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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?

#271

Post by tomcam »

inglor_cz wrote: post #244
kingofpandora wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tool that uses passive voice as a heuristic for good versus bad writing is immediately suspect. And any writer who uses such a tool for validation is unlikely to be a good judge of writing to begin with.

Writer here, reasonably competent, because people pay me for writing (in Czech; forgive me my English errors). Passive voice in narration is ... strange most of the time. It kicks the reader out of the situation, like Out-of-body experience, only it is an Out-of-book experience. "John was killed by the assassins, his body was later discovered by a cleaning lady, carried out by morticians and dissected by pathologists…

Your written English is superb. It's indistinguishable from that of a literate native speaker.

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

#272

Post by relaxing »

alisonkisk wrote: post #178
keiferski wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought the once a week Sunday paper format was a blessing in disguise. It forced writers to sum up the week in a way that anyone could pick up and understand. If you go to nytimes.com right now, there are a bunch of stories which are clearly in medias res. It feels like jumping into the 5th episode of a Netflix series.

People talk about "slow news". I'd like a weekly or monthly "current events" review more than news, except for major timely events like an election or natural disasters. What happened to "newsweek"?

> What happened to "newsweek"?

The internet happened, and it became The Daily Beast, and then it became a zombie publication with nothing in common with the old print edition.

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

#273

Post by benlumen »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #50
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…

It isn't just that journalism has become an ideological battleground. Even without the cultural warfare, once-mighty publications would still be seen as in decline. The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy. Due to the pressures of swiftly producing content that draws maximum clicks, journalists at even august publications are now forced to create articles little distinguishable from a minimum-wage content wr…

>The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy.

Bingo. I honestly think modern "journalism" has more in common with marketing and search engine optimisation than traditional journalism. That's the sort of high-level view I've adopted to explain this decline.

I wrote my first and only substack bit about this last year and have been in two minds whether or not to continue with it.

https://benlumen.substack.com/p/thank-god-i-never-went-into-...

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

#274

Post by monoideism »

johncena33 wrote: post #148
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…

I personally think it's post-modernism and the adjacent ideologies are responsible for this. Since everything is subjective and there's no objective notion of truth and it's all moral relativism, one has the license to do anything they want. That's why activism and ideologies took over professional integrity.

I think pomo is responsible, along with a handful of other factors: clickbait journalism, dramatically increased echo chamber of journalists due to social media, and (perhaps most importantly), the changing values of Millenials.

Regarding the latter, it's only when Millenials started moving up the career ladder at these organizations in the early 2010s that we saw the publications really change. And the insider reports from the NYTimes indicate the change in reporting is basically an outcome of generational conflict.

Obviously, many on here are the exception, but in general, younger GenX, Millenials, and Zoomers were all financially screwed over, and they've (perhaps understandably) taken out their rage on society. Why so many have adopted a race-based identitarian outlook, instead of aiming for race-blind equality, I understand much less.

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

#275

Post by relaxing »

duckerude wrote: post #10

I fed the first tech article I could find on NYT's front page ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley... ) into Hemingway: - Grade 12 (aim for 9) - 14 adverbs - 4 uses of passive voice - 7 phrases have simpler alternatives - 14 of 72 sentences are hard to read - 30 of 72 sentences are very hard to read That's very close to the score of the 2010 article, the biggest difference is the lower numbe…

The NYT has always targeted a higher reading level.

Through random circumstances I wound up reading the print edition of my city’s daily broadsheet for a few months. The difference in writing style and structure was incredible — the local paper felt dumbed down in comparison. Going back to the Times was like a breath of fresh air. This was a couple decades ago.

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

#276

Post by pgcj_poster »

andi999 wrote: post #135
aerovistae wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes it is good entertainment, but wouldnt then the kids read those anyways?

Kids need to encounter something before they're motivated to seek it out on their own.

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

#277

Post by relaxing »

berniemadoff69 wrote: post #174

Have you ever noticed how the general mood of newspapers (at least in the New York Times and the Washington Post) is a feeling of despair? This is easily noticeable when looking at the photography [0]. You can pick up a Sunday copy of the NYT, or even open up the NYT's twitter, scroll around, and observe how many stories' lead image is of someone looking off with a kind of gloomy gaze in their eye. I assume years of…

Possibly because it mirrors the national mood?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/311228/national-mood-shows-litt...

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

#278

Post by inglor_cz »

tomcam wrote: post #271
inglor_cz wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writer here, reasonably competent, because people pay me for writing (in Czech; forgive me my English errors). Passive voice in narration is ... strange most of the time. It kicks the reader out of the situation, like Out-of-body experience, only it is an Out-of-book experience. "John was killed by the assassins, his body was later discovered by a cleaning lady, carried out by morticians and dissected by pathologists…

Your written English is superb. It's indistinguishable from that of a literate native speaker.

Glad to hear that, thank you!

Slavs in general tend to struggle with "a/an/the" in English, because most Slavic languages lack articles. Out of the entire language family, only Bulgarian uses definite articles.

Articles feel unnatural to me, too. I got used to them, but in a similar way that one gets used to a prosthetic arm: you can do things, but it feels mechanic and distant.

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

#279

Post by mudita »

oe wrote: post #259
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For me, the experience with friends is similar. If I want to mostly hear their voice and feel close to them, voice messages are great, but if I want or need some information then please, just send me a text.

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

#280

Post by valarauko »

vharuck wrote: post #182
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just that journalism has become an ideological battleground. Even without the cultural warfare, once-mighty publications would still be seen as in decline. The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy. Due to the pressures of swiftly producing content that draws maximum clicks, journalists at even august publications are now forced to create articles little distinguishable from a minimum-wage content wr…

>There is also the issue of declining attention spans as people consume snackable content on their mobile devices. Have there been any studies to back up this pervasive idea of declining attention spans? I'm asking honestly, not combatively. It has some signs of "common sense" beliefs that aren't true or useful: generalizing over a large group, lamenting something lost, and focusing on something poorly defined. Of co…

> * Streaming services don't have scheduled programming, so shows can be as long as they want. Different episodes of the same show don't have to be the same length. "Seasons" can be any number of episodes. With that freedom, a lot of shows are now 45+ minutes long (equivalent to hour-long shows with commercials). If the average attention span were shrinking, this isn't what I'd expect. *

Tangential anecdote: I have a friend who's a writer for Netflix & Amazon shows, and the streaming services have fine grained detail on subscriber behavior - at what point in the episode do people tend to stop watching, etc. The streaming service uses this data to create specific models for how shows and individual episodes should be structured to maximize audience retention. The writers are given specific instructions of how many and how frequently "payoffs" need to be peppered throughout the episode.

So while shows today might be 45+ minutes long, they're also not written like shows in the past.

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