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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

USA Today is news written for 5th graders. It has always been a waste of time and paper for anyone who really wants to know what's going on.

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The people who can only read at a 5th grade level are precisely the people who need to be more informed about what's going on

Why? They mostly don't do anything very impactful. Voting and other civic engagement is very low amongst the illiterate.

not talking about illiteracy, ~50% of americans read at a 6th grade level or below... that's certainly enough to make an impact, the 2024 election was decided by ~250k votes across 3 states... Michigan specifically has a reading level below national average

And the percent of eligible citizens who vote is often not much more than 50% in presidential election years (higher recently but not for good reasons). It's even lower in mid-term years. If you're not an engaged, informed person and your worldview is based on USA Today headlines I'd rather you didn't vote.

well you can enjoy your imaginary world where you get to decide who votes and who doesn't, but I'd rather the people who do exist and vote in the real world read USA Today than nothing at all...

we're talking in the area of 100M+ people, remove accessible reading from them and you're left with what? cable news and tiktok?

There's enough high quality video and audio news that it's fully possible to be an engaged and informed person even if you can't read for shit. Plus, text-to-speech is very good now. You can listen to written articles as well, even if you can't read them. You still need to evaluate sources and fact check, but that's a separate skill (albeit one most literate people also fail at).

I don't believe the literacy rate is a measure of intelligence, when the "three cueing" educational calamity is right there as an obvious explanation. That and Americans just being overworked and exhausted and sick all the time.

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