This is exactly what I was going to say. The news economy, and the algorithm economy, both depend on grabbing attention.

If you make a news article saying everything’s a kind of okay right now, nobody’s going to read it and look at your ads or click on anything.

If you say oh my God the municipal water boards totally f***** you won’t believe what they just did, people are going to click to see what the hell happened. And then you say everything’s mostly okay, but the commissioner wore a weird tie to the meeting…