[CliffFletcher]

The business model of the traditional media has collapsed, fatally undermined by Kajiji, Craigslist, and the move to online consumption. I know people who have worked in the media for 25 years and they admit this is the twilight of the newspaper as we know it. Most of their colleagues have been laid off and moved into corporate communications It's no longer a viable business. Not when the money from classifieds has vanished, and digital ads on websites earn a small fraction of what print ads earn (and that's even accounting for ad-blockers).

So the media that are left are desperately chasing an audience. And how do you appeal to a broad audience in this day and age? Sensationalism. Click-bait. Superficial coverage that generates heat without generating light.

That's the dilemma - behave like traditional news organizations did and have a tiny audience. Or let the market dictate your content, and become no different than any other online echo chamber resounding with bias and outrage.

Take the example of the Globe and Mail. As the online version became its main platform, it gradually shed the in-depth, fact and research-heavy pieces and replaced them with columns. And not even even-handed and judicious columns, but flat-out polemics meant to champion a cause or other and outrage any who disagreed. Great for generating clicks and angry rejoinders in the comments section. Problem is that people can get dogmatic jerimiads and calls to action from any of a limitless number of blogs and forums. And the reliance on columns only fuels the belief that newspapers are all highly biased, and are not credible on important issues.

So are the media acting against their own interests? Or do they recognize that the audience for serious, thorough, balanced news is vanishingly small, and not viable in any commercial sense?