Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I agree. From those first pictures I saw (charred plane) I drew my own conclusion that a large number of people must have died. From the latest reports, it appears I was wrong. Sometimes we don't know enough to make meaningful conclusions without experts weighing in. Not to mention bias- first hand accounts are rarely impartial. In this instance there aren't any "sides" to take, but I'd bet that most of…
That's fair, but I think I still disagree. If you are only looking at one source, sure, it can be confusing, but if you have a good collection of all of the first-hand sources really you are able to draw the same conclusion that any reporter might be able to. Right now we have basically outsourced the job of drawing conclusions from opinionated people to reporters. Given the right information I believe every person c…
Yes, and this is economically efficient. Of course they get all sorts of things wrong at the outset - the fact that this is annoying is a reflection of how much we rely on them. But the fact is that in most cases we don't especially need to know these things immediately; I'm curious about this crash, of course, but it doesn't affect me directly and there's nothing I can do about it. It's actually better that I didn't check the news until a bit later in the day when some time had gone by and the details had firmed up - I'm a little behind the curve, but I've saved 2 hours of pointless and probably poorly-founded speculation. If it wasn't for the fact that my wife watches more TV than I do I'd probably go days at a time without checking, and just catch up Saturdays when the Economist arrives.
I understand being a news junkie - because I am one. But it's an unhealthy habit that rarely yields enough advantage to justify the time involved. I'll check out your startup but really, I suspect it would just be an endless time sink for me. I already find this a big problem with text-based news.
EDIT: I meant to say internet-based news.
To answer the reply below, I guess my question is 'what benefit is there to me in following multiple reports as they break? To be good at it requires doing it on a regular basis, but the economic benefit is questionable. I think it's a great idea, and if it can build up a sufficient community then it has the potential to function as a better news bureau than existing sources. The hurdle to climb is that the number of people who will be both skilled at analyzing breaking news events and have the time to put in regularly will be fairly small, and every time there's a major event the interested local population that joins in will consist largely of -first timers, whose contributions will amount to (Shannon) noise.
I mention a local event, because I see that while we're worried about this because many HNers are in the Bay Area, over on the East Coast near Maine a train carrying oil derailed and exploded in the middle of a small town, flattening the town center and with 60-100 people missing. So a plane crash with only two fatalities doesn't seem very important from a different perspective.