he called Trump supporters “garbage” and smeared his opponent. The one thing they did not do is their job. They did not say “How dare the leader of our country compare his political opponent to Adolf Hitler?”, “How dare he insult the majority of Americans simply for supporting the other party?” or “He is lying about his opponent to win”. Instead, they spread and amplified these lies.

But the primary reason the media landscape is changing is actually not cultural; it’s economic. Put simply, the technological advances of the last 20 years have rendered the traditional media model obsolete. 

What does a TV channel or a newspaper do, exactly? It buys content produced by individual journalists, anchors, and presenters and packages it together into a newspaper or TV programming. What is a newspaper or a day’s worth of TV content? It’s an aggregated set of opinions from a range of voices pre-selected for you by the editor. Like a taxi company which hires a large number of different drivers, a newspaper or TV channel hires lots of different contributors and sells their services to its customers.

In the pre-social media era, this model made sense for everyone: the consumer had a manageable selection of content curated by a trusted authority, writers and content creators had access to a large, otherwise unreachable audience, and the publication enjoyed the profits and influence conferred by the sum total of its audience and contributors.

All three of these advantages no longer apply.