Why the chase for clicks and analytics-based reporting may simultaneously kill the media and elect Trump

Finding our way back to a Dark Ages of information one click at a time.

By Andrew J. Pridgen

In the old-media Dark Ages, only the office flu went viral. Articles were shared by passing them across the breakfast table. And liking something meant, you actually liked it—not that you felt you needed to in order to placate someone looking for attention.

But that’s all changed. Now there are numbers, lots of them—and very specific ones at that— attached to everything. And everything has a pre-assessed and post-assessment value. These very words, probably around 1,345 total when you reach the bottom, are words that I have the ability to scrutinize, gerrymander and analyze to pinpoint to the exact fraction of a penny how much they’re worth.

For decades, Macy’s bought 5/6th of a page next to Herb Caen’s daily bread of 1,000 words of notes, ephemera and other stuff Bay…