Merchants of Truth

The definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade. With the expert guidance of former executive editor of _The_ _New York Times_ Jill Abramson, we follow two legacy (_The_ _New York Times_ and _The Washington Post_) and two upstart (_BuzzFeed_ and _VICE_) companies as they plow through a revolution in technology, economics, standards, commitment, and endurance that pits old vs new media. _Merchants of Truth_ is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state of the news business told by one of our most eminent journalists. Jill Abramson follows four companies: _The_ _New York Times_, _The Washington Post_, _BuzzFeed_, and Vice Media over a decade of disruption and radical adjustment. The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning and fickle audience of millennials. We get to know the defenders of the legacy presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty Baron (_The_ _Washington Post_), Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet (_The_ _New York Times_), Jonah Peretti (_BuzzFeed_), and Shane Smith (_VICE_) as well as their reporters and anxious readers_._ _Merchants of Truth_ raises crucial questions that concern the well-being of our society. We are facing a crisis in trust that threatens the free press. Abramson’s audiobook points us to the future.