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Publishing Is Back to the Future

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Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#21

Post by galaxyLogic »

13415 wrote: post #5

Today, Youtube suggested to me to watch a 15 s Hitler speech. Why? I have not the slightest idea. But I clicked out of curiosity, just to see once more how "good" ol' Hitler spoke. It was one of his better speeches. Comments disabled. I'd say that's the problem of modern journalism. They have to compete with algorithms that maximize clicks and engagement, no matter what content. I hope I'm wrong but I see no way how…

I can see that NYT could have an online front-page that shows me kinds of stories I am interested in. Still they need not be fake news, like lot of Facebook posts are about(?). Just makes sense. If they're not working towards that I don't know why. Adapt NYT to the possibilities of per customer customization

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#22

Post by tabtab »

lbarrow wrote: post #3

I'm struck by how much Ben's description of what the NYT is becoming - an opinionated, subscriber-focused institution - matches up with how I think about Substack and Patreon. I wouldn't be surprised if in the long run we basically end up with two types of news and media institutions: the advertising-focused ones who go for incredibly broad and often low-quality work, and the subscribed-focused ones who are more narr…

NYT should more clearly split news from op-eds. Op-eds are supposed to be opinionated by definition.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#23

Post by Booktrope »

pdonis wrote: post #15
Booktrope wrote: post #9

A shallow, one-sided take on what happened to the news business. I mean, here's a guy who quotes himself (!) saying, "I’d go further: I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet" As his example of this, he appears to the New York Times as his exemplar of a company that's been relatively successful online.…

> Comparted to Breitbart, Fox News, and other non-fact based journalism You're assuming that the NYT is "fact based journalism". I don't think it is. They are pushing a point of view, just as every other media source is. > indispensable for all news outlets I know the news outlets claim this, but I find the claim to be either very stupid (highly unlikely) or very disingenuous (much more likely). If I want to know wha…

Google and FB have a huge share of the internet reading market; polls repeatedly show that over 30% of the population gets its news from Facebook posts, and another large share get info from Google searches. Twitter also plays a huge role, and soon to be added, stuff like Gab where no you will not be served up any liberal stuff. With the market dominated by a few "aggregators" it's not quite accurate to say, oh, news sources can just get their own following. Of course they can get some market share; the NYT has done better than most newspapers at that, and Breitbart even better, due I think to its much better alignment with social media (sensationalism, tribalism, etc.)

Just because you can find CNN(or even MSNBC) on your TV or go to their website, doesn't address the role of FB and Google in dissemination of news. Let me repeat, over 30 percent of Americans get news from their Facebook feeds. Facebook uses these feeds to attract advertising on a scale no media producer can even dream of, and it comes from the same advertising budgets.

I have to say, when you name call people who disagree with you (very stupid or disingenuous), it's a good indicator, your argument doesn't have a very solid foundation. You say, it's "ludicrous" to say news outlets need visibility in Google or FB for people to know what they're saying, you totally miss the point. Yeah, I can set up a web site with my opinions, and anyone can come and find out what I'm saying too. We're talking about how to make economically viable newspapers that provide fact-based reporting (no, not perfectly factual or "true" but a serious effort), and that does require having a presence where a huge share of the potential audience finds their news sources.

If someone could actually build a successful media business on the scale of a serious newspaper without relying on social media to send readers in today's market, why, they'd be the most successful newspaper exec since, oh, I dunno, Joe Pulitzer, who incidentally was famous for something called "yellow journalism," meaning sensationalized, not very factual stuff.

No, NYT isn't some paragon of "truth", but it does make a much more serious effort to report facts than the non-fact based media. Yes there's some slant to its reporting, but its not always the same (news tends to be less liberal than editorial, for example, and they publish quite a few right wing op ed pieces for variety. If you think the quality of journalism on Brietbart and NYT are equivalent, well, you must not think of "facts" in quite the way I do, you know, stuff that actually happened and can be verified.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#24

Post by ivanhoe »

amoorthy wrote: post #8

This is the best part of Ben's article: > I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet…the New York Times doesn’t have the truth, but then again, neither do I, and neither does Amazon. This is the key insight in news today. You cannot rely on any one source for the full story. You must read multiple perspec…

At some point it becomes a burden to do it yourself, so you'll be forced to outsource it to a person or company of trust, to follow all the news for you and filter out the important ones, ask around with their contacts, do the fact checking, and give you a digestible overview of what's going on - and then you're basically back at the square one, as you've just re-invented the journalism.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#25

Post by coldtea »

amoorthy wrote: post #8

This is the best part of Ben's article: > I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet…the New York Times doesn’t have the truth, but then again, neither do I, and neither does Amazon. This is the key insight in news today. You cannot rely on any one source for the full story. You must read multiple perspec…

>This is the key insight in news today. You cannot rely on any one source for the full story. You must read multiple perspectives, ideally from different points in the political spectrum.

The problem is that counter-intuitively, in the past with limited news sources, you're more or less forced to hear more sides of the story. A newspaper would carry both e.g. conservatives and liberals (at least a few of the side it didn't favor) to attract people. If you bought it, you had the chance to see the other side expressed.

Now with the internet, we can loose ourselves in an echo bubble of our own creation (only reading stuff on "our" side, since we're no longer forced to get our news wholesale like in print newspaper format). Or the news website or social media site can elect to show us just (or much more of) the stuff we like by itself.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#26

Post by pdonis »

Booktrope wrote: post #23
pdonis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comparted to Breitbart, Fox News, and other non-fact based journalism You're assuming that the NYT is "fact based journalism". I don't think it is. They are pushing a point of view, just as every other media source is. > indispensable for all news outlets I know the news outlets claim this, but I find the claim to be either very stupid (highly unlikely) or very disingenuous (much more likely). If I want to know wha…

Google and FB have a huge share of the internet reading market; polls repeatedly show that over 30% of the population gets its news from Facebook posts, and another large share get info from Google searches. Twitter also plays a huge role, and soon to be added, stuff like Gab where no you will not be served up any liberal stuff. With the market dominated by a few "aggregators" it's not quite accurate to say, oh, news…

> Just because you can find CNN(or even MSNBC) on your TV or go to their website, doesn't address the role of FB and Google in dissemination of news.

Of course it's true that FB and Google play a role in news dissemination, but it's also irrelevant to the argument the news outlets are making. They are basically saying that they should be considered the "official" news, and should get a piece of the revenue from any other organization that has a role in disseminating news. And I think that claim is nonsense. It is up to individual people to decide where they want to get their news from. If they would rather get it from Google and Facebook than the NYT or CNN, that is the NYT's and CNN's problem; they either need to up their game or go into a different business. It is not a problem that needs to be "fixed" by law.

> when you name call people who disagree with you (very stupid or disingenuous), it's a good indicator, your argument doesn't have a very solid foundation

It wasn't name calling, it was calling a spade a spade. I am saying that the news organizations are not actually fighting for "equality" or "fact-based journalism" in news dissemination. They are fighting to preserve the privileged position they had before the Internet destroyed it. Sorry, but I don't care.

The Internet destroyed a lot of old business models and created a lot of new ones. That's how it works in the big leagues. You either adapt or you go out of business. And in any case I don't see either the NYT or CNN in any danger of going out of business, which just makes all of their complaining seem even more disingenous--it's just obvious that they aren't fighting for principle, they're just arguing that they should be allowed to siphon more money from other people's pockets into theirs, and they already have plenty of money, so I have no sympathy for them, and I certainly don't want the law to be forcing other companies to pay them money because they are supposed to be "news" outlets.

To be clear, I don't have any sympathy for Google or Facebook either. I am certainly not a fan of the ad-supported business model. But that just means that none of the sides in this brouhaha are the good guys.

> it does make a much more serious effort to report facts than the non-fact based media

I know the NYT claims this, but I don't agree with it. As I said, the NYT is pushing a point of view just like every other media outlet. That means I can't take anything they say at face value any more than I take anything Breitbart or Fox News says at face value. So, again, I don't see them as fighting for any kind of principle of "responsible journalism". There are no responsible journalists in today's world. It's not clear that there ever have been. We just couldn't see behind their facade before. Now we can.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#27

Post by mchusma »

closeparen wrote: post #20

Ignorance of the business side is not childish or haphazard. Editorial independence - that the news should not be influenced by business concerns - is as important to journalists as "do no harm" is to doctors. Separation between newsroom and ad business staff is maintained intentionally as a matter of ethics. It is the same sort of animal as the separation between proprietary trading and advisory services at a bank.…

"do no harm" is a horrible moral framework. It led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands this last year, where we routinely and repeatedly do things that are expected to cause more harm because we haven't first proven "no harm".

Examples include banning the many safe and effective vaccines, prioritizing 2nd doses over first doses, and prioritizing people who have had COVID equally to those who have not.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#28

Post by gcblkjaidfj »

yuy910616 wrote: post #16
gcblkjaidfj wrote: post #4

they got a sugar high with clubhouse and now they think they can scale their medium investor scam media up. probably also motivated by /r/wsb latest forays.

are you referring to a16z?

Yes, assumed that was in the title :)

the article does start with "Andreessen Horowitz is going direct"

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#29

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

mchusma wrote: post #27
closeparen wrote: post #20

Ignorance of the business side is not childish or haphazard. Editorial independence - that the news should not be influenced by business concerns - is as important to journalists as "do no harm" is to doctors. Separation between newsroom and ad business staff is maintained intentionally as a matter of ethics. It is the same sort of animal as the separation between proprietary trading and advisory services at a bank.…

"do no harm" is a horrible moral framework. It led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands this last year, where we routinely and repeatedly do things that are expected to cause more harm because we haven't first proven "no harm". Examples include banning the many safe and effective vaccines, prioritizing 2nd doses over first doses, and prioritizing people who have had COVID equally to those who have not.

That may be the case, but it may be not.

Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map?

Could be puzzling.

Re: Publishing Is Back to the Future

#30

Post by majewsky »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #29
mchusma wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"do no harm" is a horrible moral framework. It led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands this last year, where we routinely and repeatedly do things that are expected to cause more harm because we haven't first proven "no harm". Examples include banning the many safe and effective vaccines, prioritizing 2nd doses over first doses, and prioritizing people who have had COVID equally to those who have not.

That may be the case, but it may be not. Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map? Could be puzzling.

> Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map?

Correlation does not imply causation. Vaccine makers prefer to test in regions with high infection activity because statistically significant results can be obtained faster. And mutations are more likely to occur in regions with high infection activity because mutations are a numbers game. Most likely we're just seeing two effects with the same root cause, without those two effects being causally linked.

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