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Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

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Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#71

Post by ProllyInfamous »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #54
Analemma_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "just" is doing a lot of work there. California had a $38 billion budget deficit last year and a $68 billion deficit the year before. I would like universal healthcare as much as or more than anyone, but without fiscal transfers at the Federal level I don't think it is possible - states cannot run permanent debts the way the Federal government can.

And in the year before there was a 100 billion dollar windfall in the budget during a pandemic no less while still hosting this healthcare program. State spending is a good thing, it really amounts to making investments into either the infrastructure of the state or its people. Its too bad headlines and therefore sentiment seem to miss this fact, and equate a spendy state to a ditzy college student with terrible cred…

I wish California well, but: any sort of attempts to implement massive healthcare changes state-wide (e.g. to single-payer, access to all), will immediately be thwarted by US intrastate immigrants, in addition to international border pressures.

>in the year before there was a 100 billion dollar windfall

I am not sure of California's particulars, but some government profitabilities are largely on account of Pandemic Funding 2020-2022 (e.g. my local county hosptial for ~1M people would not have turned-profit w/out CoVid fund$).

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#72

Post by eli »

next_xibalba wrote: post #52
eli wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a fluke that it worked so well for so long.

Over 100 years is a fluke? Nothing about it feels unlikely, lucky, or by chance. fluke - noun - an unlikely chance occurrence, especially a surprising piece of luck. Ex: "their triumph was no fluke"

The etymology of that sense of "fluke" is from the game of billiards. It's when you make a successful stroke by accident.

And yes it was a lucky stroke for journalism that the same newspapers that carried their words happened to carry lucrative ad space and sports box scores that were hard to get elsewhere.

Classified ad revenue carried a lot of newspapers because for a long time there was really nothing else like it. That was lucky. It wasn't anything particular to the news; but a lack of other options. Now there are other options.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#73

Post by basch »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #40
uptown wrote: post #16

I'm fairly tuned into news -- certainly less-so than in the past, but somehow I never even heard of The Messenger.

Yep, I read the news every day, subscribe to several news outlets, keep up with the various issues going on, am even somewhat tangentially aware of the various meta-drama going on in journalism circles, and the shutdown announcement is the first I've ever heard of The Messenger. Whatever they were spending their money on, it certainly wasn't marketing.

I would like some kind of tool that watches for new publications, maybe some objective ranking on popularity and subjective ranking on quality, and an associated graveyard that switches to archival links.

It also needs a slider, to see the historical version of a leaderboard on any given day. You can plug the redef and techmeme leaderboards into archive.org but it is all a little kludgy, with missing data.

https://redef.com/charts/sources/total

https://www.techmeme.com/lb

https://mediagazer.com/lb

https://www.memeorandum.com/lb

There is also

https://longform.org/archive/publications

https://www.aldaily.com/media/

There used to be https://www.newswhip.com/ which had a free section, Im not sure if it is gone or just burried. At one point Counterparties https://www.niemanlab.org/2011/09/felix-salmons-brain-drudge... which used https://percolate.com/ (now seismic) as a backend.

And then you have the world of blogger, medium, substack, ghost. Bloglovin was the site in that realm back in the day.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#74

Post by [deleted] »

javawizard wrote: post #11
infamouscow wrote: post #7

These people took glee in demonizing and dehumanizing half of the country under the guise they're on the wrong side of history. Except what actually happened is the pendulum has swung in the other direction completely repudiating credibility of these organizations, and the people that were dehumanized are understandably very mad. These alleged journalists are supposed to report on the the world and events around them…

Having not heard about the Messenger before today, I'm not sure what ideological position you're talking about. Can you elaborate?

[deleted]

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#75

Post by basch »

BadHumans wrote: post #29
thejohnconway wrote: post #2

Almost as if a for-profit model isn’t a great fit for journalism… especially on the internet.

How do you suggest we pay journalist? They certainty shouldn't work for free.

Taxes -> Libraries -> Grants

Bundles (Apple One, Microsoft 365) -> Apple News, MSN Pro

Feedly -> Publishers -> Authors

The problem with paying for journalism, is you have to pay ahead of time to consume an unknown. To do that you either need trust, or institutions collecting a little from everyone and making decisions where to allocate funds.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#76

Post by basch »

uptown wrote: post #42
ycdxvjp wrote: post #28

No one has any great theories on what to do about info overload. So it's going to suck until someone comes up with something new.

The original Circa had a great approach to this IMO. They chunked up news into smaller pieces of information, and gave you a way to indicate interest in receiving follow-up notifications about a given story.

Circa was definitely ahead of its time, and never quite replaced.

The anti twitter/reddit/facebook. And also an anthesis to something like wikinews.

The powers that be need to revisit the idea of organizing information in a way that stories get appended and built upon, instead of each new piece of information being a new post in an endless firehose.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#77

Post by fuzzfactor »

booleandilemma wrote: post #5

I love the title "brunchlord".

It is kind of meaningful on its own but probably should be kept in context as much as possible before the concept has a chance to drift.

>scale-chasing incompetence by visionless brunchlords

There.

It may not be award-winning journalism but this is the kind of creativity that does stand out above the crowd.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#78

Post by uptown »

basch wrote: post #76
uptown wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original Circa had a great approach to this IMO. They chunked up news into smaller pieces of information, and gave you a way to indicate interest in receiving follow-up notifications about a given story.

Circa was definitely ahead of its time, and never quite replaced. The anti twitter/reddit/facebook. And also an anthesis to something like wikinews. The powers that be need to revisit the idea of organizing information in a way that stories get appended and built upon, instead of each new piece of information being a new post in an endless firehose.

They had an editor, Anthony DeRosa, who took the time to make sure what they were reporting was accurate before pushing publish. In an era where 'first' dominates, it was refreshing -- but maybe not popular.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#79

Post by nvm0n2 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #13
javawizard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having not heard about the Messenger before today, I'm not sure what ideological position you're talking about. Can you elaborate?

It's a-little-ambiguously-coded pro-MAGA how dare people hate the right, the right will have its revenge bit. It doesn't really talk to The Messenger.

It's talking to the author of the article, who rather ludicrously diagnosed the problem with the Messenger as it being not biased and ideological enough.

Re: Messenger Implosion Shows Journalism Lead by Visionless, Fail-Upward Brunchlords

#80

Post by linehedonist »

65 wrote: post #64
BadHumans wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by modernize? Is being funded by ads modernizing in your eyes because that is how Morning Brew makes their money. If that's how you look at it then you'll be happy to know that many publications are very modern and write sponsored content filled with modern ads.

Morning Brew gets good sponsorships because of their modern content. Modern content is making video, appealing to a target demographic (Gen Z for them), and being active on social media. Many newspapers don't care enough about social media to realize if they make social media oriented content, they would get sponsorships on those platforms. I used to work at a large regional newspaper, and they could not understand h…

Regional newspapers also by definition have a geographically restricted market. That worked well when there were geographical restrictions to distribution (printing and delivering newspapers), but less well in our modern age. NYT et al have found success by appealing to pivoting to larger national and international audiences.
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