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I wrote a piece that argues something I've been thinking lately: that we've been overemphasizing "trust" in the post-Trump discussions about journalism and underemphasizing the fact that many people just think reading lots of news makes their lives worse.
niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
The rise in mistrust toward the media is driven by (a) the accurate observation that "the media" online includes a lot more untrustworthy characters than the old media did, and (b) a decades-long ideological campaign to denigrate journalists' work. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
Making a real dent in either of those is going to be really, really hard. While I'm all for listing your editorial values on your website and other such pro-trust moves, the reality is that the people watching Hannity aren't going to be swayed. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
But there's a (larger, I'd argue) group of people who avoid news because it leaves them stressed, anxious, depressed, afraid, disempowered, and exhausted. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
These are people who don't have the news-junkie gene, who aren't infovores by nature. They are not Media Twitter. And the reason they avoid news isn't that they don't trust it — it's that it makes their life worse. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
Here are some comments left on an @iroughol piece over the weekend on news avoidance. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do… 
These aren't people who've been poisoned by ideologues. These are rational economic actors who look at what we're offering, see what effect it has on them, and say no thanks. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
You may think they're being irresponsible citizens. But it doesn't much matter, does it? Shaming them is unlikely to make them active @nytimes subscribers. They're deciding how they want to use their waking hours every day. niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
For me, this is a much deeper critique of our work than "These people don't trust us." It's: "These people don't think we're untrustworthy — they just think our product doesn't add anything of value to their lives and maybe makes things worse."
niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
niemanlab.org/2019/06/why-do…
The bright side? It's a lot easier for me to imagine journalists solving *that* problem — making a better news product people find useful and valuable — than it is to imagine solving a trust problem that's been driven deep into the psyche of one slice of America for 40+ years.
