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When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

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Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#101

Post by ghaff »

Spivak wrote: post #86
aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

I think you’re misunderstanding this tool. You’re shoving a Monet into a tool for graphic designers and complaining that it flags it as blurry. Writing for news should be boring, dry, precise, clear and near painfully explicit with as little subtext as can possibly be achieved. Hemingway’s writing style just happens to be a good example of it. I think you and people in this thread are confusing news with storytelling…

So you don't like the writing in The Economist? I do think it aims to be precise and clear but I certainly wouldn't say it aims to be boring.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#102

Post by rsynnott »

_red wrote: post #2

If we assume that newspapers goal is to sell papers to the maximum number of potential readers, this indicates a decline in general literacy / IQ of reading populace. Compare and contrast the average newspaper article written in say 1921 compared to now. The difference in comprehension level is pretty glaring.

The average person in 1921 certainly was not reading the New York Times, if they were reading anything (which is doubtful).

In any case, the complaint being made (which I'm not sure that I buy) is that it's _more_ poorly written (and thus hard to read) today, not _less_.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#103

Post by [deleted] »

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #74
aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

So I don't know anything about this app really or its evaluations but I think applying it to acclaimed fiction is not a criticism of applying it to a newspaper article per se. News articles are meant to convey concrete information relatively concisely. So metrics like sentence length and complexity and adverb count are at least in theory valid things for it to measure and aim to reduce. Now whether it effectively mea…

[deleted]

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#104

Post by andi999 »

aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

I am a bit surprised about: " The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, and is widely taught in American high schools."

Really? I have difficulties understanding this. Is it because it is interesting for the kids through its shock value and manageable length? But this then looks to me like declaring ketchup to be vegetables so enough veggies are eaten at the canteen.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#105

Post by symlinkk »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #50
keiferski wrote: post #24

Something that I think is rarely discussed when this topic comes up is the loss of prestige. Working for The New York Times or The New Yorker used to have some weight with pretty much everyone in the country. That is no longer the case. It hasn't been so for at least a couple of decades. Extremely erudite-yet-mostly-apolitical people like Lewis Lapham [1] went to literary magazines and high-end journalism a half-cent…

It isn't just that journalism has become an ideological battleground. Even without the cultural warfare, once-mighty publications would still be seen as in decline. The issue is the modern ad-based internet economy. Due to the pressures of swiftly producing content that draws maximum clicks, journalists at even august publications are now forced to create articles little distinguishable from a minimum-wage content wr…

Because 99% of long articles are a waste of time that could be summarized in a sentence or two. This is why no one reads articles here or on Reddit, and just skims the comments instead.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#106

Post by coliveira »

aerovistae wrote: post #35

> So I threw in the entire text into Hemingway, an app that identifies poor or confusing writing. I found this interesting, because it seemed unbelievable to me that an app could be able to tell good writing from bad writing in a reliable or useful way. So I took excerpts from Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and pasted them in. (For anyone unfamiliar with it, The Lottery is considered a masterpiece of a short story, an…

English is not my first language, so it astonishes me that some people really think that short sentences make good writing. Anyone can write bad prose using short sentences. Moreover, by writing in this way the language loses any kind of spice, so it's not a surprise that journalism and technical texts are so unpalatable. Another consequence is that even educated people never stop sounding like they're talking to a ten year old.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#107

Post by screye »

For centuries, Journalism was the art of investigation and power brokers. Journalists were civilian detectives and their media outlet was the badge that let them enter crime scenes. Once the information was obtained, began its next task: wielding their power to subtly craft a narrative and manufacture consent. It was a fine balance. 90% of the time you reported facts, so that you could bend the truth the other 10% of the time. The monopoly over facts, lent them this power.

The nature of Journalism has completely changed with the advent of the internet. You don't require as many people on the ground, and the access afforded to high resource high prestige outlets is not very useful. Opinions, realtime updates and news is broadcasted straight through tools like Twitter. Information is decentralized and free. Thus, Journalists role has now become to exclusively broker power. The narrative is all that matters. Everyone knows the news anyway.

This is where new media began spiralling. Pushing narratives is the only value you can provide, but the power needed to get buyin for the narratives was lent by a monopoly over facts, that isn't there anymore.

note: The collapse of the NYT specifically is rooted in an entirely separate generational struggle. This does not address it.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#108

Post by sdenton4 »

A12-B wrote: post #57
sdenton4 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think much of the journalism of ideas is happening in podcasts now. Podcasts certainly more of a frontier right now, with lots of people (still!) trying out interesting things, compared to the shrinking world of print journalism. 'Rough Translation' with Gregory Warner is one of the best, imo. The idea of to take important stories in the US and find analogues in other countries, and look at how they've played out.…

I don't think you're wrong (I don't know enough), but it's quite the caricature of entrepreneur culture to say that podcasts are doing journalism better than the journalists. NYT is one paper, from one city. The scope of print journalism is vast and probably defeats podcasts 100 to 1.

Many of the people doing the best work in podcasting are journalists, make no mistake! Many who either are currently or formerly were at NPR, rotating long time contributors to This American Life, etc.

For the most part, podcast reporting is closer to magazine reporting than newspapers. ('Democracy Now' is maybe the exception that proves the rule?) But given the survival rate of magazines at this point in history, it's obvious that podcasts are where you're going to see more innovation.

Re: When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

#109

Post by slowmovintarget »

acwan93 wrote: post #31
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #19

This might be because the New Yorker (and other fancy newspapers) need to differentiate their writing from the very direct, straight to the point writing we see online nowadays. Instead of getting straight to the point, they meander on in an attempt to sound smarter.

One thing that irks me about The New Yorker is their liberal use of diacritics. They've added umlauts to words with consecutive vowels like "cooperate" (coöperate) and "reelect" (reëelect), when it hasn't been a part of conventional American English (or any regional variant?) for quite some time. It comes across as pretentious, which may be what they're going for and what their target audience wants to feel when they…

They can't all be fans of Spinal Tap.

Those lead to mispronunciation of the words, in the examples you cite.

edit: ah... because they're not umlauts, they're diaeresis. Still, unneeded.

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