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Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

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Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#61

Post by philippnagel »

jawns wrote: post #16

This is sort of like Amazon announcing that it wants to strengthen its partnership with mom-and-pop shops, and help those mom-and-pop shops sell products in new and innovative ways. I'm a former journalist who used to work for a metro daily newspaper that has long suffered, as most newspapers have, from declining ad revenue. For these papers, the only reason to partner with Facebook is because they feel they have lit…

I am currently tinkering with something that might help.

Basically you would "sell" your readers CPU/GPU time to us via a small JS-script embedded into your page to power ML/DL and scientific computation tasks (similar to BOINC). Thoughts?

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#62

Post by threeseed »

jawns wrote: post #60
ihsw wrote: post #28

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism -- fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content. Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are. They peddle claptrap and tripe with reckless abandon. Facebook could throw ten thousand engineers at th…

> Conduct real journalism with well-paid staff that have the time to do their job I can guarantee you that every single editor in the country would like to have well-paid staff who have the time to do their job well. And if you can come up with a business model to make it happen, well then I am willing to dub you the savior of the news industry. But absent any suggestions about how news organizations can actually acc…

Hilariously enough one company has a business model that is working: BuzzFeed.

They have been using the money raised from their clickbait business to operate BuzzFeed News. Which actually is a very distinct unit containing highly respected, award winning journalists who work on old school, long form journalism.

Example: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/super-court

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#63

Post by notatoad »

mattlevan wrote: post #8

Is there anything Zuckerberg doesn't want to get his company involved with? It's been said on HN again and again, but I'm really looking forward to a decentralized digital publishing platform that gains momentum and actually gives Facebook a run for its money. Anyone know of any such existing platforms up and running now? Last I looked into this, I discovered "Steemit", but it doesn't seem very promising.

>Is there anything Zuckerberg doesn't want to get his company involved with?

I've seen quite a few comments (on HN and elsewhere) since all the "fake news" buzz started saying essentially "Facebook needs to stop pretending they aren't a news company. They are where people get their news, and they need to take responsibility for that"

And I completely agree. Whether zuck wants to be in the news business or not, he already is. Might as well do a good job of it.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#64

Post by threeseed »

NoGravitas wrote: post #53
oculusthrift wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because "mainstream media" like nyt and wapo have well respected, educated journalists working around the clock to research stories and find evidence whereas "alternative media" is a guy in his moms basement making up stories. just as with science, people only dispute it when it goes against their own interests.

That's quite an oversimplification. Your characterization of the alternative media is sometimes right (except that they're usually not making up stories -- they're usually summarizing stories produced by regular journalists, often with an editorial overlay). But there are also alternative media sources doing real research and investigative journalism, like Democracy Now! and the Intercept. On the other hand, the bigg…

The Iraq War happened well over a decade ago. And the New York Times et al all did internal reviews of their behaviour and made substantive changes.

From Morning Joe, this morning, you can already see that the New York Times has learnt lessons from that era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaI0u0ZdpMg

So the idea that they should still after all this time be permanently tainted is ridiculous and frankly is just an excuse by those who have different political persuasions.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#65

Post by pvg »

ihsw wrote: post #28

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism -- fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content. Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are. They peddle claptrap and tripe with reckless abandon. Facebook could throw ten thousand engineers at th…

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism

It doesn't change it because it's not a fact, let alone a universal one

fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content.

No it isn't. "Fake news" is not a synonym for "shoddy journalism" - it's not journalism at all but a deliberate attempt to mislead.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#66

Post by ABCLAW »

There's a continuing thread through these 'fake news' and 'new journalism' discussions, namely that there is a need for express interference in information circulation. This is premised upon the notion that there is a defect in circulation, but little discussion of the actual details of that circulation, its aims, and its qualities. The result is a discussion which has no direction, buffetted to and fro by the winds of self-interested parties.

Is there any appetite to begin a multi-disciplinary conversation about what constitutes an effective conversation? I feel as if there's disconnect here, one that leaves us all poorer, if only intellectually, as a result.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#67

Post by randyrand »

threeseed wrote: post #59
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by fake news? It seems to have started out as actual made up news by organisations/people/websites pretending to be news organisations, but actually just making things up - eg. The pope endorsing Trump story and I'm sure loads more on both sides. Then some professor published his list of fake news sites, and included a bunch of conservative media sites as well as satire as well as obvious fake news,…

Fake news should only really refer to the type of news that was generated from the kids in Eastern Europe i.e. completely made up with zero truth behind it. Unfortunately fake news has come to mean "news that I disagree with". Like today when Trump tweeted that the BuzzFeed story was fake news even though there was nothing fake about it. Just that the claims were as yet unverified.

There's plenty of fake news on both sides. It's amazing to me that people can be so far up their ass to no not notice that.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#68

Post by mcintyre1994 »

collias wrote: post #51
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why Buzzfeed are being criticised for it either, because they only reported verified facts - that the report was going around, that it was neither verified or falsified, that it contained errors and falsehoods. I imagine the others are just annoyed Buzzfeed jumped first when they all had it so they're criticising them.

Wouldn't pushing a story that was "neither verified or falsified", be considered "fake news", by some definition?

"By some definition", sure. I have no idea what the definition of fake news is (I just made a comment saying I have no idea what it is at this point), but I expect that some definitions being used would include buzzfeed yep.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#69

Post by untog »

ihsw wrote: post #28

It still doesn't change the fact that news orgs universally lack the time to conduct real journalism -- fake news is a direct result of reducing the time that journalists have to vet and verify content. Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are. They peddle claptrap and tripe with reckless abandon. Facebook could throw ten thousand engineers at th…

> Frankly I'm quite happy about "fake news" proliferating, it makes obvious how hopeless and useless news orgs are.

It feels incredibly reductive to group "news orgs" together like this. It's not as if they are all on the same level. Yet, all suffer from the erosion of trust in news media, no matter how good their work might be. Any if they all dies, what replaces them exactly? I'm yet to see anything close to a compelling model (especially from Silicon Valley).

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#70

Post by jawns »

philippnagel wrote: post #61
jawns wrote: post #16

This is sort of like Amazon announcing that it wants to strengthen its partnership with mom-and-pop shops, and help those mom-and-pop shops sell products in new and innovative ways. I'm a former journalist who used to work for a metro daily newspaper that has long suffered, as most newspapers have, from declining ad revenue. For these papers, the only reason to partner with Facebook is because they feel they have lit…

I am currently tinkering with something that might help. Basically you would "sell" your readers CPU/GPU time to us via a small JS-script embedded into your page to power ML/DL and scientific computation tasks (similar to BOINC). Thoughts?

It's a very interesting idea, but I see two hurdles to adoption:

1) Getting readers to consent. Oh, sure, they might unknowingly "consent" if it's buried in the TOS. They might even explicitly consent if you present them with a one-time consent form that implies it's making use of resources that would otherwise be idle. But then their laptop starts to heat up every time they visit the site. If they leave the tab open, other apps appear sluggish. Eventually, they're going to notice that they're not actually giving away something that has no cost to them. It's more like loaning someone your car when it would otherwise sit parked in your driveway. Eventually you're going to notice wear on your car, and an empty gas tank.

2) Digital advertising revenue is insufficient, by a significant margin, to replace print-ad revenue. I would expect the revenue from this type of arrangement to be low enough that it doesn't solve the problem, but only stems the tide a bit. Perhaps some publishers would be willing to invest the time to integrate with this, even if it's a comparatively low revenue stream. But I think most publishers are investing most of their energy looking for the true game changer: a business model that can actually sustain their business.

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