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Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

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Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#21

Post by joeclark77 »

What you're describing is a blog. I wouldn't wait a day for it, since the blogs I follow provide links and commentary within hours. The challenge is to find one that isn't a one-trick pony, i.e. isn't just about one topic like politics.

If you want to launch a new one and be successful, you'll have to find a way to stand out from the crowd. That's probably going to be a "bias" of some kind, or at least a particular philosophy you intend to bring to bear through your commentary.

For example, I would be interested in reading a blog that reports on the news through the lens of black swans and antifragility (see Nassim Taleb's books). It's something I haven't really seen done well.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#22

Post by joeclark77 »

awgme wrote: post #14
codeddesign wrote: post #9

Impossible. Your own biases consciously or sub-consciously would ultimately skew the curation. Facebook ran into this issue a little while ago with trending topics. If they did it manually, it was skewed. If they did in algorithmically, it was skewed based on whoever wrote the algorithm. The only possible way that I could see this working is if you had 3 columns: Left-wing, right-wing, and relatively unbiased (all ne…

That was what we had in mind! I guess instead of saying we're trying to be "less biased", we should be focusing on "what both left and right-wing leaning news are saying", as long as the information is correct.

The problem with that is that in most cases, one of the two of you will be more talented and get more traffic, resulting in the other guy getting flamed by commenters, etc. For example Sean Hannity's show used to be "Hannity and Colmes", one right-wing and one left-wing commentator, and poor Mr. Colmes was just outnumbered and outgunned to the point that he quit.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#23

Post by bryanrasmussen »

awgme wrote: post #14
codeddesign wrote: post #9

Impossible. Your own biases consciously or sub-consciously would ultimately skew the curation. Facebook ran into this issue a little while ago with trending topics. If they did it manually, it was skewed. If they did in algorithmically, it was skewed based on whoever wrote the algorithm. The only possible way that I could see this working is if you had 3 columns: Left-wing, right-wing, and relatively unbiased (all ne…

That was what we had in mind! I guess instead of saying we're trying to be "less biased", we should be focusing on "what both left and right-wing leaning news are saying", as long as the information is correct.

It might achieve some popularity but the difficulty of determining correctness or bias or other things without bringing your own bias to the problem will of course mean that the stated goal is not what will actually be the end result.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#24

Post by kahrkunne »

awgme wrote: post #15
kahrkunne wrote: post #10

I'd be willing to wait, but you probably wouldn't be able to write unbiased news with one day and two people. Bias is not something you do on purpose, it's something you have to work very hard to avoid.

We're not thinking of writing a new piece of article for each given topic, but more going towards giving a list of maybe 2 or 3 link to articles that can fully describe the happening of an event. And as I mentioned in another comment[0], our goal to be "less biased" is to feed readers(other people in the loop) other sides of the story as well, as long as the facts are correct. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…

I think that might be the way to do it. At least, it is what I do; I don't even try anymore to find unbiased news, I just get many news sources of which I know how they're biased.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#25

Post by partisan »

It would be a fine idea but I wouldn't exclusively use your service because then I am only seeing the world through your lens. I would synthesize it with the other news sources I use. If your service has an obvious political or social position, then I would ask you to state that upfront as either part of the identity of the site or as part of a disclaimer.

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#26

Post by NumberCruncher »

dfmooreqqq wrote: post #5

I usually wait a week for less biased, more reliable curated news ( http://theweek.com/ )

I usually wait a year or more until somebody writes a book about the subject. And I realise that the "random burning issue in the middle east" or the "life story of the next celebrity killed by drog abuse" is not just boring like hell but also totally irrelevant for my life and I do not want to waste my time reading books about this nonsense.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Re: Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

#27

Post by codeddesign »

brudgers wrote: post #17
awgme wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was what we had in mind! I guess instead of saying we're trying to be "less biased", we should be focusing on "what both left and right-wing leaning news are saying", as long as the information is correct.

Curious what would be considered left leaning and right leaning and whether or not an "equal time" approach might reflect a bias.

Correct...The only way around this that I see would be to allow voting in which the crowd would decide if the article would be in the correct column or not.
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