>There is a frightening dearth of well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding as opposed to hit a word limit and generate pageviews.
I've left comments like this before, but I'll reiterate: go subscribe to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs. There are others in this general vein, too, but that I don't care for as much: Mother Jones, n+1, etc.
Sites like "The Feature" and "Longform.org" also help.
Look, I know that, and I will sit there and read thousands of words of well-written copy all f*ing day.
Meanwhile, Americans are terrifyingly ignorant of basic facts about the world around them and their own lives.
"Well, the elite media exists, and people with college-level reading skills know what's up, so I guess we don't have to do anything" isn't a real answer.
>Meanwhile, Americans are terrifyingly ignorant of basic facts about the world around them and their own lives.
That's a demand problem, not a supply problem; in the GP you wrote: "There is a frightening dearth of well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding as opposed to hit a word limit and generate pageviews." But there isn't "a frightening dearth of well-produced content." You can argue that too few people want to read it, but you can't legitimately argue that it doesn't exist.
>you can't legitimately argue that it doesn't exist
I can! I said:
>well-produced content from a variety of perspectives that seeks to measurably increase understanding
I would argue that lots of the quality stuff out there is designed for consumption by an audience that's already really smart and well-informed, and doesn't increase what we can call "net understanding" by the whole of society.
What about targeting people who aren't already well informed? Fox News is great at this, only their goal is to help the Republican Party. What if someone did the same thing with the goal of making people smarter?
I know this isn't a new idea and sounds incredibly naive. I don't care. There's a need for this whether the demand is there or not.
I've left comments like this before, but I'll reiterate: go subscribe to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist, and Foreign Affairs. There are others in this general vein, too, but that I don't care for as much: Mother Jones, n+1, etc.
Sites like "The Feature" and "Longform.org" also help.