Why I left news

Mainstream Reporting's downfall isn't the result of any real decrease in the quality as much as an availability of alternatives.

Journalism has always been dodgy, it's just a lot more obvious these days.

"Newspapers make 80% of their income from legal notices in this state. That's the only thing keeping them alive." That's what a local reporter told me recently when he was discussing his retirement.

He also said most of the reporters have lost their jobs and only a tiny group remain. That makes sense, as the newspaper is now 20% the size it was ten years ago. There's maybe one or two 'investigative' articles each week and rest are AP news, local sports, or articles about local shops and what they sell.

She writes with passion, pathos, and poignancy. It's easy to feel her pains. Lots of emotionalism.

But she misses two much larger 'stories': First, what's happened to the 'news' business is a short term disaster on top of a long term tragedy. Second, what's happened to the news business is one more case of what's happened to big parts of the US economy.

It appears that society has one need from the news business, and that business has one need from society: Society needs from the news business solid, useful, important information on government, foreign affairs, the economy, etc., and the news business needs from society eyeballs to get ad revenue. At this point, neither society nor the news business is getting what they need.

More generally, my view has long been that what society needs from the news business, "information on government, ..." is so important and has been so poorly provided that the news business is, may I have the envelope, please (drum roll), the most serious problem facing our country and our civilization. In simple terms, the norms of the news business just have not been to provide the information our society needs. There is a nice, not really comprehensive but still nice, view of what the news business has been doing in the OP -- next to nothing to do with providing the information society needs.

Instead of the information, for at least 100 years or so the main product of the news business has been just light entertainment. The 'story' telling techniques have been borrowed from formula fiction going back to the ancient Greeks -- a protagonist to identify with who has a problem, threats, evil (especially as in the morality plays), black/white hats, etc. Drama? Yes. Solid information? No.

Thus my view is that this lack of information caused, say, for just a short list of a few little things, The Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the wars in Viet Nam, The Great Recession, the devastation of the US 'rust belt', etc. That is, my solid belief is that with some solid information instead of just formula fiction techniques to tell dramatic stories for light entertainment, we could have avoided all those disasters.

For some evidence about my claims about the lack of solid information in the news content, the level of content featured on HN and in the comments is large steps above the standards of any well known news outlet -- magazine, newspaper, TV, or Internet.

Information quality? The news business has a tough time reporting percentages meaningfully: E.g., "up 5%". Okay a percentage change is a measurement a at time s and a measurement b at time t and then

     100 * ( b - a ) / a

and the "up 5%" omits the times and is unclear if the change is an annual rate, or not. So, the "up 5%" is just drama for entertainment and not information. Next the news media regards graphs of numerical data as just opportunities for graphic arts. So, they fail to indicate units on the axes, etc.; the graphs they do would do poorly in freshman physics or engineering labs.

It goes on. The output of the news business is rarely significantly useful. Did I mention that their goal was just light entertainment?

Best lines: "vanity of a byline" "I no longer can introduce myself as a reporter and watch people’s eyes light up"

I was a TV producer and can relate. Part of the attraction was to be where the action is, but increasingly main stream media is not that place. A byline does not necessarily equal impact.

I quit and co-founded a startup that will do more for journalism than my work in TV, but in a less public way that people can't relate to. Media Spot Me is for journalists to discover people to interview. Something that was a central pain-point of mine.

I still appreciate the possibility of the media but like you said it is not as sexy inside as it sounds when talking about it to others.

Yes, society needs information on government, to keep them accountable. Yet you miss the bigger picture too: it's not just government. We need information on oligarchic networks, corporations, executives like the police, plutocrats who buy influence and corrupt: ie anyone who will pillage you and your community's wellbeing for their selfish ends with no justification.

Sousveillance of the powerful by all of us is necessary. And we, the nerds and geeks with the information machine skills are the ones to do it. If you're not thinking about this, you will suffer in the end. Look at what happened to Aaron.