There has been a marked decline in the amount of complexity/detail you get in a mainstream publication about many topics, they've moved to a thoughts/feelings/opinion style of reporting over drier "just the facts" style, I don't know why but I imagine engagement online is better and that's bled into print but not a journalist.

I do know that I find print journalism (generally) far less useful because I like detail.

Mainstream media has to compete for attention with dozens of new classes of entertainment, much more than we used to have in the 20th century.

I find it human that attention span, and willingness to engage deeply with a topic, has declined in such an environment.

I think there's been a large difference in the tech-literacy of people since 1997. If you ask an average person what a "byte" is or what an "IP address" is, they'll have no idea. Sure, its not something that everyone would know about back then, but I think it's more likely the layperson would be able to understand that article

I disagree, I think we get that impression because the Internet used to have only tech-savvy people on it but now we hear from everybody and their dog