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Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

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Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#81

Post by Jordrok »

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…

> Fox News' "Fair and Balanced" slogan needs to taken as religious dogma...

I think I agree with most of what you're trying to get across in your post here, but the reference to Fox News is throwing me off. Followed to the letter, being 'fair and balanced' is certainly something that should be aspired to, but Fox's use of it as a slogan has always been a complete joke. Fox's interpretation of 'fair and balanced' is hardly any better than than the 'fake news' alternative.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#82

Post by ihsw »

pvg wrote: post #65
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.

It doesn't have to be deliberate but it can be completely unintentional. Let's take a look at the latest rumor mongering about Trump -- many news orgs have happily reported that intelligence agencies have evidence of Watergate-level wrongdoing and they've thrown in sexual deviancy for good measure, but all of it is unsubstantiated.

I'd expect reputable news orgs to not touch the issue until we see public statements by public officials but they're talking it up like no tomorrow. This is fake news and it qualifies just as well as shoddy journalism.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#83

Post by timdavila »

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.

>decentralized digital publishing platform

Like the internet?

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#84

Post by wfo »

oculusthrift wrote: post #29
wfo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could ask how you draw the line between "mainstream media" and "lies" just as easily and just as poignantly. The answer is easy in both cases. When they lie, it's a lie. When they don't, it's not.

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.

Sometimes "alternative media" is something like the Intercept, full of pulitzer-prize winning journalists who present a view contrary to the political establishment and are adversarial with respect to those in power, in sharp contrast to the "mainstream" NYT and wapo who are essentially government stenographers when it comes to much of their coverage -- they tell us what "a government source" has told them to tell the public without a critical eye or examination. If they dared print real criticism, they would lose their access or funding.

Sometimes it's Democracy Now!, a long-running counterculture mainstay that again presents an adversarial view and touches on subjects the mainstream media never would -- finding out about the Dakota Access Pipeline issue and reporting in depth months before the mainstream media deigned to grace it with even a moment of coverage.

Sometimes it's Breitbart. In those cases you are correct but 'alternative media' is an umbrella term that just means 'any group of people who do not behave as a mouthpiece for the political and economic elites'.

After the Telecommunications act of 1996 media has massively consolidated. At this point the 'mainstream media' refers to the media owned by those same 6 extremely powerful megacorporations that control all 'approved' 'serious' discussion. Alternative media means any alternate view.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#85

Post by MasterScrat »

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?

Reminds me of the hackathon project made by MIT students. It was the same idea but it would mine BTC instead of doing ML in Javascript.

Site archive here: https://web.archive.org/web/20140425180831/http://tidbit.co....

To be honest if I had a dead simple way to pay a few cents to read an article I would do it for a number of publications. But I'm not willing to signup individually to each one.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#86

Post by TenOhms »

threeseed wrote: post #41
collias wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Yesterday was a great example of mainstream sources losing credibility. They were all over the (as far as I know) totally unverified document that an intelligence agency decided to leak to Buzzfeed for some reason. They wonder why no one trusts them anymore...

The mainstream media did a fine job. Your criticism is completely misplaced. The New York Times, CNN, Guardian etc all reported the verified facts. Which is that a report was produced by an ex-MI6 spy looking into allegations that Russia had amongst others compromising video involving prostitutes/golden showers and President Elect Trump. This report was obtained by John McCain and passed to the FBI for verification.…

Compare 'peegate' with 'pizzagate'. On the latter, the mainstream media wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole (rightly so), because so much was pure speculation from internet neckbeards and trolls (to use affectionate terms).

With the former, we have the press doing the job of internet trolls, shoveling serious allegations with absolutely zero evidence given.

Through a political lens it makes perfect sense, it's very sad, and I can't trust anything the main stream media tells me anymore. They've lost me forever unless there's a serious 'come to jesus' moment and they confess their bias and rectify it.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#87

Post by jawns »

ihsw wrote: post #71
jawns wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I don't mind kicking them when they're down, news org editors are some of the most vile scum of the earth. They have no shame about peddling garbage. Unless they make a sincere effort to restore trust by reporting the news instead of trying to shape society by controlling the narrative then I will happily dig their grave. At this point there is no news org I rank higher than Reddit comments -- it's all a stream of pi…

I used to be a news editor. I guess I should consider myself vile scum as well?

The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle:

10 Revenue declines.

20 Cost reductions are needed. First, you trim operational expenses, but eventually, you need to reduce head count.

30 With fewer reporters and editors available, you either overwork the remaining staff, leading to burnout, increased turnaround, and a reduction in quality, or you reduce coverage.

40 Either way, subscribers notice an inferior product. They're getting less than what they used to get, either in terms of quality or breadth of coverage (and likely both).

50 Subscribers cancel their subscription.

60 GOTO 10

So now we arrive at a catch 22. The product is not going to improve in quality unless a lot of people are willing to pay for it, and a lot of people (such as yourself) aren't going to be willing to pay for it unless the quality markedly improves.

I wonder if it might be possible for newspapers to get around this problem by doing a Kickstarter-like conditional pledging campaign. Basically, you have people commit to buying a subscription, but only if a high enough threshold of other people also commit. Then it becomes a win-win. If the campaign reaches its threshold, then everyone involved can feel pretty confident that it generates enough revenue to bump up the quality (assuming the newspaper is actually committed to doing that). And if it fails to reach the threshold, then you're not out any money for an inferior product.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#88

Post by pvg »

ihsw wrote: post #82
pvg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't have to be deliberate but it can be completely unintentional. Let's take a look at the latest rumor mongering about Trump -- many news orgs have happily reported that intelligence agencies have evidence of Watergate-level wrongdoing and they've thrown in sexual deviancy for good measure, but all of it is unsubstantiated. I'd expect reputable news orgs to not touch the issue until we see public statements b…

It doesn't have to be deliberate but it can be completely unintentional.

That's not what 'fake news' means.

many news orgs have happily reported that intelligence agencies have evidence of Watergate-level wrongdoing and they've thrown in sexual deviancy for good measure

No reputable news organization has reported that. I understand how you can be unhappy with the state of journalism but your arguments are not helped in any way by you inventing 'facts', redefining terms or completely misrepresenting reporting.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#89

Post by _23sd »

maxfurman wrote: post #21
patja wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious about your conclusion that some newspapers in state capitals are doing OK with subscriptions. Can you say more about which specific state capitals and newspapers you see as thriving? What do you see as different that is making newspapers in state capitals succeed where those in other cities are struggling?

Not the parent, but I think it just means some cities are big enough markets to support a locally-focused newspaper but most smaller cities and towns aren't. It's no secret that local papers are dying but for example the Philadelphia Inquirer is still around.

Exactly. Yes, the big papers are less profitable than before, but however much the LA Times complains about adblock they're not going out of business. My hometown paper, on the other hand, is having trouble affording to have the full staff of journalists they used to maintain, and hiring someone to modernize their online presence may be out of reach.

Re: Introducing: The Facebook Journalism Project

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

jawns wrote: post #87
ihsw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind kicking them when they're down, news org editors are some of the most vile scum of the earth. They have no shame about peddling garbage. Unless they make a sincere effort to restore trust by reporting the news instead of trying to shape society by controlling the narrative then I will happily dig their grave. At this point there is no news org I rank higher than Reddit comments -- it's all a stream of pi…

I used to be a news editor. I guess I should consider myself vile scum as well? The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle: 10 Revenue declines. 20 Cost reductions are needed. First, you trim operational expenses, but eventually, you need to reduce head count. 30 With fewer reporters and editors available, you either overwork the remaining staff, lead…

> The major difficulty traditional local newspapers have faced over the past two decades is this downward cycle

IIRC, It's more like 4-5 decades, and while the cycle is approximately correct for the positive feedback loop now running, it didn't, as I recall, actually start with declining revenues, it started with a wave of newspaper mergers (and acquisition of newspapers by non-newspaper firms) and attempts to increase profits after those mergers by reducing costs, which got you to the step you label "20", and the cycle took off from there.

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