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

When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?

mleverything.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 307 posts

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

#111

Post by konjin »

offtop5 wrote: post #21

This is what happens when you spend decades demonizing journalism. Instead of giving us insightful articles, the New York times is competing against Facebook and Twitter to grab your attention immediately. I have a feeling most people don't read an entire New York times article, the entire point is just to create headlines you can share on Facebook or Twitter, keep those clicks and kpis flowing! In a way this is fant…

Who exactly forced the NYT to support the Bush administrations preposterous claims about WMD?

If journalists want to be lionized instead of demonized they should perhaps stand up to power, and not only when their friends don't like the people in power.

News is dying because they whored themselves out decades ago. Facebook and google are excuses for the final stages of the decline, but they weren't there in the 90s when quality started to slide and papers were being bought out.

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

#112

Post by BitwiseFool »

underseacables wrote: post #25

Newspapers could be suffering from a race to the bottom in terms of hiring the cheapest (and probably less skilled) talent. With all of the financial woes compounded, hiring recent J-school graduates versus investing in those with more experience, may be showing the inexperience in print.

I also sense that newspapers are retaining the old guard talent at the expense of younger, more fresh voices. For instance the New York times constantly puts peices up by Paul Krugman and he almost never writes anything insightful. Given his credentials, I assume he commands a high price for his commentary. I assume the business side thinks name recognition is more important than taking risks on new writers.

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

#113

Post by chrisan »

Reference Article:

> But her friend and editor, Claire Banse, also 23, had told her the paper had already hit its quota on the word “retarded” and she’d objected. (What else rhymes with “departed”?)

Author of post:

> Wait, what does it mean to have a quota on a word? Are they not using that word enough or are using it too much?

Can someone explain how "already hit its quota on the word" could mean they are not using that word enough?

And even past that, how could you think when taking into account the context of "retarded" make you think "hit its quota" means there was desire for more use of "retarded" in an article?

I am confused on how this person is confused

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

#116

Post by symlinkk »

offtop5 wrote: post #21

This is what happens when you spend decades demonizing journalism. Instead of giving us insightful articles, the New York times is competing against Facebook and Twitter to grab your attention immediately. I have a feeling most people don't read an entire New York times article, the entire point is just to create headlines you can share on Facebook or Twitter, keep those clicks and kpis flowing! In a way this is fant…

Or maybe they should just adapt to the times? Just get to the point, don’t write thousand word articles just because that’s tradition?

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

#117

Post by gxqoz »

keiferski wrote: post #90
gxqoz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Lapham, but I'd consider many current New Yorker writers to be writing consistently interesting articles. Same with someone like Patricia Lockwood for the London Review of Books.

I used to be a big reader of The New Yorker. To me, they've slipped even more than the Times over the last decade, probably because they were on a higher perch.

I started reading about 10 years ago so don't have a great reference for earlier writing.

But just looking at some of ones from this year highlighted on longform, there was some great stuff here: https://longform.org/archive/publications/new-yorker

For instance "Trolling the Great Outdoors", "Why Does the Pandemic Seem to Be Hitting Some Countries Harder Than Others?", and "Fish Farming Is Feeding the Globe. What’s the Cost for Locals?".

And its TV criticism under Emily Nussbaum (who hasn't written an article since 2019 for reasons I haven't been able to figure out) was consistently excellent.

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

#118

Post by sdenton4 »

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #85
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.…

This ignores the fact that journalism is a professional discipline with established ethical practices that is practiced by groups of journalists and editors together. Now there's definitely an argument to be made that it routinely fails to live up to those standards and that it has certain structural weaknesses and biases that need to be addressed. But it is, overall, a system of professionals who consider their work…

Text had no special claims in truth, I'm afraid. And many of the best podcasters are in fact journalists. Greg Warner, Sarah Koenig, even Alex Blumberg...

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

#119

Post by ghaff »

function_seven wrote: post #89
underseacables wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want news to return to the local level. Local news I am willing to pay for, because the information, and thus confidence in it, is closer to home and more identifiable. Reminds me of a book by John Grisham{1} about a young journalist who buys a small southern newspaper, and turns it around by focusing on actual news. {1}. The Last Juror

I don't think you're willing to pay what it would actually cost. Not calling you a liar, just noting that a truly local news source, operating at the level that they did 20 years ago, would cost so much more today. The revenue for a local paper used to come primarily from advertising that doesn't exist anymore. Movie theater listings, classified ads, auto dealership sections. The Real Estate "section". Each of those…

I live in a fairly small town (7,000 people). A long time ago now, we had a sort of labor of love local paper that ended up shutting down. (The publisher fell ill.) The only remaining paper option was a "local" from one of the conglomerates. Pretty lousy overall and it mostly covered what was going on in a local small city and some bigger towns. Wouldn't have been worth subscribing to. Facebook and NextDoor is about the best I can do although even those aren't very active.

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

#120

Post by konjin »

chadlavi wrote: post #13

Imagine if you were underpaid and overworked and your code that you stayed up until 3am writing went to production right away with no code reviews, and no one really cared because your code was sort of just filler to hold the space between ads. EDIT: actually, even more dangerously: it's not just filler between ads, but also something that other people point to as a source of truth. Even though it was just cranked ou…

More like: imagine if your code wasn't run on computers but written by hand, then it was rated by hn comments and finally the highest scoring comment was put into production which happened to be a fully automated pace maker used by millions.
Post reply on HN