Why you probably hate the news media and some journalists

This blog post started out as an explanation to my friends and family in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, why their newspapers had become shadows of their former selves. Why their newspapers were so thin. Why news coverage was so shallow. Why they felt like they weren't getting their money's worth.

But really, we can't get there without first talking about where we were 30, 40, 50 years ago, in the Golden Age of media, before the internet.

To get up to the present, where most people say they do not trust the news media, we have to talk first about

• The impact of cable news on news content and credibility
• The impact of the internet on news content and credibility
• And the impact of news media arrogance on credibility (but please, don't jump to the end; work with me on this). 

The Way It Was--Highly Profitable

Newspapers had more than 100% market penetration into the 1960s. That is, total circulation exceeded the number of households (detailed in How I Ran My Newspaper Monopoly.) Today total newspaper circulation represents less than one-tenth of the U.S. population.