When did writing in major newspapers become so bad? • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by robertoandred » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

kyle_martin1 wrote: post #62

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…

I agree. Centralized media equals a controlled narrative. Gone are the days of investigating prestige and bi-partisan reporting. Maybe it never really existing though... It's clear that the majority of reporters lean center to far left politically. When it comes to topics that will make their "side" look bad, there's usually a lack of intellectual curiosity for the truth. This happens on both sides, of course, but th…

Of course, Project Veritas isn't honest. People pretend they are but know they aren't, and then assume "the other side" must be just as bad.

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

#252

Post by pradn » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

TravisLS wrote: post #61

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 like the Hemingway app, but it is very much designed to make you write like Hemingway (ie short, clear sentences _only_). Obviously most great writing is not in this style. The Hemingway app is good for work emails and marketing copy, or if you happen to like that style. It is hardly the universal arbiter of "poor or confusing writing".

There are plenty of writers - I know several - that seem to think Hemingway's style is the "correct" one. And it may be, for business use-cases, where clarity is more important than beauty, insight, nuance, individuality, or consonance with the meaning of the text.

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

#253

Post by robertoandred » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #56

LanceH wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems in the past 15 years there is a deliberate avoidance of the actual topic until deep into the article. I can only assume this hits some optimization for online use.

I think it's an elitism in the writing style. If you can write densely, it signals education.

I think it's pretty elitist to think that only the highly educated can read your sentence.

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

#254

Post by robertoandred » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #19

This might be because the New Yorker (and other fancy newspapers) need to differentiate their writing from the very direct, straight to the point writing we see online nowadays. Instead of getting straight to the point, they meander on in an attempt to sound smarter.

Except the New Yorker isn't a newspaper, it's a literary magazine. It and its writing serve a different purpose.

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

#255

Post by indigochill » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

banana_giraffe wrote: post #231

ketzo wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. This is actually quite insightful to me. I wonder if this applies more broadly? What from your own life makes you say that?

It's a variant of Goodhart's law. Can't speak for the person you're replying to, but absent good management, I've seen review goals turn into nonsense. "You had a goal to fix 5 bugs this quarter, and only fixed 4", "but one was a massive bug that would have cost us $x!", "but you didn't fix 5 bugs, so no bonus" You see it happen on different levels a surprising number of times.

Anecdotally, when I worked in customer support, we were explicitly told that we had to hit a certain number of replies to customers in our ticket system. So I played by the rules: I very clearly grabbed all the easy-to-reply tickets, sent the easy reply, and dropped them if they got hard.

Appropriately, a manager spoke to me telling me this was unacceptable (though he did concede the goal was stupid), and gratifyingly the official goals soon changed to reflect an appropriate balance of consistency with a customer as well as some degree of overall throughput.

The drawback there is that accurately reflecting what they want in hard metrics might not really be possible because it does come down to a judgment call where the exact balance between support quality and throughput lies (and it's often a shifting balance as well, depending how much support load there is). Which is probably why managers fall back on stupid but easy-to-measure metrics.

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

#256

Post by cbanek » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

Just a small point, but I feel like the editing has also gotten worse over time as newspapers have gone digital. I see spelling errors, punctuation and other problems in WaPo about once a week, and I don't even read it all.

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

#257

Post by pradn » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #24

Something that I think is rarely discussed when this topic comes up is the loss of prestige. Working for The New York Times or The New Yorker used to have some weight with pretty much everyone in the country. That is no longer the case. It hasn't been so for at least a couple of decades. Extremely erudite-yet-mostly-apolitical people like Lewis Lapham [1] went to literary magazines and high-end journalism a half-cent…

For erudite articles on everything from Tang Dynasty poetry to the international ransom insurance market, I recommend the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. Or, in general, any of the book reviews. They give assignments to gifted scholars and writers who take the books they "review" as starting points to go deep into all sorts of topics.

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

#258

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

mitchdoogle wrote: post #172

symlinkk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 99% of long articles are a waste of time that could be summarized in a sentence or two. This is why no one reads articles here or on Reddit, and just skims the comments instead.

I almost always at least skim an article before diving into the comments. Many times I will read the whole thing, especially if it is short, as this one is. I do believe that most probably don't do that. It's often possible to tell which commenters have read it and which haven't, i.e. if a comment mentions something not even present in the article, or if it mentions something clearly refuted in the article. I think i…

A lot of long form articles are like online recipes though: A giant barely-related narrative about the subject’s home town and hobbies and life philosophies, and hidden within are the 5 lines showing ingredients and how to cook the food.

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

#259

Post by oe » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #210

mudita wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, then it's a real shame. I strongly prefer written text to podcasts. Maybe that's just my own taste, but to be honest, I believe, that it's just a much, much better medium for conveying ideas. With text I can process the content non-linearly. I can skim to get an overview. I can go back to previous passages and find them again easily even days later. I can take more time to reflect on difficult parts a…

I've tried to get into podcasts more times than I can count. I just can't get there. Besides the advantages you describe, I can "consume" the content SO much more quickly on a page than a podcast, even if I speed it up, which seriously degrades the medium anyway.

I feel like many if not all podcasters are my “friends” who I chat with, only I don’t need to speak. I don’t see why they should convey their ideas any faster. I enjoy whatever time we spend together and it’s usually enough to fill the time on my commute or washing the dishes.

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

#260

Post by abvdasker » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #73

TravisLS wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the Hemingway app, but it is very much designed to make you write like Hemingway (ie short, clear sentences _only_). Obviously most great writing is not in this style. The Hemingway app is good for work emails and marketing copy, or if you happen to like that style. It is hardly the universal arbiter of "poor or confusing writing".

Oh wow it's almost completely okay with Hemingway. I pasted some of his work in and it had almost no complaint at all. Good point.

I think it would be fun to create a version of this which pushes writing towards other recognizable styles like Raymond Chandler or David Foster Wallace. Maybe you pick a style from a dropdown and the analysis changes. You could possibly take it even further and automate some transformations of the input to stylize a piece of writing.