There’s no code for what should be in the daily news. The news is a product like any other, so if something is in the daily news, that’s because it sells (or drives up engagement because the broadcaster is selling ads).
Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#42Yes, I agree. Why is 30% to 40% of the time slot allocated to matters that are as ephemeral as the weather and of no long term consequence whatsoever? (For that matter, the weather segment has become much longer than it needs to be, but I digress). Afaict it's only bc it's cheap filler. Certainly most sports fans can either watch things as they happen, or can find out the results any time they want on the internet. I…
I assume you are joking about the weather, but either way... Before weather was freely available on computers or phones, it was useful to know what the weather was likely to be so you could plan local and/or national travel accordingly.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#43Let me guess, you don't follow sports? I know many, many people who do daily. Have you seen the episode of the IT Crowd where the guys get sports blurbs from. some website to recount to their coworkers to make them more popular? It's even been enshrined in pop culture how much the regular people is concerned with sports compared to the average "nerd". Just because you don't care does mean it's not enormously popular.
Just because you don't care does mean it's not enormously popular.
And, naturally, just because something's enormously popular doesn't mean it's worth caring about.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#44You’re not alone. I think it’s strange too. There are a lot of strange things other folks find entertaining though. Also for the record, I love playing sports. I’ve just never really understood sports spectators, nor those fans that rabidly follow sports stats. The caveat being I can understand parents watching their kids play, just not this whole watching strangers called “professional athletes” play sports.
I didn't used to. A couple of stats wonks helped me understand it.
Sports spectating is about stories. What ends up woven together out of individual matches is patterns, and humans love sussing out patterns and identifying them... There's a whole psychological reward system that is triggered by forming a prediction and watching it come true. So a lot of sports wonks watch for that hit... When their favorite player does his signature play, or their favorite team uses the strategy they've honed to a fine point to win a game.
In a sense, I personally watch SpaceX launches for the same thing. Does my day-to-day hinge on whether an additional 60 Starlinks get to orbit? Definitely not; I'm not in the aerospace field, and I'm fortunate enough to have a high-speed fiber landline plumbed into the side of my home by a previous owner. But I get to see whether the rocket will land this time (or, for that matter, whether it'll go up or something will violate expectations and the whole mission will go off the rails). I derive catharsis from the expectation / tension / satisfaction loop of a successful launch, landing, and deploy. It's a story of successful engineering.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#45Sports and weather. They tease it early and then show it last, because it's what people who watch local news watch it for.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#46Tv news is entertainment. Not news.
Bread and circus political distraction has never gone out of style.
Sports reporting makes perfect sense.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#47Problem: We need people to watch our TV news program so that we can entice advertisers to pay for ads.
Solution: Offer things people are interested in watching, like sports.
Basically enough people like watching sports news that it is worthwhile for news programs to offer coverage, so that they get more viewers and can command higher prices for commercial ads. It's as simple as that.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#48In the US, national TV news is on around 6 or 7, before prime time, and doesn't cover sports. That's left to the local news broadcasts, which devote 5 minutes to it at the end of their early and late 30 minute broadcasts. Local TV news in the US is fixated on weather, fires, car accidents, gruesome crime stories and so-called "human interest" stories, rarely covers local government. Now that's something I don't under…
Yes, people really are, by your value system, that shallow. The answer to any "are _x_ really that _y_" when the point of reference is informed by the tastes of _x_ is always "yes".
You can rightly say that those stories don't interest you. They don't interest me, and as such I don't watch a lot of local news. But there are huge swaths of people that do watch this content. That is why it exists.
It is like ads on the internet. They exist because they work on someone, even if they don't work on _you_.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#49If I read the consensus here correctly: Sportball-viewing is the largest US hobby -> something -> ergo news.
I have a couple of thoughts. First, can someone clarify what "something" is? Comments seem balanced between "you must not like sportball" and offering other information-ish things as evidence of, well, something. If the point is to qualify sportball as news, I'm unclear how those accomplish that.
Second, I expect comments to proceed to "Well, what is news anyway?" and here's what I have for that.
The extra-constitutional protections given to the press by the 1A imply a duty by news orgs to act as an adversary to Govs and other powerful interests - to unearth their misdeeds and other effects of public interest.
Reporting that honors press' 1A protections seems to unambiguously qualify as news. Reporting outside the scope of that may better qualify as information and/or entertainment.
No one is saying that information and entertainment shouldn't be published. However, universally cheap publishing provides endless sport/celeb/infotainment options to us. It is unclear how news orgs best serve us by redirecting resources away from 1A implied duties - just to provide the bazillionth option to hear about sport/celebs.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone find it strange that sport is part of daily news?
#50The job of the news is to inform people (or more cynically, keep them watching to show ads). Sports are a major topic that a huge number of people want to be informed about. Why wouldn't they be in the news? There are lots of things in the news that some people don't care about - they report on traffic (or at least they used to) even though many people don't commute. They report on the stock market even though many p…
I disagree that the job of news is to inform people. I think that it’s just a possible side effect that they champion in order to keep you engaged.
Okay, fine, then the job of news is to get people to watch so they can sell advertisements. An enormous number of people want to watch news about sports. The logic doesn't change.