51–60 of 233 posts
Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…
Not everyone is from the US
> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…
Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People have been talking about saving local news for more than 20 years. And the economics just don't work for the most part--whether in most cities or in smaller towns. I live in about a 7,000 person town. Let's say half the people would pay $20/year for a local paper--which we had at one point. That's wildly optimistic I know. Throw in some advertising. But I'm guessing you're still something under $100K/year. So y…
But the local papers have always had ads in them to supplement revenue, so I imagine you could still reach $100K or more. In a lot of small towns that’s still enough to cover an editor-in-chief and an additional reporter.
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I mentally tune out anyone who uses the word "elitist". To me, it's one of the clearest signs that they're arguing using prejudices rather than evidence.
Taylor Lorenz attended a 90 thousand a year high school. Is that not elitist? https://twitter.com/comfortablysmug/status/13696539131216773...
(BTW, I don’t know who Taylor Lorenz is, and don’t really care. I’m just surprised by this reasoning.)
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I mentally tune out anyone who uses the word "elitist". To me, it's one of the clearest signs that they're arguing using prejudices rather than evidence.
Taylor Lorenz attended a 90 thousand a year high school. Is that not elitist? https://twitter.com/comfortablysmug/status/13696539131216773...
> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…
The article also focuses heavily on the Times but mentions that FB has these deals with other publishers too. To the extent that there’s ire in the article, I think it would be better focused on Facebook.
The ad-supported business model of newspapers has always been problematic. In theory there’s a firewall between the business side and the journalists, but my faith that this is the case is reduced when orgs like the NYT get rid of their public editor.
The NDA between FB and the publishers is really gross. It shackles the NYT from covering itself and keeps the various orgs that have this deal from reporting about it on each other. It’s not a good sign when the NYT can’t hold the WSJ accountable. This part is weird tho:
> Facebook has been funneling money to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Bloomberg, and other select paid partners since late 2019. [...] The exact terms of these deals remain secret, because Facebook insisted on nondisclosure and the news organizations agreed. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agreements were worth as much as $3 million a year...
So the WSJ is reporting on the deal despite signing the NDA?
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Isn’t Apple News+ the Spotify of newspapers? If you don’t want the social aspect of news, you can get the AP stories through the AP News app or subscribe to rss feeds to major papers. The AP keeps papers from covering the same story from their own angle, you’ll usually see the same AP stories printed in papers across the country. I agree it’s hard to filter the news on your own and quality journalism does seem to be…
> Isn’t Apple News+ the Spotify of newspapers? I'm not on an Apple platform and don't even know what this is. I suppose it works for Apple subscribers?
Competitors from Google and CNN are rumored to launch soon.
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Not too long ago, Facebook took out a full page ad against Apple to gaslight consumers that anti-tracking was harming small business. This company is like a perforated colon that keeps leaking feces into the collective body of society. Pretty soon we'll go into septic shock.
Anti-tracking is harmful to all businesses who advertise, is it not?
I feel like there's basically no allowable nuance in this discussion because holding any opinion than "tracking is 100% bad with literally no upsides for anyone other than ad networks any business that claims to get any value whatsoever is being misled" is taken as a defense of the current state of internet advertising and is the digital equivalent of burying your head in the sand while everyone else continues like you don't exist.
If you can't understand and explain why the fence was put there then you'll get nowhere trying to argue that it should be torn down.
> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…
Proving the quid pro quo is hard, but just the knowledge that the money is there and can go away at the whim of a private actor will having a chilling effect on the sort of content you report on.
Journalistic entities have an incentive to project an image of an unbiased, principles institution untouched by the private business world, but as someone who was raised by two editors, that narrative is more mythos than reality.