The past few weeks have brought bad news to the hardworking scribes of the news business. If the most savvy and avant-garde of the new digital journalists can't make a living, what hope is there for old-school newspapers? To many, the health of our democracy is inextricably tied to the health of our journalism: If the latter begins to die, the former must immediately follow. A resurrected Franklin wouldn't have a news job inside The Washington Post; he'd have an anonymous Twitter account with a huge following that he'd use to routinely troll political opponents, or a partisan vehicle built around himself like Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, or an occasional columnist gig at a less partisan outlet like Politico, or a popular podcast where he'd shoot the political breeze with other Sons of Liberty, la Chapo Trap House or Pod Save America. Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times, offers a peek into this collision between the legacy grandeur of journalism and the current zeitgeist in her memoir Merchants of Truth. Journalists pining for a return to their golden age of advertising-supported journalism are disturbingly similar to aged Midwestern factory workers seeking a return to the time when high-school-educated labor could afford middle-class lives with total job security. Revenue-wise, the Great 21st Century Journalism Shakeout will likely end with smaller organizations inventing new business models that those villains-the internet and social media-enabled. More than likely, given the new business models, this will mean some partiality from journalism as well. Read more