6 ms·

Where is the modern day Murrow or Cronkite? All over. The trick is to find them. Our world is so much better because newspapers matter less and so much wors

Where is the modern day Murrow or Cronkite? All over. The trick is to find them. Our world is so much better because newspapers matter less and so much worse because cable matters more.

kartD 10y ago
True, journalism has been democratized, do you have any recommendations? I seem to have difficulty finding them
- losteverything 10y ago
  I like the week.
  - kartD 10y ago
    Not to my taste, but I can definitely see why someone would like it. Still pretty good. Thanks!
    - losteverything 10y ago
      I'll add Bloomberg. Esp their radio. Esp__2 their law program.
      - kartD 10y ago
        I love Bloomberg and WSJ!
  - e40 10y ago
    A friend recommended this. I went to their website and there was an article on guns (it was just after one of our horrific gun violence incidents) and their solution: arm everyone. That was really the conclusion from the op-ed, make sure everyone has a gun. No thanks.
    - losteverything 10y ago
      It's an aggregator mostly. (Re) prints from many sides. Definitely a case where it is a far better reading experience in physical magazine form than electronic. You can peek ahead to see where the opposing view or alternative view is going. The format is good for short attention people like myself
    - acheron 10y ago
      Yeah, definitely not worth reading any source that presents a different opinion from yours.
      - e40 10y ago
        Yes, because all opinions are equally valid and calling out a so-called idiotic one makes me closed minded. Got it.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    The Week is fine but it's mostly short attention span recaps of what's been reported elsewhere. The question in this thread is where are the journalists who are doing investigative stories that take months (e.g. Spotlight) and the answer is that they exist but there are a lot fewer than there used to be.
- unwiredben 10y ago
  I like reading the investigative stories at Talking Points Memo's Longform section (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform), and I'm also a fan a lot of the original work at Pando (https://pando.com/ https://pando.com/). I tend to follow the source links on a lot of the more popular sites and see if the original is worth a RSS subscription.
  - lotso 10y ago
    I'm not sure I'd consider Pando real journalism (maybe they've changed since they're behind a pay wall). Funded by VCs and they write about the tech industry.
catacombs 10y ago
The world is much better off because newspapers matter less? I disagree. From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate to Edward Snowden to the current water crisis in Flint, newspapers have broken stories that've benefitted the public. If any of you watch the news, a majority of stories are recycled from original newspaper reporting. While papers' circulations are dwindling, they are still making a difference online. If no one is keeping our elected officials accountable, who will? Surely not Dave and Kelly of News Channel whatever.
- losteverything 10y ago
  Less because the "publishable" population has gone from a few to almost anybody. A smartphone is a personal publisher-editor-printer-distributor. We do not have to rely on the newspaper to be the 1st ordinal of "news" I can be a news seeker much easier now Newspapers are important just less so than in 1976, say
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    That's a nice thought but the majority of what "anybody" posts is mindless nonsense with the added benefit of not even pretending they're trying to be informative. It's like how cell phones put a camera in everyone's pocket so now when we have natural disasters or a 10 car pileup we get photos, but about 3/4 are idiotic selfies.
    - losteverything 10y ago
      I wonder if we will ever grow out of that, now that cameras are everywhere. The sense we have to capture news. I grew up wanting to be the next (accidental) Abraham Zapruder.(0) to be the source, the Deep Throat so to speak, of something so important -to be validated by the news. (0) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1PbgeBoQ4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1PbgeBoQ4
  - abakker 10y ago
    I'm sorry, but I can't disagree more. Newspapers are far from being a distribution channel, and to think of them that way is as reductive as thinking of social networks as address books. Newspapers are organizations that are first and foremost investigative, backed up by quality control, editorial, and research organizations. If you replace this with a smartphone and shift the delivery model out from a newspaper, then the role of being a fact-checker, editor, researcher, and expert falls on the reader. This is a bad idea, not only because it creates more work for the reader, but also because it increase the extent to which personal bias of the readership can increase the incorrect interpretation of facts. Obviously, no newspaper is a perfect example of this ideal, but they are a great deal further along the curve than almost any individual. As a result, they act as a force against filter bubbles by promoting a whole set of stories and ideas that force people to participate more broadly with real world events and ideas. The mere fact that we worry so much about editorial bias in newspapers is a symptom of the importance that they play in guiding their consumers. The solution is not self-guidance and self-filtering and self research in order to wade through a sea of unqualified, unedited BS. Furthermore, by being a news seeker, you are admitting that you are still seeking to know what is out there? Is there a particular reason you do not want to consume news through a qualified source? If you want to read the panama papers by yourself then you will likely do that to exclusion of all other reading for a period of days to weeks, and you will need to spend twice that doing research to understand what it means. If you go through a newspaper, they do that work for you. Newspapers are not broken in any fundamental way. The only reason that this discussion is even happening is that news was traditionally funded by advertising, and that advertising is a shifting business, dragging news along with it. Discussions that center on the decline of newspapers without acknowledging that the shift in advertising revenue is really the problem ignores something very important: that the business of generating news is not at fault, the business of paying for it is. That is the real discussion worth having.
3minus1 10y ago
> Our world is so much better because newspapers matter less Disagree. Just last week John Oliver showed David Simon talking about a golden age of corruption when journalists stop going to town hall meetings and local political events.
- arkadiyt 10y ago
  Here's the youtube link for those who are interested - it's 20m and a great watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=bq2_wSsDwkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=bq2_wSsDwkQ
slededit 10y ago
If you go back and actually listen to some of Murrow's broadcasts (especially radio ones), you can see he took value judgements frequently. The era of unbiased broadcasting never existed. The internet archive has many recordings: https://archive.org/search.php?query=edward%20r%20murrow https://archive.org/search.php?query=edward%20r%20murrow

Where is the modern day Murrow or Cronkite? All over. The trick is to find them. Our world is so much better because newspapers matter less and so much worse because cable matters more.

kartD 10y ago

True, journalism has been democratized, do you have any recommendations? I seem to have difficulty finding them

losteverything 10y ago
I like the week.
- kartD 10y ago
  Not to my taste, but I can definitely see why someone would like it. Still pretty good. Thanks!
  - losteverything 10y ago
    I'll add Bloomberg. Esp their radio. Esp__2 their law program.
    - kartD 10y ago
      I love Bloomberg and WSJ!
- e40 10y ago
  A friend recommended this. I went to their website and there was an article on guns (it was just after one of our horrific gun violence incidents) and their solution: arm everyone. That was really the conclusion from the op-ed, make sure everyone has a gun. No thanks.
  - losteverything 10y ago
    It's an aggregator mostly. (Re) prints from many sides. Definitely a case where it is a far better reading experience in physical magazine form than electronic. You can peek ahead to see where the opposing view or alternative view is going. The format is good for short attention people like myself
  - acheron 10y ago
    Yeah, definitely not worth reading any source that presents a different opinion from yours.
    - e40 10y ago
      Yes, because all opinions are equally valid and calling out a so-called idiotic one makes me closed minded. Got it.
- ghaff 10y ago
  The Week is fine but it's mostly short attention span recaps of what's been reported elsewhere. The question in this thread is where are the journalists who are doing investigative stories that take months (e.g. Spotlight) and the answer is that they exist but there are a lot fewer than there used to be.
unwiredben 10y ago
I like reading the investigative stories at Talking Points Memo's Longform section (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform), and I'm also a fan a lot of the original work at Pando (https://pando.com/ https://pando.com/). I tend to follow the source links on a lot of the more popular sites and see if the original is worth a RSS subscription.
- lotso 10y ago
  I'm not sure I'd consider Pando real journalism (maybe they've changed since they're behind a pay wall). Funded by VCs and they write about the tech industry.

catacombs 10y ago

The world is much better off because newspapers matter less? I disagree. From the Pentagon Papers to Watergate to Edward Snowden to the current water crisis in Flint, newspapers have broken stories that've benefitted the public. If any of you watch the news, a majority of stories are recycled from original newspaper reporting. While papers' circulations are dwindling, they are still making a difference online. If no one is keeping our elected officials accountable, who will? Surely not Dave and Kelly of News Channel whatever.

losteverything 10y ago
Less because the "publishable" population has gone from a few to almost anybody. A smartphone is a personal publisher-editor-printer-distributor. We do not have to rely on the newspaper to be the 1st ordinal of "news" I can be a news seeker much easier now Newspapers are important just less so than in 1976, say
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  That's a nice thought but the majority of what "anybody" posts is mindless nonsense with the added benefit of not even pretending they're trying to be informative. It's like how cell phones put a camera in everyone's pocket so now when we have natural disasters or a 10 car pileup we get photos, but about 3/4 are idiotic selfies.
  - losteverything 10y ago
    I wonder if we will ever grow out of that, now that cameras are everywhere. The sense we have to capture news. I grew up wanting to be the next (accidental) Abraham Zapruder.(0) to be the source, the Deep Throat so to speak, of something so important -to be validated by the news. (0) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1PbgeBoQ4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kq1PbgeBoQ4
- abakker 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but I can't disagree more. Newspapers are far from being a distribution channel, and to think of them that way is as reductive as thinking of social networks as address books. Newspapers are organizations that are first and foremost investigative, backed up by quality control, editorial, and research organizations. If you replace this with a smartphone and shift the delivery model out from a newspaper, then the role of being a fact-checker, editor, researcher, and expert falls on the reader. This is a bad idea, not only because it creates more work for the reader, but also because it increase the extent to which personal bias of the readership can increase the incorrect interpretation of facts. Obviously, no newspaper is a perfect example of this ideal, but they are a great deal further along the curve than almost any individual. As a result, they act as a force against filter bubbles by promoting a whole set of stories and ideas that force people to participate more broadly with real world events and ideas. The mere fact that we worry so much about editorial bias in newspapers is a symptom of the importance that they play in guiding their consumers. The solution is not self-guidance and self-filtering and self research in order to wade through a sea of unqualified, unedited BS. Furthermore, by being a news seeker, you are admitting that you are still seeking to know what is out there? Is there a particular reason you do not want to consume news through a qualified source? If you want to read the panama papers by yourself then you will likely do that to exclusion of all other reading for a period of days to weeks, and you will need to spend twice that doing research to understand what it means. If you go through a newspaper, they do that work for you. Newspapers are not broken in any fundamental way. The only reason that this discussion is even happening is that news was traditionally funded by advertising, and that advertising is a shifting business, dragging news along with it. Discussions that center on the decline of newspapers without acknowledging that the shift in advertising revenue is really the problem ignores something very important: that the business of generating news is not at fault, the business of paying for it is. That is the real discussion worth having.

3minus1 10y ago

> Our world is so much better because newspapers matter less Disagree. Just last week John Oliver showed David Simon talking about a golden age of corruption when journalists stop going to town hall meetings and local political events.

arkadiyt 10y ago
Here's the youtube link for those who are interested - it's 20m and a great watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=bq2_wSsDwkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=bq2_wSsDwkQ

slededit 10y ago

If you go back and actually listen to some of Murrow's broadcasts (especially radio ones), you can see he took value judgements frequently. The era of unbiased broadcasting never existed. The internet archive has many recordings: https://archive.org/search.php?query=edward%20r%20murrow https://archive.org/search.php?query=edward%20r%20murrow