I believe he is correct. People in general have neither the time nor the training to collect raw information, determine what pieces of information are related and which aren’t, and the ability to do that and put the results in words the average person can understand is still needed today.
News isn’t going out of style because nobody needs it, it’s because they have lost credibility.
The greatest casualty of the Information Age is journalism and journalists — because we don’t need the “interpreters,” but the world’s foremost experts on their subject matter are capable of transmitting their information directly to people capable of understanding.
Not everybody will be receptive to great insights and understanding — which is the first task of communications — identifying the proper audience, and not just (broad-)casting pearls before swine, thinking that is an intelligent thing to do.
That’s the first task in effective communications — and not simply ranting to the world, thinking one’s message will be heard and understood by the proper recipients of that message. There are thousands of people broadcasting their messages on the street corners of the world everyday — and nobody is listening to them either.
And that is the problem of what the random, broadcast message has become in today’s world of communications and information — in which, the first thing done, is to identify the right audience for that information — rather than demanding the acknowledgment of their superiority of understanding that enables them to reduce the complicated to a simpler form.
Instead, most journalists make a simple matter complicated, to prove the superiority of their understanding — which is the ONLY thing they are communicating anymore, and why they are turning people off (and vice-versa).