> True, but a difference is that they could not spread their confidently wrong opinions globally, only locally, and that opinions were tied to their identity.

The content producer - audience ratio was just different, a dumb line from a journalist would definitely have an outsized reach that go well beyond what the writer might have expected.

As you note, even today people with a global reach aren’t that many: I could be shouting a lot of thing on top of my soap box, I’d probably not be actually reaching more than a few dozen people, and we have enough content for the effect of a single person to be vastly diluted.