A New Year's resolution for journalists

(4) We will stop publishing “outrage du jour” stories. The toxic combination of partisan journalism and social media results in a barrage of faux outrage every single day. This is good for internet traffic but bad for the health of our society. And pretending that President-Elect Trump (or the Republicans or the Democrats or Congress or the Supreme Court) each day nudges us closer to the Apocalypse further undermines the credibility of journalism, in addition to making it nearly impossible to report on legitimate scandals. (If everything is a scandal, then nothing is a scandal.) The result over the past decade has been predictable: The Left moves further Left, the Right moves further Right, and those in the center are left pondering the sanity of our compatriots.