We Are in a Writing Renaissance

When I started trying to get into journalism in the early 2010s, the old newspaper business model was in terminal crisis. Whole newsrooms were being laid off. Thousands of newspapers across the country were folding or going online-only. A new crop of digital magazines had risen to take their place, but most of them were nakedly clickbaity—as BuzzFeed proudly proclaimed in its title. They also seemed to operate at the whims of oligarchs: Arianna Huffington had become, for no clear reason, a leading figure in the industry. It would also soon become obvious that these outlets relied heavily on the mercy of social-media algorithms. In the mid-2010s, Facebook changed its algorithm to de-emphasize news, eventually spelling doom for BuzzFeed and its ilk.