Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#51

Post by opportune » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

amiga_500 wrote: post #12

dade_ wrote: post #7

Articles in The Economist are usually a better investment of my time. I was originally introduced to the magazine by a teacher in high school, but I've come to learn that many other people weren't as fortunate. https://www.economist.com/

I find it to slavishly neoliberal. I used to read The Economist, then in the build up to 2008 when according to them all the growth was actual real growth, the system was fine, and banks knew what they were doing. I no longer read it.

As long as you keep this in mind while you read it, I think even people who disagree with that will get a lot of value out of it. Personally I’ve found many of their foreign policy positions disgusting (and found their slandering of Corbyn as an anti Semite particularly disappointing) but at the same time they still have some of the best foreign policy coverage out of any source I’ve been exposed to.

Outside of foreign policy and politics I’ve found them to be pretty exemplary

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#52

Post by frakkingcylons » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

dade_ wrote: post #7

Articles in The Economist are usually a better investment of my time. I was originally introduced to the magazine by a teacher in high school, but I've come to learn that many other people weren't as fortunate. https://www.economist.com/

Agreed, Economist is quite good. Weekly publications tend to be more interesting in depth, I still find some of Businessweek's features to be worth reading. But I don't bother to keep up with daily news from most outlets as the SNR tends to be pretty low.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#53

Post by Legogris » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #13

Oh, are they finally apologizing (or providing proof for) their story The Big Hack about chips the size of a grain of rice China puts in computers made by Dell and Apple and others? No? Not a word about it? It’s almost like they’re continuing to pretend that their giant journalistic screwup doesn’t exist. Don’t care. ‘Are articles are too long’. How about yours articles are untrustworthy?

Is this what state-fed misinformation looks like?

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#54

Post by cocoa19 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

I applaud this note.

I wouldn't be surprised if regular newspapers have bullshit metrics that lower the quality:

- Words per article

- Number of clicks

- Articles posted

It's the equivalent of measuring lines of code and transforming agile points to man-days.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#55

Post by chad_strategic » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

This is not good for my ASD, not good at all.

ASD = Attention Surplus Disorder

I seem to be the only one here that likes Bloomberg, but then again I work in finance.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#56

Post by dont__panic » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

justaman wrote: post #6

dzink wrote: post #3

Part of the problem is Google - their algorithms reward longer keyword-laden content.

How many people hit up google search for news? Doesn't most news come from social media feeds these days?

There are a lot of people who don't use social media for news. Besides, sometimes folks want to educate themselves about a recent news subject that their social media feed hasn't surfaced for them so they'll search for additional information... often via Google.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#57

Post by philipodonnell » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

razakel wrote: post #31

_jal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Economist articles about things I don't know much about are great. But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. It isn't just the spin; sometimes you can guess whom they were talking to and whom they weren't by how wrong and they way they get something wrong.

>But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. Gell-Mann Amnesia, as Michael Crichton put it: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the…

wow

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#58

Post by function_seven » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

greatgib wrote: post #36

The point of the chief editor is so true that I'm surprised to read that from them. I have noticed that a lot of times with this kind of web media. - You have a clickbait title like this: "How a normal guy managed to hack WallStreet with a simple pen" - Then, you have one page of interesting introduction on the topic but without the reply to the title question. "In november 2018, WallStreet was busy with the introduc…

My god you hit the nail on the head.

It's frustrating to try and read those articles. Even when they have an actual story to tell, but choose to interleave some sort of "B plot" all throughout the writing. I'm left guessing which pages I can skip and which ones are worth reading. Wishing they'd just put all the background info in a standalone section.

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#59

Post by nillium » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

This has been our working hypothesis; we're building tools for newsrooms to syndicate the piecemeal updates of breaking stories throughout the day, for people who dont want to commit to long articles or videos.

https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/

Re: Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories

#60

Post by Legogris » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

save_ferris wrote: post #5

This memo highlights a problem that I’ve noticed recently as the public debates the legitimacy and effectiveness of the media. This chief editor is basically telling his people to write what readers want to read. But there’s a difference between what readers always want to read and what may be necessary to read. For example, if people only read what they wanted to read, how many people would really take interest in a…

I think this is more targeting droning exposes of the life history of individuals and what they had for lunch - fluff content in articles that could have had the same information in 25% of the length without feeling overly terse.