Live data from Hacker News

Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

washingtonmonthly.com

71–80 of 233 posts

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#71
post #67

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

Why do you think substack doesn't count as paying for news?

Substack (to me) is more of a lens you put on to consume the news. Multiple other use cases but most people are paying and trusting someone to filter the noise for them.

If they realize it or not.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#72
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue,

Uh, say again?

Let's guess at a CPM of $10, and "millions" to be "2 million". That would be 200 million hits. You seriously think that an interview with a tech CEO whom few normal people will have heard of is going to have double the audience of the Superbowl?

I'd bet that in reality interviews with tech execs do horribly when it comes to generating traffic, but are done for the prestige of publishing something that looks like traditional journalism.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.

Tech blogs are about as independent as news sources get, so no, they are very much expected to act that way.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#74
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

Anybody know of a good news source that doesn’t fall into this trap? I hear the economist is pretty good.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#75
post #61
post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

Miramax was over 10 percent of the ad spend in the NY Times in the early 2000s. They conveniently killed the story of Harvey Weinstein (head of Miramax) then: https://www.thewrap.com/harvey-weinstein-new-york-times-bill...

[deleted]

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#76
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, Uh, say again? Let's guess at a CPM of $10, and "millions" to be "2 million". That would be 200 million hits. You seriously think that an interview with a tech CEO whom few normal people will have heard of is going to have double the audience of the Superbowl? I'd bet that in reality interviews with tech execs do horribly when it comes to generating t…

There are reputational benefits that are hard to quantify. Getting interviews with big names legitimizes you, which probably increases views on other articles

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.

> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. >> People do with the NYT and WaPo,

For me neither of those newspapers have integrity at all.

Edit: there is ample evidence of both "newspapers" flat out lying; what I would call straight out propaganda as if they are part of an agenda. I doubt downvoters will want to debate me but if any of you have the guts please reach out. It'll be an easy win for me.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#78
Facebook would have to be stupid to not be bribing everyone in sight, it's not like anyone is going punish them. Anyone who still uses the site must think it's a good deal and additional information clearly won't change their mind at this point. The US government can't regulate any corporation without 50% of the population losing their shit at "big government overreach". There's no mechanism beyond those two to affect change in a corporation.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#79

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

First of all, I'm not sure what's your point.

But... Why wouldn't a "partisan" substack count? What if I spend around 30 seconds a day on Google News, just to see what the different propaganda machines try to push for today, so it's not something I would like to pay for, but I value and trust some "Substack" journalists and opinion people.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#80
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, Uh, say again? Let's guess at a CPM of $10, and "millions" to be "2 million". That would be 200 million hits. You seriously think that an interview with a tech CEO whom few normal people will have heard of is going to have double the audience of the Superbowl? I'd bet that in reality interviews with tech execs do horribly when it comes to generating t…

I don't know if it's really "worth millions", but I think you're missing aspects besides CPM. Having an interview with such a well-known person gives your blog a lot of credibility that you can leverage, e.g. when making deals with sponsors.
Post reply on HN