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The end of grand narrative

It's quite rational to be less interested in serious news

By Godfrey Hodgson  
August 20, 1999
August/September 1999

This should be a golden age for news. Digital technology has put prodigious tools into the newsroom. People in the west are better educated and travelled than ever before. The only snag is that one by one, and then million by million, the audience for news-especially international news-is drifting away. Newspaper readership is declining in Britain, a fact concealed at the top of the market by a slight shift from tabloids to broadsheets; in the US it is falling more sharply. Within newspapers “serious” news, rather than comment, features or sport, seems least attractive to readers.

It is the same…

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Godfrey Hodgson

Godfrey Hodgson is director of Oxford's Reuter Foundation Programme. He presented the BBC Analysis programme, The Last Superpower.

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