Letters to the Editor
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It has nothing to do with real journalism and everything to do with advertising demographics and survival in the medi marketplace
Who has disposable income and can be persuaded to spend it for products that promise anonymous sex, anonymous violence and racist and misogynistic snark? Twenty, thirty and forty-something white American males who have learned that they cannot afford to be empathetic in a ruthless marketplace.
That is all you need to know to understand that mindless march to war as well as George Bush and Don Imus. In most mediums mass-market journalism cannot survive unless it caters to that audience because they have the most disposable income and they have predictable pavlovian responses to time-tested advertising tropes.
That seems obvious when it comes to cable news and talk radio but it is less obvious in the case of major national newspapers. But their target demographic is the stockholder of the companies that target the most lucrative demographic.
Most journalists don’t consciously cater to them, they either have jobs or they don’t and they learn how to keep those jobs that pay well when they get them. Sex sells. War sells when it is experienced vicariously as it is taught in video games. Racist and misogynistic snark sells when insecurity and resentment fuel it.
The last election proved once again that that demographic is a minority. Reasonable folks have other means of getting the news.