Here's another important shift during that time period: journalists become media personalities.

Not socialites. Not someone in a prestige industry. Media personalities.

Like, imagine how we view certain podcasters today. Let's cut the shit: they're cool.

If you want to be an artist, writer, whatever these days, there's a big chance that you're also going to end up a podcaster. They serve the same exact function as journalists did 10 years ago--at least culturally speaking.

Why did this happen? A bunch of reasons.

But saliently, what we already know -- the business model changed!

So, on the publication's side, there are two ways to generate clicks:
(1) Clickbait
(2) A personality that draws you in

Now, everyone likes to point to Gawker and Buzzfeed for being the real disruptors in this space. I don't disagree--they didn't help. But may I submit another theory:

Vice really, really fucked shit up.

So you have all these Millennials who want to be someone, but are obviously not going to go onto work for The New York Times or anything. And they know it. NYT won't take you, but you know who will? Gawker. Buzzfeed. xoJane. Vice.

Vice was especially pernicious, because

however briefly, they both masqueraded as "good writing" and absolutely *defined* what it meant to be cool. This was the apex of journalism-as-a-personality, journalism that wasn't really about journalism.