Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

politico.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 170 posts

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#121

Post by betenoire »

flukus wrote: post #87
betenoire wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick. I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we and I'm just uninformed?

I agree, but change journalist to "software developer" and see what kind of reaction you get around here.

For things we absolutely depend on, (like information in order to make rational choices), then hell yeah!

The thought of firmware or software in my body at some point scares the bejesus out of me, and it would bring me peace of mind to know there are accredited and audited standards for developing my pacemaker warez

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#122

Post by betenoire »

ghaff wrote: post #98
dbcooper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we should have strict rules about who can call himself an engineer?

I don't agree with the parent about journalists (or that software developers should be licensed in general). But I would point out that, especially for engineers involved in signing off on certain things from a regulatory perspective, there is a Professional Engineer license that's required for certain jobs. I took and passed an Engineer-in-Training exam at one point because had I continued in my then job path I'd ha…

We don't always need to apply an idea in the abstract to everything in the world. There is a big difference between someone who makes CRUD apps for a living, and someone who writes firmware for a pacemaker. No need to paint with such broad strokes.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#123

Post by someguydave »

dbcooper wrote: post #96
betenoire wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick. I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we and I'm just uninformed?

Perhaps we should have strict rules about who can call himself an engineer?

Such rules already exist and are widely ignored.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#124

Post by losteverything »

trhway wrote: post #102
betenoire wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick. I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we and I'm just uninformed?

>why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. >Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Russia has basically done it. Any web resource with more than 3000 monthly visitors gets the "mass media" status with additional rules and restrictions and related punishments. I'd not say that this is a good thing to say the least.

What?

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#125

Post by tcbawo »

jhayward wrote: post #63
njharman wrote: post #52

The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers, MPAA, RIAA, newspapers, governments and even people who expect hard to access (look up in county courts files) means effectively "private". There is vastly more supply of "attention" than there is demand for "attention". Combined with the ease of distribution/search and picking and…

> The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution. This is undoubtedly the key aspect of the networked world. Papers have, in the past, tried to do various forms of syndication and distribution bundling deals to establish a viable business model but to my knowledge these have all been abject failures. Compound this with the loss of monopoly income from local classified ads and we have implosion. My suggesti…

Better (yet scarier) would be curated content. I would love for someone to filter the firehose of information, but I don't want to live in an echo chamber. I don't want a feed that tries to hide opinions or facts I disagree with. Provide me the basic arguments and rationale from multiple sides, not strawman arguments. Provide fact checking (with context). Today, this function would best be performed by people.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#126

Post by Clubber »

betenoire wrote: post #79
nkozyra wrote: post #10

The conclusion that a drop in readership is proof that moving to the web was a mistake is extraordinarily shallow. "Readers continue to leave print newspapers, but they’re not migrating to the online editions." Because they have more options. Print products were often monopolies, especially in the early to mid 90s, a hey day for newspapers. There was often a single publication per DMA. What happened then is newspaper…

My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick. I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist. Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we and I'm just uninformed?

Cynically, I think it's because the constitution implies journalists freedoms that certain public figures would prefer the general citizenry not have.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#127

Post by quirkafleeg »

rustynails wrote: post #94
amelius wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm curious. Are we actually measuring how well people are informed in general? Is informedness declining? That would be interesting, since the web is supposed to bring us information, not take it away.

The media has always had a vested interest in what it tells you. Look up William Randolph Hearst as an example. However, today, you see a lot more blatant manipulation in the media. People are conditioned to it, which is scary. Take a subtle example, Ars Technica almost never says Chairman, it says Chairperson, but it will say Chairwoman (which also shows their ignorance of the origin of Chairman). Ars has played all…

> Take a subtle example, Ars Technica almost never says Chairman, it says Chairperson, but it will say Chairwoman (which also shows their ignorance of the origin of Chairman).

Where is your evidence for that claim?

Chairwoman - About 272 results: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=chairwoman+site%3Aar...

Chairperson - About 179 results: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=chairperson+site%3Aa...

Chairman - About 2,960 results: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=chairman+site%3Aarst...

> True of False (taken from Wikipedia): "Limited voting rights were gained by some women in Sweden, Britain, and some western U.S. states in the 1860s."

> The answer of course is False. We have voting records from the UK (as one example) showing quite a few women on independent means voting in the 1830s

How does that make it false? It doesn't state that no woman voted in the 1830s, it states that some women gained voting rights in the 1860s. The only way it's false is if no women received voting rights in the 1860s.

It's not "an example of a stream of calculated deceit that has flourished in the last 20 years", it's simply an example of nobody who edited that page being aware that some women voted in the 1830s.

If you have legitimate sources demonstrating they did (your link states 1843, BTW, not 1830s) then edit the Wikipedia page and add/correct that info. That's how Wikipedia works.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#128

Post by tcbawo »

carlmungz wrote: post #46

As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I started teaching myself to code last year, I told my editor as well as a couple of other senior staff members (including the chief exec) about my ambitions to combine coding and journalism. My editor was all for it but there was little she could do besides telling…

I had high hopes for Everyblock, the hyper-local social network (almost a geographic form of Facebook). Besides user-generated content, it aggregated much public information (permit applications, police reports, etc.). It was initially developed through a grant as open source software. I was convinced that newspapers would latch onto the platform. But, that never really seemed to happen. NBC News bought it and shut it down in 2008. They attempted a re-launch, but I haven't followed it since then.

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#129

Post by spc476 »

rustynails wrote: post #85
olalonde wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sacrificing the ideals of journalism sounds like a bad deal for democracy We should not romanticize journalism of the past too much either. The "old news" subreddit gives some perspective (obviously, it's biased towards funny or unusual stories) https://www.reddit.com/r/OldNews

I have recorded one year of imagery in a 1970 newspaper (as a start). Speaking from firsthand experience with comparisons from the last few years, media has taken a huge leap backwards and prejudice and nastiness has increased considerably. This is in spite of most people who haven't compared saying the opposite of what I have observed ("oh, you want to go back to how it was 50 years ago when men were all sexist?").…

And go back to 1900 and you'll find completely biased newpapers (The Arizona Republic used to be called The Arizona Republican: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arizona_Republic ---that's not the only example either) and over the top reporting that would give newspapers (and TV) a run for their money today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism). Was it better in the 1970s? Or was the bias better hidden at the time?

Re: What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake?

#130

Post by jrcii »

ams6110 wrote: post #113
specialist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists attempt to tell the truth, gets second sources, endures fact checking, and correct any mistakes made. Pundits are just loud mouths. Truthiness is irrelevant. Propagandists knowingly lie, distort, omit, whatever.

Journalists also focus on facts - who, what, when - and avoid bias. Something that we've seen has gone out the window at what used to be legitimate news sources. I have no problem with opinion pieces or punditry, but don't try to disguise it as journalism.

That type of journalism is going away fast. Often if you look at the New York Times, for example, almost every article on the front page is an anti-Republican op-ed style hit piece masquerading as journalism. CNN is the worst after that, followed closely by MSNBC, ABC News etc.
Post reply on HN