Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

by Ryan Holiday

There is this naive belief that readers have: If news is important, I’ll hear about it. I would argue the opposite—it’s mostly the least important news that will find you. It’s the extreme stuff that cuts through the noise. It’s the boring information, the secret stuff that people don’t want you to know, that you’ll miss. That’s the stuff you have to subscribe to, that you pay for, that you have to chase.

The world is boring, but the news is exciting. It’s a paradox of modern life. Journalists and bloggers are not magicians, but if you consider the material they’ve got to work with and the final product they crank out day in and day out, you must give them some credit. Shit becomes sugar.