Ask Paul: July 10 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s a nicely diverse set of questions to kick off the weekend amidst our latest summer heatwave here on the East coast.
Outlook.com Inbox tabs
simont asks:

Have you heard anything more about mailbox categories/tabs coming to Outlook.com and the Outlook client? Apart from the leaked screenshots a few months ago, Microsoft hasn't said anything about that feature publicly.

Not officially, but someone reached out to me (I think on Twitter, since I can’t find it in email) to show me a screenshot saying that Outlook.com was actually taking away most of its existing tabs (Promotions, Social, and Newsletters), leaving Focused Inbox as the only choice. So I’m not really sure what’s going on there.
The evolution of news
jwpear asks:

Have you read Loserthink by Scott Adams?

No, sorry.

One topic Scott covers is how the ability for news companies to instantly read what is driving up ratings and what is not has changed them from delivering information to manipulating our brains for profit. The goal today is to elicit an emotional response. Naturally, this makes the news more polarizing.

Yep. This is a huge problem, and as traditional news organizations disappear, they’re being replaced by tech companies and news aggregation services, which accelerates this change. My late-70's-, 80's-, and early 90's-based education, coupled with the cold war, taught me that a free press is important to a free society. It pains me to hear people throw out "fake news" and talk of how worthless the press is. It feels like we've forgotten how important the press is and that some in the news industry have forgotten this too. If Watergate were to take place today, I'm pretty sure Nixon would remain in office. It's just too easy to manipulate people and polarize them.

I could not agree more, and the acceptance of fake news may be the single biggest threat to democracy today.

I often wonder if writers/journalists today are/were required to take an ethics class covering topics in their field of work?

If you’re traditionally educated, probably. But most media today is more of the “blogger” variety with no formal training. I didn’t go to school for journalism, either, but I at least benefitted from many years of writing under the wing of a formal publication with very real rules regarding not just style but also ethics.

Not trying to make this political. Just thinking more generally. How do media companies run their business, and writers/journalists earn a living, while balancing that with a form of information delivery that doesn't heighten emotions and polarize so much?

I don’t see this changing, sadly. It would require massive federal protection and regulation, and let’s face it, we have politicians that have come to power specifically because of fake news and the lack of this protection and regulation. We’re going to need a lot more outrage before there’s any change.

Sorry to be so negative. T...