The Wednesday Letter #213 - 3/27/2024

THIS WEEK: Post-Investing; African Currencies; The Role of a Stock Market; The Islamic State is Back; Baltimore Bridge Collapse.

POST-INVESTING

A friend of ours recently mentioned the book Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers in which the author Andrey Mir explains that today’s media has moved away from the advertising model to the reader model. In the former, media outlets provided news and were paid mainly through advertising. But when advertising revenues collapsed, “the business of the media mutated from news supply to news validation… When people turn to the news media, it is not to find news, but rather to validate already known news”.

By ‘validation’, Mir means that readers, listeners and viewers tune into media that validate or confirm their point of view or political leanings. A media outlet works within a cause or mission and its consumers are followers of the same cause or mission. To follow a certain paper or channel means to be an adherent to a certain set of beliefs, much in the same way that a donor may contribute to a think tank. A prime example of this shift is The New York Times where adve…