Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization

By: Andrey Mir

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers may be the most profound analysis of the subject since the last time Marshall McLuhan wrote about it. Mir describes a universe in which the news now chases the reader rather than the other way around. Everything is told in a wonderful epigrammatic style – you will be digging up quotes from it for years." – Martin Gurri, author of “The Revolt of the Public”.

"The most important book in media theory that has been written in 40 years." – Paul Levinson, author of “Digital McLuhan”.

"Andrey Mir’s Postjournalism offers a powerful, sweeping narrative of how news media have evolved over the centuries." – Arnold Kling, economist, author of “Crisis of Abundance” and “Invisible Wealth”.

"In his book Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers, Mir is here partly to praise newspapers, partly to bury them, but mostly to explain why their death is (a) inevitable and (b) a very big deal. He communicates this with a history of news media and a blizzard of concepts and neologisms." – Danyl Mclauchlan, “The Spinoff,” New Zealand.

"As Mir argues, this change in the economic structure of the news media has quietly transformed journalism from a theoretically neutral means of “manufacturing consent” into a political cause that people are rallied into supporting, usually by inciting them to some form of outrage." – Murtaza Hussain, “The Intercept”.

You might have heard about postjournalism. This is the book that introduced the concept of postjournalism in 2020.
The main cause of the mutation of journalism into postjournalism is not political; it’s economic. Journalism was funded predominantly by advertising, but the internet took ads away. The news media were forced to switch from plentiful ad revenue to desperately seeking revenue from readers and viewers.
But people always already know the news from their newsfeeds. It is impossible to sell—news is no longer a commodity. However, when something triggering happens, people still want someone authoritative to confirm how bad this bad event is and reassure them that others see it in the same light.
This is the service that old media still can offer. Because of the loss of ad revenue, the news industry has switched from news supply to news validation. This is the primary cause of postjournalism, leading to fundamental changes in agenda setting, the rejection of standards of objectivity and impartiality, deepening polarization, and other issues.
The ad-driven media manufactured consent. The reader-driven media manufacture anger. The former served consumerism. The latter serve polarization. The book explores polarization as a media effect.
(The book was revised in 2025).

Other books by Andrey Mir:

• Human as Media. The Emancipation of Authorship. (2014).
• Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. (2024).
• The Viral Inquisitor and other essays on postjournalism and media ecology. (2024).
• The Digital Reversal. Thread-saga of media evolution. (2025).