As journalists lose their jobs, more publicists get hired. The result is that there are now seven times as many publicists as journalists. The rise of AI agents will only make this worse, much worse.

The entire media ecosystem is breaking down. Around three-quarters of journalists now block publicists who are (they believe) spamming them. I get so many pitches from PR people that I can’t even begin to deal with them.

I’m fortunate that I’ve found other ways of getting access to useful information—but that’s more a workaround rather than a real solution. In the meantime, all the noise coming from the publicity world isn’t good for anyone. As a result, many deserving musicians, authors and other creatives can’t get any attention, no matter how talented they are.

There are many causes, but the single biggest one is the decline in paid jobs for journalists. And the underlying reason for that is obvious: Google and Facebook stole all the ad revenues that previously supported journalism. Fix that and so many other problems go away End of story.