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The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#101

Post by DanielBMarkham »

We as an industry have kicked around "how to save journalism" for years now. Here's what I've got:

If you want journalism, sponsor endowments for journalists to report in certain areas, like foreign policy or local government. At the same time, and critically, sponsor endowments for editors to put a tight reign on these journalists.

Completely decouple good journalism for hunting-for-eyeballs. Then let the content curators and aggregators make some kind of business out of it, if they can.

In the past, whenever we consumed quality content, it was always there because some commercial interest paid for it to be there. Somehow we've forgotten about that. There has always been a difference between what the commercial interests wanted and what quality content demanded, but in the past the feedback loop was so slow and diffuse that good content happened anyway. This is no longer the case.

So if you want good content, you're going to have to completely decouple it from commercial interests -- and apply rigorous quality standards as well. Good editors are sorely missing in modern content creation, and everybody seems to want to take the old models, including ad-sponsored material, and make them work. They will not work.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#102

Post by AngrySkillzz »

Animats wrote: post #18

Crowd-sourcing news quality does not work. There's no ground truth. Google News is suffering from this. I noted on Wikipedia today, in a discussion of reliable sources, that I had searched for info about a Wikipedia topic with Google news search, with terrible results. The top three results were Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss ("progressive and anti-Zionist"). This is pathetic.

Google is scary bad at providing accurate information and I think it's a big problem, skewing people's view of the world. Just search anything related to nutrition, supplements, medicine, etc. and you'll see that most of the top results are from crank blogs, "alternative medicine" websites, or otherwise sources with no basis in fact. And if you don't know much about how culture happens on the Internet, you might be satisfied just to click on the first few and accept that information as truth. Scary stuff.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#103

Post by eigenvalue »

ThomPete wrote: post #98

I think the problem with journalism is that it was never the actual business. What it was, were supporting and adding sophistication to the news industry, but it was never actually central to the business. But the value of news was that it didnt used to be widely available. That was actually what people paid for. The news and clssifieds, not the journalism. And so what we see are all these people in the news industry…

The actual business was really the classified advertisement section, which was killed by Craigslist and eBay!

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#104

Post by dandersh »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #79
ykler wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that "fake news" refers to stories fabricated, often by small-time entrepreneurs, to make money off of Internet ads and typically spread through social media. Propaganda, on the other hand, is biased or fabricated stories promulgated to forward a political agenda, especially by a government or other entity in a position of power. However, the term "fake news" has rapidly been politicized, and a lo…

I don't think this is it. The very concept of fake news is, fundamentally, propaganda. The mainstream media's privileged position of controlling the narrative is under threat, both from within the media (e.g. Breitbart) and without (random guys on the internet creating narratives). The idea of "fake news" is propaganda, created in order to push Facebook/Twitter/etc into shutting down the media and random guys that ar…

No, fake news is a real and distinct phenomena from propaganda.

Propaganda: The NYT, at the behest of the government, publishing reports of Iraq possessing WMD's in order to lay the groundwork for an illegal invasion and occupation.

Fake News: A fabricated story about a made up individual finding boxes of ballots marked for Clinton, complete with a photo pulled from Google. The story then is pushed on social media sites by sockpuppets.

In other words there's a difference between Judith Miller and Stephen Glass.

Of all the significant distinctions, the most important one is that fake news is driven by the current state of the internet: ad revenue based click grabbing, pushing of content on social media (sometimes through sockpuppets), an elevated level of anonymity, etc.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#105

Post by dandersh »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #82
vinhboy wrote: post #2

> It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism. (One could argue he has a moral imperative to do so, given his position of power, but that’s not the same thing.) That line is pretty much all you need to know about the article, despite what the title is claiming. In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact…

> If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half this country does not care for fact vs fiction. (You sure stirred it up with this one.) But it's not really true, is it? The better way to describe the situation would be to say that the ~35% at BOTH ends of the political spectrum only wants to hear and read "news" that confirms their biases. And "journalism," as a business, has given them that. What I'm…

No, the person you quoted is absolutely correct.

A frustrating part of political discourse is that most people don't bother to put in the time and energy to understand the things they talk about, largely because it does matter enough to them to actually be right.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#106

Post by ThomPete »

eigenvalue wrote: post #103
ThomPete wrote: post #98

I think the problem with journalism is that it was never the actual business. What it was, were supporting and adding sophistication to the news industry, but it was never actually central to the business. But the value of news was that it didnt used to be widely available. That was actually what people paid for. The news and clssifieds, not the journalism. And so what we see are all these people in the news industry…

The actual business was really the classified advertisement section, which was killed by Craigslist and eBay!

agree added it in

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#108

Post by cylinder »

hxta98596 wrote: post #38

This is an odd editorial. The author stretches to explain how Zuck's Manifesto released this week could destroy journalism. But then she provides evidence that journalism is for all intents and purposes already dead. She cites a (possibly inflated) prime time news audience size of ~3 million people, and 1.5 million digital subscribers for the NYT...So less than 1% of America are using these previously major sources o…

I'm surprised the left has become so sympathetic to the corporate media all of a sudden. These people colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump. This was only a year ago.

Re: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism

#110

Post by macintux »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #31
eropple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, and should, have your own opinions . Does that extend to facts ?

You can look at any situation and pick and choose what facts you want to care about, and that process can be extremely biased and misguiding, even though all the facts will be correct. It's not so cut and dry as facts vs. fiction. If things were that simple the problem would be easily solved.

It is so cut and dry as facts vs fiction, but I think 2016 proved it's not easily solved.

Trump constantly spouted blatant fiction. He still does. This isn't one set of facts vs another.

Trump lies, then vilifies those who call out his lies, and somehow he's the hero.

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