Anne Elizabeth Moore, a Chicago-based author in her evisceration of Vice Media, had three gems that are worth sharing.

1. Lie becomes joke becomes stance: the evolution of form is mirrored by readers’ decreasing attention spans in the Internet age.
2. The metric of success is “clicks” over “paper sales”—a clear, and discomfitingly natural, extension of tabloid news values into the digital sphere.
3. That’s reserved for “clicks,” both the motivator and the reward in a media ecosystem without broadcast licenses or cover prices—two outdated systems that, however ineffective, promote at least the appearance of media accountability to a viewing or reading public.

The merits of rest of her argument are for others better equipped to discuss.  I am not a purveyor of Vice, though I occasionally end up on Motherboard, a technology focused subsection of the publication. Still, Moore’s three observations are easily applicable to other publications as well.