The Media’s Post-Advertising Future Is Also Its Past | The Atlantic

Final paragraphs from a journalism + advertising reality check

"Every once in a while, somebody asks me whether we’ll ever get back to a place where the country can agree on a “single set of facts.” Those asking the question tend to be nostalgic for the 1950s, when they could count the number of television channels on one hand and rely on Walter Cronkite and a local media monopoly to control the flow of information.

That past is dead and irrecoverable. We’ve accelerated backward, as if in a time machine, whizzing past the flush 20th century to a more distant, more anxious, and, just maybe, more exciting past that is also the future."

The Media’s Post-Advertising Future Is Also Its Past | The Atlantic