31–40 of 67 posts
Has anyone made something like this for HN?
Part of the problem is deciding what journalism is . I don't mean that in terms of the craft -- I was a journalist for many years in the legacy media. We knew what we were doing, and were proud of our work. The issue is that like any other art/craft/trade, being good at it isn't enough. Is this a charity? A public good? A business? A hobby? Good journalism is very expensive. It requires people doing real work who nee…
There's news for entertainment, and news for making informed decisions. I suppose in a healthy democracy, it would be in the people's best interest to have unbiased and thoroughly investigated the news available so voters can make the best decision for themselves and the country. It wouldn't be profitable so it would have to be publicly funded like PBS News, BBC, CBC. And, well, it was good while it lasted but politi…
And who determines what is "unbiased?" If I don't match your biases, am I biased?
It is a completely unbalanced dynamic. And it takes massive financial support. These are professional salaries that need to be paid for in some way. You need a lot of staff to actually meaningfully cover various stories and regularly publish.
Now think of the potential readership. A small fraction compared to the old days when the paper of record was the only way to learn about anything at all. Orgs like NYT that have essentially a national customer base do alright. 5% of the entire united states (made up number) is a lot of damn people. 5% of a single metro region on the other hand just isn't enough to support the demands of the work. It never was enough.
Now you have newsrooms getting bought and commanded from upon high. LA times is a rag now thanks to a conservative billionaire putting his thumb on the editorial board and laying off staff. The newsroom isn't even in LA anymore, it has been reduced to an office in El Segundo. The old newsroom in downtown LA that they were kicked out of has been vacant for 8 years now, presumably the owner (onni group) is doing the commercial valuation shenanigan where they are concerned about the value of the asset to take loans out against vs the potential cash flow opportunities from rent paying tenants.
A bunch of investors went on a buying spree of traditional news outlets about 25-30 years ago, hoping to make good money off of them. They also offered free access to the news online at the time.
Well, people stopped buying newspapers and fewer and fewer people watch the local news, so there was no money making happening.
They're still expecting to make the cash off the original investment. There will be no reinventing, civic consequences be damned.
Part of the problem is deciding what journalism is . I don't mean that in terms of the craft -- I was a journalist for many years in the legacy media. We knew what we were doing, and were proud of our work. The issue is that like any other art/craft/trade, being good at it isn't enough. Is this a charity? A public good? A business? A hobby? Good journalism is very expensive. It requires people doing real work who nee…
Journalism today is a joke. More like 'what journalism? that heavy manipulative gossip masquerading as journalism?' Until society as a whole recognizes the value of managing disagreement and the discussion of controversy without emotion, journalism is a losing proposition because it will always be more profitable to cater to the larger emotional reasoning population. Until the rational percentage of society is large…
People also of course aren't reading in general, they are watching reels and ticktocks.
Part of the problem is deciding what journalism is . I don't mean that in terms of the craft -- I was a journalist for many years in the legacy media. We knew what we were doing, and were proud of our work. The issue is that like any other art/craft/trade, being good at it isn't enough. Is this a charity? A public good? A business? A hobby? Good journalism is very expensive. It requires people doing real work who nee…
Around the time of the first Obama term, journalism got redefined as activism rather than reporting. It's been a slow but inevitable collapse ever since.
This is sort of what I mean in one of the other comments regarding biases. This is an entirely subjective take, not to mention vague. Who redefined it? Whose journalism were they redefining? Everyone's, or specific people/outlet?
Reinvention takes money. A bunch of investors went on a buying spree of traditional news outlets about 25-30 years ago, hoping to make good money off of them. They also offered free access to the news online at the time. Well, people stopped buying newspapers and fewer and fewer people watch the local news, so there was no money making happening. They're still expecting to make the cash off the original investment. T…
There probably is no substitute for the state paying for it. We just need to balloon NPR/PBS into BBC scale (relative to the size of the US, so even bigger) and hope for the best. Yeah yeah, there are plenty of ways this could go wrong, but those pitfalls are not guaranteed, whereas the ways private sector journalism can go wrong have occurred in practice. So we might as well try it.
I don't disagree, but given the ideological opposition towards NPR/PBS right now from Republicans, the only way we might accomplish that is by promising to turn them into fox news.
The most egregious offenders never allow reader comments or discussion underneath the story.
This would do a lot to restore trust.
The problem is, they want to restore trust and keep acting deceptively too!