6 ms·

I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I followed that with anywhere else? His response was nope. There is

I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I followed that with anywhere else? His response was nope. There is a lot of potential for using snapchat for news related coverage. Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. I might sign up for an account if Snap gave me a way to get hyper-local coverage from snap journalists.

aphextron 9y ago
>Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. Sure, why not? We've already completely destroyed the distinction between standards based accountable journalism and blog post rabble rousing thanks to social media "news feeds". This seems like the next logical step.
- two2two 9y ago
  I understand your sentiment, but why can't there be varying degrees? If we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose.
  - chii 9y ago
    > we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose. and that's why there's apathy, because you cannot easily tell the difference between award winning and terrible (when the desire isn't to tell the truth, but instead manipulate the public opinion). If only there's a way for the reputation of a new source to be tarnished for reporting badly...
    - csydas 9y ago
      I understand your complaint but this ship has sailed long ago; a corollary of modern communication and access to information online is that now anybody with an agenda can publish it. The old model of set gatekeepers and Walter Cronkite delivering the trusted news isn't really possible at the moment since we're flooded with information. There are more information sources than one can possibly sort through and you can spend your life in a bubble without realizing it anymore since you can't tell where news came from, who made it, who sponsored it, and so on. You can curate your own news flood, and people happily do to ensure it only has defeatable opposing views and the rest is just reaffirming. We gave up on mainstream media and for some reason decided that rants on YouTube, walls of text on Reddit, and tweets were better. Actually come to think of it, this might be a really good idea for a distributed ledger for the Associated Press - let whoever report whatever with the AP block chain, but require that the entire "transaction chain" or chain of custody is published with each bit. Make it clear what came from where and how it forked.
- xux 9y ago
  That's what people said about TV - it completely destroyed accountable print journalism with show business. Nothing new here
  - iheartmemcache 9y ago
    Ebbs and flows. We've had the tabloid 'yellow journalism' since at least the late 1800s with the Hearst media conglomeration[1]. One could easily make the argument that if it weren't for the US capitalist interests and the tabloids' depiction of the USS Maine going down[2], McKinley wouldn't have approached Congress to seek war. Nonetheless, the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate in the 70s was a case-study in fantastic journalism. More recently, The Rolling Stone's coverage of the financial coverage by Matt Taibbi was better than the NYT's in the late 2000s. The Manchester Guardian broke the Snowden story (which itself was just a masterpiece of journalistic execution, following the Watergate 'staggered release' model). I thing what is new here is that 160 characters or a Snapchat emoji isn't a format conducive to conveying the nuances behind something as complicated as geopolitical affairs and sectarian violence culminating into factions like ISIS breaking out, due to the vacuum of power which existed after the stereotypical 'despot strongman' gets thrown out, leaving a void of power entirely disrupting two countries, dozens of ethnic groups, leading to three major fronts all vying for power in addition to what can easily be argued as a modern US/Russian proxy war. Sure, a 4 minute feature on NPR won't begin to do it justice, but sometimes you'll get 12 minutes of syndication from the BBC and let Lyse Ducett run with her on-the-ground coverage. If any demographics' primary (or worse,) sole method of news consumption is a 'headlines only' format, as it may be for the 14-21 demographic, I might be slightly concerned. Tangentially, now that 24 hour cable news exists, you have the converse problem of having too much time to fill, so you'll get talking heads in an echo-chamber[3] consumed by the 65+ demographic. Cronkite and Morrow (and arguably even up to Jennings, which is what I remember watching as a child) at least had 30 minutes of airtime with a captive audience to go into the nuances. (And while the "big 3" were not without their biases, they certainly did an objectively better job than the disservice MSNBC and Fox News is doing.) -- [1] I suggest anyone interested in the media's influence on policy to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8.... [2] While still inconclusive as to the cause, most historians regard this as not an act of war or sabotage but a ship design defect, evidenced by other ships of the same design failing in the exact same fashion. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cP74QzyrLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cP74QzyrLw Allow Jon Stewart on the O'Reilly factor delineate why the Fox News & MSNBC model is so harmful.
farnsworth 9y ago
That's unfortunate, Snapchat "news" as I've seen it has been far lower quality than even cable news.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Worse than Now This?
  - chii 9y ago
    That's a comedy show. If you rely on last week tonight for your news source, you're already in trouble.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      I'm not talking about LWT: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/ https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/
Swizec 9y ago
> I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I mean, I'm 29 and I get all my news from Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews. Panders to a different demographic, but is ultimately just as bad. Most news is garbage anyway. Designed to make you anxious so you'll buy more stuff. At least HackerNews doesn't have that motive so it's more interesting on average.
- avaer 9y ago
  The thing is, the crowd that gets their news from Snapchat would agree with you that most news is garbage. Which is why they get it on snap. I love HN as much as you do, but the stories here equally pander to a demographic. It's just closer to ours.
  - losteric 9y ago
    It's important to distinguish between entertainment and news.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      Do news outlets even make that distinction? Because I don't think they do. At least not in the broad sense of entertainment as "Content you consume despite complete lack of actionable information" some news you find out and you're like "Holy shit, I gotta do X and Y and instantly change my behavior". Examples of such news are, "Tsunami barreling towards your city" or "Nukes detected en route to your town" or "Air raid incoming" or even "Draft starting for your target demographic". Or something more benign like "So and so VC is starting a fund for thing you're doing" Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Examples of news like this: "Bowie dies" or "Terrorist attack in city 8000km away" or "US gets involved in yet another war that doesn't affect you" or benign things like "VC starts a fund for thing you have zero interest in"
      - look_lookatme 9y ago
0x445442 9y ago
>> and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news Translation, anything that fits with our (NBC's political agenda).

aphextron 9y ago

>Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. Sure, why not? We've already completely destroyed the distinction between standards based accountable journalism and blog post rabble rousing thanks to social media "news feeds". This seems like the next logical step.

two2two 9y ago
I understand your sentiment, but why can't there be varying degrees? If we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose.
- chii 9y ago
  > we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose. and that's why there's apathy, because you cannot easily tell the difference between award winning and terrible (when the desire isn't to tell the truth, but instead manipulate the public opinion). If only there's a way for the reputation of a new source to be tarnished for reporting badly...
  - csydas 9y ago
    I understand your complaint but this ship has sailed long ago; a corollary of modern communication and access to information online is that now anybody with an agenda can publish it. The old model of set gatekeepers and Walter Cronkite delivering the trusted news isn't really possible at the moment since we're flooded with information. There are more information sources than one can possibly sort through and you can spend your life in a bubble without realizing it anymore since you can't tell where news came from, who made it, who sponsored it, and so on. You can curate your own news flood, and people happily do to ensure it only has defeatable opposing views and the rest is just reaffirming. We gave up on mainstream media and for some reason decided that rants on YouTube, walls of text on Reddit, and tweets were better. Actually come to think of it, this might be a really good idea for a distributed ledger for the Associated Press - let whoever report whatever with the AP block chain, but require that the entire "transaction chain" or chain of custody is published with each bit. Make it clear what came from where and how it forked.
xux 9y ago
That's what people said about TV - it completely destroyed accountable print journalism with show business. Nothing new here
- iheartmemcache 9y ago
  Ebbs and flows. We've had the tabloid 'yellow journalism' since at least the late 1800s with the Hearst media conglomeration[1]. One could easily make the argument that if it weren't for the US capitalist interests and the tabloids' depiction of the USS Maine going down[2], McKinley wouldn't have approached Congress to seek war. Nonetheless, the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate in the 70s was a case-study in fantastic journalism. More recently, The Rolling Stone's coverage of the financial coverage by Matt Taibbi was better than the NYT's in the late 2000s. The Manchester Guardian broke the Snowden story (which itself was just a masterpiece of journalistic execution, following the Watergate 'staggered release' model). I thing what is new here is that 160 characters or a Snapchat emoji isn't a format conducive to conveying the nuances behind something as complicated as geopolitical affairs and sectarian violence culminating into factions like ISIS breaking out, due to the vacuum of power which existed after the stereotypical 'despot strongman' gets thrown out, leaving a void of power entirely disrupting two countries, dozens of ethnic groups, leading to three major fronts all vying for power in addition to what can easily be argued as a modern US/Russian proxy war. Sure, a 4 minute feature on NPR won't begin to do it justice, but sometimes you'll get 12 minutes of syndication from the BBC and let Lyse Ducett run with her on-the-ground coverage. If any demographics' primary (or worse,) sole method of news consumption is a 'headlines only' format, as it may be for the 14-21 demographic, I might be slightly concerned. Tangentially, now that 24 hour cable news exists, you have the converse problem of having too much time to fill, so you'll get talking heads in an echo-chamber[3] consumed by the 65+ demographic. Cronkite and Morrow (and arguably even up to Jennings, which is what I remember watching as a child) at least had 30 minutes of airtime with a captive audience to go into the nuances. (And while the "big 3" were not without their biases, they certainly did an objectively better job than the disservice MSNBC and Fox News is doing.) -- [1] I suggest anyone interested in the media's influence on policy to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8.... [2] While still inconclusive as to the cause, most historians regard this as not an act of war or sabotage but a ship design defect, evidenced by other ships of the same design failing in the exact same fashion. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cP74QzyrLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cP74QzyrLw Allow Jon Stewart on the O'Reilly factor delineate why the Fox News & MSNBC model is so harmful.

farnsworth 9y ago

That's unfortunate, Snapchat "news" as I've seen it has been far lower quality than even cable news.

rhizome 9y ago
Worse than Now This?
- chii 9y ago
  That's a comedy show. If you rely on last week tonight for your news source, you're already in trouble.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    I'm not talking about LWT: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/ https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/

Swizec 9y ago

> I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I mean, I'm 29 and I get all my news from Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews. Panders to a different demographic, but is ultimately just as bad. Most news is garbage anyway. Designed to make you anxious so you'll buy more stuff. At least HackerNews doesn't have that motive so it's more interesting on average.

avaer 9y ago
The thing is, the crowd that gets their news from Snapchat would agree with you that most news is garbage. Which is why they get it on snap. I love HN as much as you do, but the stories here equally pander to a demographic. It's just closer to ours.
- losteric 9y ago
  It's important to distinguish between entertainment and news.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Do news outlets even make that distinction? Because I don't think they do. At least not in the broad sense of entertainment as "Content you consume despite complete lack of actionable information" some news you find out and you're like "Holy shit, I gotta do X and Y and instantly change my behavior". Examples of such news are, "Tsunami barreling towards your city" or "Nukes detected en route to your town" or "Air raid incoming" or even "Draft starting for your target demographic". Or something more benign like "So and so VC is starting a fund for thing you're doing" Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Examples of news like this: "Bowie dies" or "Terrorist attack in city 8000km away" or "US gets involved in yet another war that doesn't affect you" or benign things like "VC starts a fund for thing you have zero interest in"
    - look_lookatme 9y ago

0x445442 9y ago

>> and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news Translation, anything that fits with our (NBC's political agenda).