Thread by @jonostrower

To save and reignite democracy, you have to change the economics of media, a 785-part thread.

But seriously, here are the front pages from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th largest circulation newspapers in the U.S. today. Can you see what's missing from all of them?

In print you won’t see a single opinion piece on the front page. (Except for a tiny Krugman plug in the bottom right corner of the NYT) Now look at their respective websites.

Every time I teach my class about the media & aviation I get the same commentary about the media perception. It all looks like opinion and they can't tell the difference. News orgs have done a phenomenally bad job at actually separating reporting and opinion.

What this says to the reader is that factual reporting is on the same level of importance as commentary. It's not. That's why it's usually the back two pages of the A section and not on the front page.

But we live in an era where engagement (or derogatorily clicks) are part of the economics of media, so we get blood pressure raising or view confirming opinion pieces alongside hard news that's on the front page because it's the most important thing you need to know today.

There are PLENTY of external forces that try to erode institutions, but institutions also erode themselves from the inside.