Hyperactive reporting is a problem. Let’s fix it.

Om Malik:

The hyperactive nature of media, enabled by our dopamine addled brains has made it virtually impossible for any sustained oversights on institutions. Social movements lose traction before they even get started, and even when they do, they don’t last long. It took a television channel and a newspaper in Britain to bring the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the world. A few months later, CA is dead, only to be reborn as Emerdata.

Now, to be fair here, the journalism world has never been great at really staying on top of and sustaining reporting on big stories. A significant majority of journalists are news addicts, leaping onwards to the dopamine hit of breaking the next story, rather than developing an old one.

But yes, the internet has made this worse. But there’s no reason it has to. Slow, sustained journalism might actually be a more important part of building financially viable businesses than we’ve realised. It’s something I hope to spend some time exploring in the coming months.