I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#271

Post by tjs8rj » Mon, May 03, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

usbline wrote: post #172

eplanit wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh -- they've done themselves such harm in recent years by embracing activism and deliberate bias that it's hard for me to feel too bad for the industry. That said, I'll applaud whichever journalists are brave enough to start pushing their industry/art back towards objectivity and diversity of perspective.

Faux-objective journalism is such a soulless drag. Everyone has biases, attempting to hide them is just gutless.

Personally what I find most frustrating is the two-facedness of it. State your bias. Maybe each reporter should have a visible profile above the article below the headline stating their “political compass results”. Why does CNN/Fox News continue to claim they are objective reporting when they have been caught so often failing to do so.

At the least, maybe explaining the other party’s perspective (as still flawed as this would be).

Ex: situation at the border

Republicans call it a crisis, they cite x, y, z. Their main argument is that illegal immigration causes X....

Democrats argue that the situation is at the root because of Y....

Be out about the biases. We all have biases, deceptively trying to hide them is worse: be completely out with them.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#272

Post by lazyeye » Mon, May 03, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

conductr wrote: post #117

gonehome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - I liked that part of his essay too, I also just generally liked his writing. There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party. The irony to me is that this kind of wo…

> There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday. This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home, leavin…

I laughed at your phrase "even when diversified". They promote all forms of diversity except diversity of thought. You'll get a far more interesting range of views from a small team of people delivering pizzas than you will from people working at Google.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#273

Post by Fnoord » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

deviantfero wrote: post #64

Mordisquitos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, the latinx movement is kind of relevant in Argentina IIRC, but in most other latin american countries the idea will be met with a lot of resistance and rejection. I would go even further than that. The US-centric idea of Latino as a unified identity (let alone with the x ), often based on North-American stereotypes of Mexican and Caribbean cultures, can be off-putting in Latin American countries. As an e…

I would argue about that, I'm salvadoran, never been to the states and I would gladly say I'm latino, we even have an expression when we go abroad, "I miss the latino heat" which means that we miss the warm weather and friendly disposition of people in latin american countries, it's a weird phenomenon that you can't experience if you're not from a Spanish speaking country and have not gone abroad. Generally speaking…

Yes, other countries have something like that. In national football (soccer) there is fierce competition between clubs, but if its international countries such rivalry counts instead. If I am in Germany, I feel Dutch, but if I am in USA I feel European.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#274

Post by michaelt » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:37 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #171

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embracing activism isn't necessarily a shooting oneself in the foot, it can be a way of trying to ensure greater profitability. A case in point is The Guardian which took a huge turn in the last decade ago from traditional British working-class themes to trans issues and the specific kind of race debates originating from the US. By doing so, the newspaper could, firstly, win the allegiance of self-identified "woke" r…

Sure and that's why they do it, but it's feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face. I think the future will mostly be the best writers being directly supported by people interested in their beat. I'm not sure how generic media orgs will continue on, but I'd expect the quality to continue to degrade.

Interesting idea. What do you imagine would happen to the global health correspondent when there's not a pandemic going on, or the war correspondent when there's not a war going on?

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#275

Post by pydry » Mon, May 03, 2021, 8:02 AM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #160

pydry wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs like what? The only ones I can think of are ones which suddenly started paying a lot due to some market quirk (e.g. miners in Australia in the 2010s). Class expectations just take a while to catch up (or never do if the market quirk doesn't persist).

In Canada at least, any contractor/constructing job. Plumbers, electricians are educated specialists making very very good hourly wage but won't get same status as say IT manager. Bonded cleaner with great references can easily be 50 bucks an hour. Truck drivers, forklift operators have steadily been well compensated and need certified skillset but again don't get same perceived class status. Note I'm not saying I do…

https://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Industry=Construction/S...

Average is 66k CAD / year, apparently.

That's not amazing. Construction is also notorious for ruining your body (health problems / early retirement a necessity) so it's not even as good as a 66k CAD office wage.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#276

Post by pydry » Mon, May 03, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #188

pydry wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k. Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only gets y…

>Truckers are not doing so well these days I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?

There's always a labor shortage of some kind if you're the one paying the wages.

In truckers' cases it must be a shortage of experienced truckers willing to partake in backbreaking labor and take financial and health risks for $60k / year.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#277

Post by michaelt » Mon, May 03, 2021, 8:22 AM UTC

usbline wrote: post #172

eplanit wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh -- they've done themselves such harm in recent years by embracing activism and deliberate bias that it's hard for me to feel too bad for the industry. That said, I'll applaud whichever journalists are brave enough to start pushing their industry/art back towards objectivity and diversity of perspective.

Faux-objective journalism is such a soulless drag. Everyone has biases, attempting to hide them is just gutless.

> Everyone has biases, attempting to hide them is just gutless.

I think this is situation-dependent.

A lot of product review journalism is nigh-worthless because giving robust reviews would cut off the freebies, previews and ad spending they depend on.

It's easy to imagine how that could be more objective: Just stop accepting freebies.

On the other hand, some situations are almost impossible to make objective: If you're a political journalist reporting on a politician doing foo today, and you know previously they promised not-foo, does reporting that context make your reporting more objective or less?

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#278

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 9:30 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #257

AcerbicZero wrote: post #178

The world has more than enough journalists and exceptionally few reporters.

The internet has commoditized facts. It doesn't matter who reports the news as it is everywhere in minutes as soon as it breaks. There is little to no reward for being first. The financial incentives therefore all push these companies into more profitable areas of journalism outside of reporting.

Words are commoditized. Veracity and context are not.

A journalist's job is to be accurate and communicate most of a complex topic concisely.

I'd argue the internet is pretty bad at that, for any sudden news event.

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#279

Post by sjellis » Mon, May 03, 2021, 10:24 AM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #237

jzb wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a particularly naive viewpoint on journalism / the publishing industry. Journalists may be the face of the industry, but they're not the primary deciders. They don't control the business decisions, or indeed many of the individual editorial decisions. Just like one little nugget of anecdata. I used to work at a radio station in a small market that was 1/3 stations run out of the same building by the same owne…

I keep on hearing the kvetching about not being willing to pay for good journalism but where the hell can I actually find it? It comes across as pure entitlement on their part, especially since I recall the various youth targetted moral panics like rainbow parties and "pharm parties" of taking literally everything in the medical cabinets like a bowl of skittles and taking them randomly - there were not nearly enough…

"solutions journalism" is an really interesting effort to adapt journalism to current realities in a positive way.

"It investigates and explains, in a critical and clear-eyed way, examples of people working toward solutions. It focuses not just on what may be working, but how and why it appears to be working, or alternatively, why it may be stumbling. Using the best available evidence, it delves deep into the how-to’s of problem solving, often structuring stories as puzzles or mysteries that investigate questions like: What models are having success reducing the dropout rate in public schools? How do they actually work? What are they doing differently than others that’s resulting in a better outcome?"

https://medium.com/@soljourno/what-is-solutions-journalism-c...

https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/

Re: I Used to Write for Sports Illustrated. Now I Deliver Packages for Amazon (2018)

#280

Post by jzb » Mon, May 03, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #264

jzb wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a particularly naive viewpoint on journalism / the publishing industry. Journalists may be the face of the industry, but they're not the primary deciders. They don't control the business decisions, or indeed many of the individual editorial decisions. Just like one little nugget of anecdata. I used to work at a radio station in a small market that was 1/3 stations run out of the same building by the same owne…

Why not start your own news publication? Run it according to your own rules.

Well, for one thing.. then I'm a publisher, not a journalist. Running a business does not appeal to me in the slightest.

Secondly, most of the problems facing publications are market forces that aren't going to go away just because the person at the helm does care about quality.

There are publications that succeed by the skin of their teeth. LWN for example. But that's a pretty rare, niche example that would be very difficult to replicate.