The post-literate age
Marshall McLuhan once predicted we’d wind up in a “post-literate” world. And now we have arrived, Rose Horowitch argues in a brand-new cover story for The Atlantic, “The End of Reading is Here.”
Horowitch, who graduated from Yale in 2023 and wrote that viral 2024 essay about “the elite college students who can’t read books,” posits that “the literate era will prove to be a brief interlude between the oral and digital ages.”
Books, she says, can hardly compete in an environment where “entertainment is limitless,” the scroll is endless, and AI can read for us. And that has implications for… everything:
“The advent of reading and writing transformed society… The decline of reading will bring about changes of the same magnitude. It will affect our innermost thoughts, our society’s politics and culture, and how we tell the history of our civilization. If we look closely, we can see that these changes have already begun.”
Horowitch describes Trump as “our first postliterate president,” noting how he has “pioneered a style of communication that exploits our distracted, disputatious age.”
My friend Joe Weisenthal said it ten years ago: “We’re entering a post-literate age. Oral culture is back.”
There’s been more and more talk about this in the past couple of years. Esquire editor Michael Sebastian wrote last winter in “The Lost Art of Reading an Actual Book” that when we stop reading, “democracy falters, liberalism retreats, stupidity abounds, and — perhaps equally as bad — we become less… cool. The postliterate age is going to be super lame.”
But as Tyler Cowen wrote for The Free Press around the same time, the signs of a return to “oral culture” are everywhere: “YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts are growing or robust. Texting is a major form of communication, but it is the written word conforming to the standards of oral communication.”
Besides, as Horowitch points out, her friends are increasingly replacing texts with voice memos.
The WSJ’s Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg recently wrote about sagging sales for “dad books” and quoted Harper Group publisher Jonathan Burnham saying, “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts. The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history” instead.
Since you’ve read this far, you probably have all sorts of pro-reading counterarguments to make. I do too. I read more than I watch. I even “read” lots of CNN programming by eyeing the closed captioning in real time and scanning the transcripts later. (Yes, every CNN program is transcribed, and it’s wonderful.)
But the trends are indisputable, even if the long-term impacts of short-form video and the scroll are unknowable. Horowitch writes, “Could the generations growing up with their brains hooked to endless video feeds be developing some kind of novel, as-yet-undetectable cognitive brilliance? Perhaps. But for now, the decline of reading seems to be ushering in a less rational, analytical, and sophisticated mode of thinking. It’s difficult to see any advantages in that.”
You should read — yes, read! — her cover story in full here. (Or maybe wait until it’s in print!)
Peter Kafka’s new “Channels” podcast interview with Joe Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, pairs perfectly with this topic. The Times is working much harder than most people realize to produce more “video-first journalism.”
Kahn said the video push is “as big a transformation as the print-to-digital transformation that I and many others were involved in for the last 15 or 20 years. This is as big a structural adjustment for us and a priority in terms of our journalistic storytelling as that.”
Kafka said he was surprised to hear Kahn put “that much emphasis on it,” and Kahn said it’s imperative: “We will always provide good journalism in text form. But the idea that we can just continue to refine the text form as people’s viewing habits shift, I think, is kind of head in the sand.”
“We’re in a race against time,” he said, “to make sure that good-quality journalism competes with AI-generated slop and influencer-generated non-original journalism out there on the internet. It’s imperative for us to be able to translate the good work that we’re doing into the forms that people want to consume their journalism in.”
>> Relatedly: New BBC boss Matt Brittin told lawmakers that “we have to be” on platforms like YouTube because “the BBC is like the disinfectant for misinformation if we get our journalism right.”
That’s how Colin and Samir summed up this news. Netflix “is leaning into snack-sized content as it seeks to claw viewing time from YouTube,” James Faris and Lucia Moses write for Business Insider.
Netflix’s newest licensing deal, announced yesterday, will bring “videos ranging from 3 to 20 minutes from brands like Bon Appétit, Cosmopolitan, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Vogue.” The shows “center on topics like travel, cooking, and fashion.”
A coalition of state attorneys general is continuing to investigate Paramount’s pending deal for Warner Bros. Discovery with an eye toward suing to challenge it.
This Reuters headline reflects that investigative effort: “Oregon to ask court to delay Paramount deal for 60 days while it reviews records.”
Oregon AG Dan Rayfield’s office tells me his team will be in Multnomah County Court today to enforce a subpoena and ask for that delay, asserting that Paramount “has refused to comply with state law and is evading review.”
Paramount says the info Oregon wants — about its interactions with the Trump administration — “has nothing to do with whether this transaction complies with Oregon’s antitrust laws and is not a legitimate basis to delay a plainly lawful, pro-competitive transaction.”
Another one of Trump’s lawsuits against a news organization has fizzled out. This time, it is a defamation lawsuit that the Trump Media and Technology Group brought against The Washington Post in 2023. A federal judge in Florida has thrown out the suit, depriving Trump Media of the trial it wants. Here’s my full story…
Amanda McGonigle, the person behind @CatsOnACouch, an Instagram account with nearly 2 million followers, which “exists purr-ly to troll the current administration & have more followers than JD Vance,” sued the Trump administration yesterday after allegedly being barred from public events featuring the VP.
McGonigle claims the administration violated her First Amendment rights by turning her away from events she had registered to attend due to her online criticism of Vance and Trump.
“It’s absurd that the Secret Service is wasting their time tracking a satirical cat account on social media,” McGonigle said in an ACLU press release announcing the lawsuit…
This just in: Graham Platner’s team is “trying to navigate an exit” from the Maine Senate race “without entirely squandering the movement he built,” and he’s “expected to announce his decision through a recorded video, which could come later today,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny and Arlette Saenz reported just now.
Lyndsey Fifield, whose allegations of mistreatment by Platner were published by the NYT last month, spoke on camera for the first time yesterday with Jake Tapper.
“There was a national reckoning after the 2024 presidential campaign about federal officials — Joe Biden and his White House, specifically — hiding important health information from the public. But the hiding hasn’t stopped. If anything, it appears to be getting worse,” CNN’s Aaron Blake writes.
Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office is refusing to say why he was hospitalized. “That’s led even some prominent MAGA figures to cry foul and demand more disclosure, while others traffic in conspiracy theories,” Blake notes.
Scott Jennings said yesterday that he spoke with McConnell by phone, but he didn’t share any concrete info about his former boss’s health. Since he’s able to call Jennings, McConnell “should be able to shoot a 60-second proof-of-life video to show us that he’s okay,” Democratic strategist Mike Nellis said on “NewsNight” last night.
Hungary’s new prime minister, Peter Magyar, is making good on his promise to “overhaul state media and stop what he called ‘propaganda’ under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán,” Reuters reports.
Yesterday, Hungarian state TV suspended its news broadcast and posted an on-screen apology for past “lies.” There were also reports of firings at some state-run media outlets.
This is probably the most important sentence in the Reuters dispatch: “Creating a genuinely balanced public service media will be a major challenge, analysts have said…”
>> WPIX, the NYC TV station known as PIX11, has returned to normal after being evacuated yesterday due to the unstable building across the street from its studio. Kudos to the journalists and engineers who kept the station on the air all day. NewsNation’s NYC bureau also had to evacuate. (CNN)
>> ABC has defended “The View” again in a new FCC filing. Brendan Carr responded by again casting doubt on whether the show should be considered a “bona fide news program.” (LAT)
>> The FTC has OK’d James Murdoch’s deal for New York mag and Vox. (TheWrap)
>> The Hill has announced a new subscription tier that will include “exclusive podcasts and newsletters, and calls with Hill journalists for $5.99 per month.” (THR)
Netflix, Disney and YouTube “are all interested in challenging Fox for the US broadcast rights to the 2030 and 2034 World Cup,” CNBC’s Alex Sherman reports. Amazon and Apple “could also enter the mix, further fueling a potential bidding war for the rights.”
Sherman hears that discussions “are expected to begin sometime in the next three months” and “English- and Spanish-language U.S. rights are likely to be sold together, rather than separately as they have been for previous World Cups.” Netflix already has the US rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cups.
>> Preliminary #s show that the US–Belgium match averaged about 42 million US viewers across Fox and Telemundo, making it “the most-watched soccer game in American history.”
>> Meta is releasing “a new AI model for creating images as the company seeks to attract creators and advertisers to its offerings.” (CNBC)
>> As part of that Meta rollout, “Instagram users with public accounts need to opt out to block AI generations of their content.” (WIRED)
>> X “is introducing new video editing and recording features in hopes of encouraging creators to publish original content on its platform instead of recycling others’ material.” (TechCrunch)
>> Google is giving content creators and website owners “a better idea of how people find their social media profiles and YouTube content through Search.” (The Verge)
>> This year’s Emmy nominations will be announced at 11:30 a.m. ET and live-streamed here. Yesterday, Mariska Hargitay was revealed as the host for the Sept. 14 awards show.
>> “The hotly anticipated Britney Spears biopic is moving forward with the hiring of screenwriter Liz Meriwether to pen an early draft.” (Page Six Hollywood)
>> “Sacha Baron Cohen has wrapped production on a new Ali G film, which will bring his sketch comedy breakout back to the big screen.” (Variety)
>> MrBeast ”is joining the cast of ABC’s reality program ‘Shark Tank,’ where he will be a guest shark for season 18, which will debut in the fall.” (THR)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.