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Since you asked ... As both a writer and reader, I fucking hate it. I think it's fucking piss-poor writing by journalists who don't know how to be journalists a

by mnm1 9y ago

Since you asked ... As both a writer and reader, I fucking hate it. I think it's fucking piss-poor writing by journalists who don't know how to be journalists and don't even know how to write an article, all in the name of attracting simple-minded readers with a one of the lamest prose techniques possible. I'm here to read an article about patents. I'm not interested in the opening few paragraphs of a bad novel. If I wanted to read a bad novel, I'd pick up a bad novel. If these "journalists" want to write a novel, then they should do that and stop writing "journalism" articles. This is one of the worst scourges of online "journalism" and frankly, I'm tired of having to skip the first few paragraphs of every article because I don't want to read some fucking stupid little story over and over again and want to get to the content. What ever happened to traditional journalism, where the facts are laid out at the top and the details come in later? It seems that "journalism" nowadays can't even get that right. If they want to put a stupid story, at least put it at the end where it belongs, where few or none will read it. You could say this is a little pet peeve of mine. Thanks for asking.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
The reason is simple - they (people responsible for the form of articles, which may not always include the original journalist) don't care about you. They're not here to deliver you value. They're here to extract value from you. My rule of thumb is simple: I look at a service and ask myself, is what I see a good, efficient way to deliver the value the service says it delivers? If the answer is no, I know that they don't give a shit about delivering value, they're only there to extract it. In the concrete example of journalism: inverted pyramid, TL;DR of the facts at the top, no useless prose - those are signs of trying to deliver value. Prose, multi-page articles, ads, auto-playing videos (be it ads or "content") - those are signs they don't give a shit about you. And yes, some may say that companies seek balance between profitability and value. Sure, maybe companies think they do that. But the choices they make matter. If they're making money literally on wasting my time, the most precious resource any human being has, then I don't want to have anything to do with them. Which is why I don't read the news. The state of the journalism is so bad here, that casual browsing of comment sections of Reddit and HN is a more efficient way to stay up-to-date on the world events than actually reading the articles.

by mnm1 9y ago

TeMPOraL 9y ago

The reason is simple - they (people responsible for the form of articles, which may not always include the original journalist) don't care about you. They're not here to deliver you value. They're here to extract value from you. My rule of thumb is simple: I look at a service and ask myself, is what I see a good, efficient way to deliver the value the service says it delivers? If the answer is no, I know that they don't give a shit about delivering value, they're only there to extract it. In the concrete example of journalism: inverted pyramid, TL;DR of the facts at the top, no useless prose - those are signs of trying to deliver value. Prose, multi-page articles, ads, auto-playing videos (be it ads or "content") - those are signs they don't give a shit about you. And yes, some may say that companies seek balance between profitability and value. Sure, maybe companies think they do that. But the choices they make matter. If they're making money literally on wasting my time, the most precious resource any human being has, then I don't want to have anything to do with them. Which is why I don't read the news. The state of the journalism is so bad here, that casual browsing of comment sections of Reddit and HN is a more efficient way to stay up-to-date on the world events than actually reading the articles.