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Newspapers are splat books for politics roleplayers.
The New York Times’ explicit model is to provide a narrative that increases the number of paying subscribers. This is also true about non-subscription media too, due to follower accounts and engagement on internet channels. Whether or not there’s a story, they have to provide one.
The reason that Pathfinder became so successful, despite being basically just a continuation of D&D 3.5, is because of the predictable content delivery. Every month you get a book, new villains to defeat, new problems to be overcome. But episodic, forgettable.
Sound familiar?
“Newspapers” here includes TV news, cable news, websites, blogs, Trending Topics, Substack newsletters, main characters of Twitter and whatever the AM radio cranks are on about this week. The narrative-industry complex.
