Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

thehandbasket.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 111 posts

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#101

Post by _Algernon_ »

robocat wrote: post #98
_Algernon_ wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what kind of university you went to but at mine it was always about ideas. If you get an idea from somewhere else, you had to cite the original work, no matter how much you rewrote it. It's not just direct quotes that need to be cited. That of course doesn't mean that every instance of plagiarism is actually detected but the principles are there.

Perhaps paraphrasing is specific to New Zealand? Students are very strongly encouraged here to rewrite everything into "their own words" and they are penalised if they don't (plagiarism detection software has been used for years to detect sentences that were not paraphrased by students). Auckland University https://learningessentials.auckland.ac.nz/writing-effectivel... says: Direct quotes from other sources should o…

That's a different issue though and has little to do with plagiarism. Based on skimming those links it doesn't seem that they absolve the student from plagiarism just because they sufficiently reshuffled the words (though again, it makes it harder to detect).

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#102

Post by ab5tract »

pastage wrote: post #68
ab5tract wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally ahistorical. Regional newspapers would “break” stories that would then get picked up by national outlets. In that system it was the standard to reference the paper that first reported the story. People understandably have a hard time conceptualizing a highly dynamic and diverse news media landscape these days, but back when it was working like it was supposed to —- before Clinton-era reforms destroyed…

It is not the first time I have heard a local issue in the US by cited as a source of a global problem. I am fairly certain that Clinton had nothing to do with this global problem, he was president during a time were lots of things changed.

If you can find any examples of non-totalitarian regimes that are facing the same media consolidation problems that were not immediately preceded by Clinton-esque laws deregulating said media consolidation, I would love to know about it!

EDIT: The “world wide web” also played a major role in kneecapping the funding sources of journalism. But failing outlets could not simply be swallowed by conglomerates without the aforementioned liberalization of media ownership.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#103

Post by globalnode »

mooreds wrote: post #16
globalnode wrote: post #13

Isn't it for journalists' protection that they try to remain semi anonymous or at least out of the limelight? You just have to look at Assange for an example of what happens when you try to become a well known person representing certain topics.

In this case, the journalist wants credit ("first reported by") from other news organizations for doing the reporting work first. She has a public blog, I don't think she's worried about being known. It's different than a journalist doing work where their identity could be problematic.

Good point. I was stuck thinking about it in only one way.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#104

Post by globalnode »

simonw wrote: post #22
globalnode wrote: post #13

Isn't it for journalists' protection that they try to remain semi anonymous or at least out of the limelight? You just have to look at Assange for an example of what happens when you try to become a well known person representing certain topics.

The vast majority of journalists are proud to put their name to their reporting. Cases where a journalist tries to stay semi-anonymous are rare, outside of reporting on despotic regimes, organized crime or other scenarios where there is a legitimate high-risk safety threat.

Yep its true, those cases that I was thinking about would likely be rare.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#105

Post by immibis »

simonw wrote: post #22
globalnode wrote: post #13

Isn't it for journalists' protection that they try to remain semi anonymous or at least out of the limelight? You just have to look at Assange for an example of what happens when you try to become a well known person representing certain topics.

The vast majority of journalists are proud to put their name to their reporting. Cases where a journalist tries to stay semi-anonymous are rare, outside of reporting on despotic regimes, organized crime or other scenarios where there is a legitimate high-risk safety threat.

But she is reporting on a despotic regime.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#106

Post by mullingitover »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #101
robocat wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps paraphrasing is specific to New Zealand? Students are very strongly encouraged here to rewrite everything into "their own words" and they are penalised if they don't (plagiarism detection software has been used for years to detect sentences that were not paraphrased by students). Auckland University https://learningessentials.auckland.ac.nz/writing-effectivel... says: Direct quotes from other sources should o…

That's a different issue though and has little to do with plagiarism. Based on skimming those links it doesn't seem that they absolve the student from plagiarism just because they sufficiently reshuffled the words (though again, it makes it harder to detect).

First link I clicked explicitly states that you're to cite the source.

So from what I see OP's claim is bunk: they want you to paraphrase, but doing that and citing your source isn't close to plagiarism.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#107

Post by miki123211 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #88
miki123211 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no working business model for real investigative journalism Shortselling and prediction markets.

But if we treat prediction markets as a source of truth, then those with wealth can spend it to distort the prediction market. Lots of arbitrage opportunity, there: you might even be able to turn a profit! This is the sort of thing that only works if hardly anyone is doing it, and hardly anyone takes it seriously. (It's like most "free market" solutions, in that regard: the conditions for a free market are actually q…

> This is the sort of thing that only works if hardly anyone is doing it

In fact, it's just the opposite.

If "hardly anyone is doing it", you can, in fact, distort a prediction market pretty easily. If you have the money to throw at it, nobody is going to stop you.

If absolutely everybody is doing it, though, the situation changes. Somebody whose pockets are just as deep as yours will eventually discover what you're doing. It is in their best interest to trade against you and bring the market to where it should be.

This is one of the reasons penny stocks are so much worse than Aapl or SPY. Penny stocks have very low trading volumes and very low interests, so it's pretty easy for a motivated player to distort their price, "pump and dump", or do other shenanigans of the sort. There are so many people trading on aapl that you can be pretty sure the current price represents the market consensus of what aapl is currently worth.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#108

Post by marcus_holmes »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #75
marcus_holmes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a professional divide between "journalists" and "bloggers" [0]. If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis. Meanwhile, (some) journalists at (some) news organ…

>> I'm not saying that the author is not a journalist, or inferring that they're a blogger. I think you mean to say that you're not implying they're a blogger.

sorry, yes, I did. Thanks for the correction

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#109

Post by marcus_holmes »

aa-jv wrote: post #73
marcus_holmes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a professional divide between "journalists" and "bloggers" [0]. If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis. Meanwhile, (some) journalists at (some) news organ…

> If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis. So? Why should this be considered a special case? Its no different than programming, for example. The idea that only authorit…

There is an argument that programming should be more like engineering - and you should not be able to do this professionally unless qualified. All of us know that we have a huge mess of bad code and worse practices in various ecosystems, and that we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Relying on open-source "amateur" [0] developers to create key infrastructure has allowed us to move quickly, but not at a very high level of quality.

Holding programming up as the apex of good practice in this area isn't the argument you think it is ;)

[0] Amateur from an engineering discipline perspective.

Re: “An independent journalist” who won't remain nameless

#110

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

danihh wrote: post #53
marcus_holmes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a professional divide between "journalists" and "bloggers" [0]. If anyone can start their own website and write stuff, without getting any kind of qualification or accreditation, and without following any editorial policy or maintaining any kind of journalistic integrity, and still get credited with a story, then journalism itself has an identity crisis. Meanwhile, (some) journalists at (some) news organ…

I’m sure that opinions vary widely on this, but I follow people and not companies. With platforms like substack, X, and LinkedIn it seems easier than ever for an independent journalist to cultivate an audience. As long as they create quality content, I’m more than happy to subscribe to whatever platform they choose to use. True quality (especially once you get into the niches) is extremely valuable/interesting and to…

Maybe not Twitter anymore but yeah
Post reply on HN