The Transformation of News Media from Journalism to Entertainment

The journalism industry is changing at a rapid pace. Not only are newspapers failing from collapsing advertising support as people finding free news online, and using search rather than brands as a route to information. But news media has also become something different than it used to be: entertainment.

Polls have shown that Americans agree the news spends far too long with coverage of thing like celebrities and the rest of the entertainment world. The news has no longer become a source of information, but a world of fun, danger, and melodrama.

Martin Kaplan is a Professor of Communication at USC. He recently spent time recording and studying local news in Los Angeles to see how much time was devoted to each type of news story. The results were found to be sports, weather, crime, and countless trivial stories.

Kaplan explains how and why this came to be.

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