Completely random question, but why the big dive on the week of the 13/06? Did nothing terrible happen? 
TIMA9X raises an interesting point about free to air news and daily newspapers. If you're a news provider in this genre and you sign up to the 'news as entertainment' philosophy a la Sunrise and Today (in a swirl of sulphurous smoke and chalked pentagrams on the floor ) you suddenly have to be...entertaining. Facts aren't entertaining. Credible commentary isn't entertaining. All the sensible people switched off when you went to the news-as-entertainment format so you have to stay entertaining, with all the emotive crap, inflammatory commentary, baldness cures and cute lil' koala stories that qualify as 'entertaining.' There's no room for boring old facts, because the people who want those aren't watching anyway.
The radio and the internet have the upper hand with actual news because they can constantly update their information. The paper and the broadcast are dead and outdated the minute they're printed/filmed, so there's nothing left in breaking news for them, hence news as entertainment (aka 'Come here stupid. We'll tell you what to think'). We're all getting so used to being called stupid and told what to think that there's a real scepticism building among the people with a degree of commonsense. Why are you telling me this? What's in it for you?
When it comes to news issues, everyone who cares already knows what happened and probably formulated an opinion. All that's left for the newspapers and broadcasts are emotive soundbites from opinionated people (aka 'experts'), infotainment and advertorial, all of which people are getting increasingly sceptical about. Which of these categories do GT et al fall under? Who knows...
Worrals travels everywhere courtesy of her own hard earned cash because no-one cares about her opinion enough to shout her a ticket/hotel room. She thinks this sucks and would be more than happy to do biassed opinion pieces about Flat Tyres outside Bourke and Why You Really Should Lock Your Motel Door in Thargo When You're The Only New Girl In Town AND scored the pub's last bottle of rum, if anyone would spring for the fare.
Last edited by Worrals in the wilds; 15th Oct 2011 at 13:00.