It's amazing how obvious it seems in hindsight, but it's a signal that if you change the underlying network architecture of how people consume content then the characteristics of popular content change.

Newspapers -> broadcast TV -> site based web -> network based web

I'd argue that network based web looks a lot more like the wild west days of hyper newspaper competition than broadcast TV. Fake news is essentially peer sourced yellow journalism. And I'm amazed publishers didn't see that coming -- there's historical precedent!