21–30 of 192 posts
If you're living within a corrupt, self-serving political system (we are), then naturally the only people who run for office will be products of that system. If a candidate who genuinely wants to change the status quo somehow manages to slip in, they will be prevented from achieving anything meaningful once inside.
No matter what, none of these people have my interests in mind. So I ask, what's the point?
Hmm. I think this article doesn't distinguish between news and bad news. Frankly, anyone reading this must be interested in news, it's in the title of the website. Why else be here? This site isn't perfect, but it's useful to know what's happening in the tech world. Knowing about the world's current events is similar. We shouldn't dwell on negative events, but they happen and they happen to real people . Just because…
"News", I believe, should be about something new or recent. We're now talking about an article (op-ed?) written by Aaron in 2006. This isn't news and much of Hacker News isn't either. It's more just curated information.
I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…
That said I still like the idea of being able to "touch base" with the news as it were - something that I can scan quickly and, if I'm disciplined enough, filter down to the bits that are actually relevant to me. Most days, hopefully, that's nothing at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds exactly like a weekly news magazine. There are quite a few that are worth reading, if you want to follow the news. The slower publishing pace allows a greater perspective and context on most stories that is missing on 24/7 channels.
Could you post some examples? Specifically ones that center on world news and not only the US / Europe.
I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess I must be too dense, but I simply do not know how to use grasswire. I'm stuck with live feed on left which shows me exactly the kind of useless "breaking" stuff I want to avoid and popular feed on the right which I don't seem to be able to control beyond either providing fact-check or comment. What am I missing?
What you're looking at is kind of like a backend - consider it the "talk" page for Wikipedia. It's a little bit chaotic this early in the morning, but our algorithm pulls in the "breaking" stuff on the left, and the most upvoted stuff flows to the top of the "popular" page. Grasswire users fact-check stuff for accuracy, and comment on whether or not/why it's important. The site is mostly for news junkies. It's a litt…
One thing to note, though - on the left I'm seeing a number of duplicated entries, with the duplicates immediately after the original. I'm using Firefox, if that matters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds exactly like a weekly news magazine. There are quite a few that are worth reading, if you want to follow the news. The slower publishing pace allows a greater perspective and context on most stories that is missing on 24/7 channels.
Could you post some examples? Specifically ones that center on world news and not only the US / Europe.
I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…
Here are some tenets to which I think any news company aspiring to change the field and report news responsibly should think about:
Popularity is poisonous and the enemy of the good - what is good or even factually right is often not popular
Context is key - without context, a fact can be meaningless or actively misleading (e.g. the most liberal senator in the senate, 45 minutes from a chemical war from the dodgy dossier).
On the ground observation is key - this is something modern tech has changed in a very positive way, though it does also allow for rumours and misinformation.
Analysis is key - without analysis from informed observers, lots of news is hard to digest and understand - it provides context
Balance is an illusion - Opinions always colour analysis and the facts reported, we should be up-front about this - every org and person has them.
Fact checking with primary sources is key - how can you possibly fact-check factoids that your readers are constantly upvoting? How can you possibly fact check an opinion?
National news is often horribly biased, and national newspapers usually pander to the government/demographic they serve, especially in time of war.
Most public outrage is wrong or at least ill-founded - we have representative and informed democracy to try to avoid the rule of the mob.
Quick news is the antithesis of thoughtful, incisive news
There's plenty of buzzfeed-esque junk out there trying to recycle news and readers as quickly as possible, and it is neither viable in the long term nor is it good for news or for readers. So I disagree completely (as does the article I think) on what you consider to be a good news publication.
PS Your website doesn't even show me what it does before it asks for email, you might want to consider changing that. I tried a fake account and looks like some kind of buzzfeed reuters mashup, and I'm afraid guilty of a lot of the sins Aaron points out.
I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…
> ruthlessly curated and fact-checked The problem with curated news is that we can be consuming propaganda and not know it. Even as it stands now, we hear of certain news in the world, but not others, and it severely affects our understanding of the world.
We're consuming propaganda either way. Media outlets chose what to write about and what not to cover, then stories that match people's biases tend to get disproportionately popularized. I hope that this fact-checking feature can at least do something against news sites publishing obvious lies and misinformation.