For Profit Media is At Odds With A Healthy Democracy

A slowly improving society is an economic threat to an attention-based media. Panic pays; progress does not. In an information economy, demand steadily shifts toward drama, conflict, and daily news designed to seize and hold our attention. People will pay to watch a zero-sum game played on the grass; nobody pays to watch grass grow.

The politics of theater does more than elevate drama over boring progress. It has a way of putting us in the seats, watching events unfold, rather than giving us meaningful roles to play. It turns citizens into spectators - passive and angry at the same time - a particularly corrosive combination for a healthy society. 

A democracy cannot thrive when its citizens are treated primarily as an audience.