hat is news? Is it a commodity or a luxury item? Can you quantify it, or will only qualitative measures suffice? Can what made newspapers and journalism so crucial to democracy even work in the internet age? Can a business model be found to sustain it? And will its purveyors be value-agnostic technologists bent on refining algorithms that control our attention, or will there still be a place for traditional editor judgement?
In alternating chapters, Jill Abramson's Merchants of Truth attempts to answer these questions by telling the story of two of the media's most potent disrupters – BuzzFeed and Vice – alongside that of two of its most storied old guard – the New York Times and the Washington Post – as they navigate these shoals.
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