It's a little rich seeing Matt Taibbi, of all people, raising the alarm about "moral manias".
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The American Press Is Destroying Itself
241–250 of 618 posts
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#242Conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan was separated from New York Magazine. He quickly found a platform in other magazine. While I disagree with Andrew a lot, I dont think he should have been censored.
Where are you seeing that Sullivan has left New York Magazine? (Sullivan should shut up about this particular controversy; he has not covered himself in glory on this issue in the past, and has no extra credibility here to burn).
Sullivan is on some kind of weird double secret probation and quite unhappy about it.
I do not understand the comment about his not having credibility to burn. Opinion columnists aren't jockeying to run for class president. They're supposed to take various opinions in order for ideas to be more fully fleshed out.
If the only purpose of the opinion section is to say things that reflect well on you or cover you in glory, we can pretty much skip the entire exercise and just lay-off all these people right now.
It's odd, and I don't direct this at you, but for some crazy reason people think that they should like all of the opinions that various press outlets run. I wonder if they have any idea the various opinions places like the NYTs have allowed folks to express, and quite rightly, too. When I have to like or agree with an opinion columnist, I'm missing something about where the value in the transaction is. I already know what I like and believe in. I don't need to read it over and over again.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, but I do read more than you, and in more languages. People who are smug like you and think people reading too little are "the problem with our country" read very little themselves. They tend to assume the world is as small as they are, and overplay their meager achievements like reading through a New Yorker article.
The problem isn’t people reading too little. It’s that people such as yourself only read a fraction of an informative article and stop because it’s “too long”. They read the headline and skim the article and get whatever their limited comprehension gets from it, and then proclaims they know what the article is saying when they don’t. Pretty much sums exactly what you were saying. I can only imagine the high level of…
Whoa, both of you—no petty spats on HN, please, no matter how much you read.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else was or how provocatively they behaved, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#244I don't think they are. I think they are optimizing for survival. Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it. So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the hi…
The most common way the free market fails to do the "right" thing is by ignoring externalities.
By optimising for user engagement, media is ignoring the effect it has over society at large.
This is actually an argument for government sponsored news outlets implemented in a politically neutral manner; i.e. the television shouldn't just be a mouthpiece for the state/the ruling party.
For an example of state-financed but politically independent organisation, one can look at the civil servants system in the UK.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn’t people reading too little. It’s that people such as yourself only read a fraction of an informative article and stop because it’s “too long”. They read the headline and skim the article and get whatever their limited comprehension gets from it, and then proclaims they know what the article is saying when they don’t. Pretty much sums exactly what you were saying. I can only imagine the high level of…
Ok, you win. You read more than I do and my reading is "the problem" with your country. Here, have a cookie.
Whoa, both of you—no petty spats on HN, please, no matter how much you read.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else was or how provocatively they behaved, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#246I don't think they are. I think they are optimizing for survival. Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it. So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the hi…
True, subscription is the main revenue source, not ads in this new media environment. So the way to optimize is to find a most passionate tribe and serve their point of view. This is why NYT is going to stop growing if Trump loses in November. With no need to resist there is no need to subscribe
Are they? Centrists aren't a particularly passionate tribe, and the NYT's is about as mainstream media as it gets. They're going to have an absolute field day leading up to and including November, no matter who wins or loses, playing up, well, everything.
NYT's most passionate tribe is not the Left, they're not left enough for them. But they're not playing to a tribe, but the passion itself. Seattle is no longer front page news for the NYTs because articles talking about hippies sitting around in drum circles not beating people up, or being beat up by police, is boring.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#247I agree with some of this, but I just personally can't bring myself to care about the firings of the editors responsible for "Send in the troops" and "Buildings matter, too". A lot of my friends unsubscribed from the NY Times for publishing Tom Cotton's pro-fascism op-ed. The NY Times had to respond to this. They are a business and their income matters. It's not so much an issue of freedom of thought in the newsroom,…
Not sure a media outlet succumbing to popular opinion to suppress the publication of unpopular viewpoints is something to celebrate...
The New York Times likely declines to publish viewpoints on a daily basis, including from all sorts of prominent people like senators. That's not suppression.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is deeper than just the press. These identity flame wars are sponsored by almost all big (non-news) corporations. The reason is clear. While there is distraction, the real issues are unaddressed and they can keep putting their hands in your pocket when you aren't looking. Also, excessive pseudo-socialism is a great tool to drive down wages and have the whole world compete against each other. Locus…
What is "excessive pseudo socialism" and "Locust capitalism?" Also, I see your account was created an hour ago.
Locust capitalism might be related to this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/
As for the pseudo-socialism part, I have no idea what it could mean either.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Democrats are not “left”. They’d barely pass for center across the pond. Centre-right to right: https://politicalcompass.org/uselection2020
Everything looks "center-right to right" when you're on the extreme left.
So there's no such thing as the center-left?
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find the proposition of lionizing someone because they fight the “groupthink”, however you define that, quite an odd thing to do. Thinking like that will occasionally result in you supporting absolute cranks, because the heuristic you’re using is unrelated to actual correctness or other useful characteristics. Seek out people who seek to be right and back up their arguments consistently with logic and data, not peo…
Yeah I didn't say any of that in my comment. Thank you for inferring that and downvoting it. You made the assumption that the people that dislike him are people I dislike. And I doubt you read the article. Basically if I don't write a full paragraph describing in essay like detail, I have to deal with people like you sitting there inferring way too much from a single statement. Awesome. I wouldn't support somebody wh…
Hey, please don't take the thread further into flamewar. ashtonkem's comment may have been a bit patronizing but it didn't deserve escalation into personal attack.
We've had to ask you about this kind of thing before, unfortunately. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart? This thread, for example, is managing to stay barely on the ok side, and the last thing we need is more of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23510456.