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When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

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Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#121

Post by AnthonyMouse »

function_seven wrote: post #89
underseacables wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want news to return to the local level. Local news I am willing to pay for, because the information, and thus confidence in it, is closer to home and more identifiable. Reminds me of a book by John Grisham{1} about a young journalist who buys a small southern newspaper, and turns it around by focusing on actual news. {1}. The Last Juror

I don't think you're willing to pay what it would actually cost. Not calling you a liar, just noting that a truly local news source, operating at the level that they did 20 years ago, would cost so much more today. The revenue for a local paper used to come primarily from advertising that doesn't exist anymore. Movie theater listings, classified ads, auto dealership sections. The Real Estate "section". Each of those…

This is ignoring the traditional economics though.

Newspapers would charge for a subscription and sell advertising. The subscription fee would essentially just pay for printing and distribution of the physical newspaper, and then advertising provided the margin.

Now advertising is in the dumps but the internet has removed the capital and operating costs of a printing press and physically delivering dead tree pages to doorsteps.

Traditional newspaper subscriptions were something like $10/month. If you have 50,000 local subscribers and negligible printing costs, that's $6,000,000/year. You can fit a full staff of journalists into that budget.

Or you can go it alone, charge the same $10/month and be making $120,000/year with 1000 subscribers.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#122

Post by aerovistae »

andi999 wrote: post #104
aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

I am a bit surprised about: " The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, and is widely taught in American high schools." Really? I have difficulties understanding this. Is it because it is interesting for the kids through its shock value and manageable length? But this then looks to me like declaring ketchup to be vegetables so enough veggies are eaten at the canteen.

Well, I suppose you could read some critical analysis of it if you're interested in why it's considered great; I'm no expert. For what it's worth I agree with its status in the canon: it's a powerful and carefully articulated story in a very compact form with a unique, exciting, and thought-provoking premise. The perfect short story.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#123

Post by keiferski »

gxqoz wrote: post #117
keiferski wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a big reader of The New Yorker. To me, they've slipped even more than the Times over the last decade, probably because they were on a higher perch.

I started reading about 10 years ago so don't have a great reference for earlier writing. But just looking at some of ones from this year highlighted on longform, there was some great stuff here: https://longform.org/archive/publications/new-yorker For instance "Trolling the Great Outdoors", "Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?", and "Fish Farming Is Feeding the Globe. What’s t…

It's not that they are universally terrible now, just that they've fallen into the same political-hype blackhole as everyone else.

I remember looking at their home page a few years ago and seeing the top 10 articles all being about Trump. That obsession with politics didn't really happen in previous eras and even when it did, it was counterbalanced by some legitimate literary criticism. Looking at their home page now, it's uh, not quite the same.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#124

Post by sanderjd »

aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

But I've always wondered: why should business writing be like Hemingway's writing? He wasn't writing for that audience. Seems like it would be better to find examples of good writing for a business audience and use those. Same thing for journalistic writing: that's not what Hemingway was doing. Maybe take all the Pulitzer winning journalism from a few decades and use that or something. But it just seems weird to pick one arbitrary literary writer for this kind of exercise.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#125

Post by firstfewshells »

All newspapers in India have reduced the number of pages in their print edition by 30-45%. The paper with the highest circulation in India, The Times Of India, has become so commercial it's now known as the The Ads of India. Every front page and literally every second page has either full page or half page ads. The quality of the journalism is abysmal with super shallow articles and grammatical errors. The websites of the newspapers are even worse with headlines always revolving around cricket and entertainment. In fact, some regional news websites have "Ask the Sexpert" on their main page. It's a cesspool.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#126

Post by jimmaswell »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #54
aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

It’s a great example of how people will use an easy quantification just because it exists. There’s a popular mindset that seems to think you can’t argue against numbers and math because they’re cold and scientific. Who cares if its a stupid number, it’s mathematically/scientifically correct!

A measure that becomes a target often stops being a good measure.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#127

Post by sunopener »

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #45

This is everywhere not just major newspapers. I experience it frequently in verbal conversation. There is solipsistic change taking place in discourse were people assume you already have their knowledge in your head. It's to the point where I have to play 24 question and then summarize the story to include all the facts to make sure I have it correct. Totally possible I'm the strange one and see ambiguity where other…

Oh... I could have sworn the "solipsistic change taking place in discourse" was that no one truly knows anything, that we're all just making shit up and stacking the shit into empires--indulging the pastime of 'bullshit-science' because we're afraid to admit we "don't know" and that ultimately the only thing we are in control of regarding knowledge is that of completely letting go of control.

When you think about it, we don't even know what knowledge is--what is it to posses (can it even be possessed?) the 'essence of knowledge'? Kinda makes you wonder if knowledge is nothing but the 'spiralcy study' of inevitable and ineffable Death--If all was known, could we really claim anything was ever truly alive?

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#128

Post by 8fGTBjZxBcHq »

sdenton4 wrote: post #118
8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors together. Now there's definitely an argument to be made that it routinely fails to live up to those standards and that it has certain structural weaknesses and biases that need to be addressed. But it is, overall, a system of professionals who consider their work…

Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...

That's not what I'm claiming at all. It's not about the medium it's about the structures, constraints, and goals of the work.

I'm also not claiming that podcasting can't be journalism, just that the structures necessary for it to be aren't widespread or generally highly valued by podcasters as a group. Plenty of journalists do use it as their medium but that doesn't make podcasting and journalism the same thing.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#129

Post by aerovistae »

sleepydog wrote: post #76
aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

For kicks, I threw a few paragraphs from The old man and the sea to see if the editor displayed any deference to its namesake. Red all over, "very hard to read", "use of the passive voice".

I didn't try that one-- I put in Hills Like White Elephants and it was mostly okay.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#130

Post by AnthonyMouse »

zozin wrote: post #37
offtop5 wrote: post #21

This is what happens when you spend decades demonizing journalism. Instead of giving us insightful articles, the New York times is competing against Facebook and Twitter to grab your attention immediately. I have a feeling most people don't read an entire New York times article, the entire point is just to create headlines you can share on Facebook or Twitter, keep those clicks and kpis flowing! In a way this is fant…

Not exactly sure what you mean by "decades demonizing journalism"? Who is doing the demonizing? Decades? Paper journalism's death has been exacerbated by the Internet, but it was dying long before the WWW was a thing. Radio, cinema, and television all played a role in killing off paper journalism. At the height of their popularity newspapers weren't just a method of conveying cold hard facts, they were a form of ente…

This theory doesn't work because the decline has nothing to do with print. Look at where cable news is now -- it's somehow, seemingly impossibly, even worse than the NYT. It's as if CNN and MSNBC looked at Fox News and reacted with a jealously-based compulsion to outmatch their pathology.
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