At the New York Post, law prof Glenn Reynolds discusses the rise of citizen journalism that the internet has enabled:

If you don’t follow the press, you are uninformed, goes the old saw; if you do follow the press, you are misinformed.

Nowadays you can actually be, you know, informed if you carefully follow the alternative press and social media.

“Truth wins as ‘citizen journalists’ rise — and legacy media fades,” June 17, 2025

Of course, one must choose carefully. But media options abound, relative to the situation fifty years ago. That is principally because the internet crashed the cost of getting into the business and reaching people.

One often hears people bemoan the alternative media that are deeply partisan and unqualified but the same people tend to ignore the many responsible figures who report otherwise neglected stories.

One outcome of the opportunity to easily look around for news is continuing loss of trust in traditional media:

Gallup recently discovered that 69% of Americans distrust the media; only 31% generally believe their reporting.

That’s a huge change: In 1976, after Watergate, 76% trusted the media. “And legacy media fades,”

The loss of trust is partly fueled by the fact that traditional media — no longer individually needed just so we can know what is going on — have tended to morph into a “viewpoint,” often that of a small, unrepresentative group of people:

… the traditional media set narratives for the people in the middle — the disengaged, passive news consumers who assumed what they heard was true.

As Gallup’s results demonstrate, that group is nothing like a majority anymore.

… Constant repetition of talking points, nonstop targeting of whoever counts as Hitler this week and an unending sense of crisis meant that hard-core supporters stayed engaged and motivated. “And legacy media fades,”

Servicing hard core supporters can be a recipe for success, of course, but it will not likely lead to the market dominance that traditional media had in days gone by.

Much more at the link.