Much ado about the dying newspaper known as the Washington Post.

Not from the public, mind you.

But from other journalists.

The average legacy newspaper reader is 55.

When I wrote books about journalism in the early 2020s, I noted that smaller newspapers were being abandoned by readers, and a few of the larger dailies were benefitting from the migration, but only because it was a Battle Royale: people who still read newspapers wanted to talk to other people about what was in the newspaper they read. They cared about what columnists thought, and what was the sanctioned narrative acceptable at cocktail parties.

But I also noted that eventually, the number of Big Gun dailies (Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times) would eventually suffer declines, with the true news junkies switching to newspapers with the biggest cache and clout.

Eventually, it came down to the Los Angeles Time, Washington Post, and the New York Times.

But the Los Angeles Times was purchased by a journalism illiterate owner and it dropped out of the running.

But the Washington Post was bought by a Tech Bro, and people at the paper felt optimism.

Except creating the world’s largest flea market doesn’t translate to understanding both the business model of journalism and the actual journalism itself.

And now the Washington Post is not going to be the last newspaper standing.

The New York Times is holding on: its owners know journalism. It’s not the beacon it once was, but people who care about having a certain mindset and image are sticking to it for now.

WaPo journalists can grovel all they want to their overlord: the truth is this model of journalism is antiquated.

Social media made everyone a potential media outlet. YouTube and SubStack gave people a false impression that if they had a following, that they were the superior media outlet. Narcissism took over: never mind these people were making the same mistakes as the legacy outlets, but only more so.

With AI, those SubStacks are about to go through the same culling as the legacy outlets.

Why settle for partisan opinion, when you can conjure up an empirical and neutral report in seconds?

We are undergoing a great correction and upheaval at the moment. When the dust settles, we will see news consumers have a radical new relationship with information.

And it’s long overdue.

AI is a different species, and one that is made for this era.

Legacy and social media are bygone eras. The dinosaurs may give it one last hurrah, but they can’t compete with the exotic new animal that can thrive in every new condition it finds itself in.