Great WSJ column on the (d)evolution of news. My favorite part is the punchline:
And at the risk of sounding old
ourselves, we’re not so worried about the under-30 set and its supposed
allergy to substantive news. If a time machine could whisk us back to
ancient Sumeria, we bet you we’d find the stampers of the Daily
Cuneiform pulling their beards and muttering that kids these days are
interested almost exclusively in frivolous things: the hot new
Gilgamesh adventure, putting away too many bowls of fermented barley
beverage, and the doings of other youth, as opposed to worrying about
crumbling canals and what the Hittites are up to.Then as now, time passes and one finds oneself part of
a family and communities of all stripes, from the personal to the
political, with news part of the lifeblood of all those communities.
It’ll be waiting for today’s youth when they need it, just as it always
has been. Only this time those new devourers of news will have better
tools than any generation before them.
We hope think that we’re building some of those tools.
