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I bet there are some good opportunties for some concentrated journalism that people will find interesting enough to build a "proper business" untainted by as mu

by rtpg 9y ago

I bet there are some good opportunties for some concentrated journalism that people will find interesting enough to build a "proper business" untainted by as much advertising. The success of patreon has me believe that you could probably get enough rich people to pay (say) $50/month for a news source that feels less of a need to pander. I don't want to be too dismissive, but even though I like the coverage I get from the NY Times, I'm still financing a bunch of think pieces on the fashion industry, their cooking apps, "78 hours in X" articles, movie reviews, Bret Stephens op-eds, "Republicans place doubt on Hillary for X"-style both sides pieces, etc. I mean, sure, journalism. And its a big outfit, we don't all need to be writing about the opiod crisis. But I would like to think there's a market. Bonus points if you make this and get a rich person to help finance it. The subscription can help ease the losses whatever billionaire ends up taking. Medium is already kinda this.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
I agree with you on everything except for the part about "Medium is already kinda this". Medium has also made the same mistake of introducing bias even though they claim to want to become a platform. A lot of people see Medium as a place where a bunch of self-important people, wannabe activists, growth hackers, social justice warriors live. You can see that by the type of posts they promote on their main page as well as their official Twitter account. It's really hard to become unbiased when the organization has a clear owner. I am hoping that the new decentralized technologies will inspire some people to come up with a completely transparent and non biased system for true journalism.
- rtpg 9y ago
  I don't really want an unbiased platform. I want a news source that accepts the postulates I accept. I don't want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I do want to read more things about labor issues, without the habitual "some people think that unions are actually bad!" stuff. I don't need the both sides fallacy, especially given the current state of politics. You wouldn't want to read a defense of homeopathy right? Why do I have to suffer through denial of climate change, defenses of trickle-down economics, or "increased economic growth will counterbalance the tax cuts!"?
  - zdkl 9y ago
    > I don't really want an unbiased platform. I want a news source that accepts the postulates I accept. And this is why we can't hve nice things. The argument here is that we generally don't want an echo chamber focused on one family of postulates and that by wishing for one, the end effect is the depreciation in social value of information sources. Think of it like genetics/evolution. You want a broad gene/information pool rather than an intellectually inbred circle-jerking cesspool circling the drain of attention at the expense of knowledge and education.
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    No, in fact I do want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I totally understand why you want to filter those out from your life, and I also want to filter a lot of things out of my life too. But that's our problem, not the media's. I think the job of journalism is to give you what needs to be heard instead of what you want to hear. Being unbiased is not easy so I think at least media needs to provide as many sides of the story as possible so that each value judgment cancels out and the consumer can make the right decision based on complete set of information. The problem with the current mainstream media is that every one of them has become "Buzzfeed"ified, which means they try very hard to optimize content AND their interpretation to cater to their existing audience. This is why you see acceleration in polarization. And this is why you see so many people sharing articles talking shit about Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. They just want to be reinforced with content AND value judgment of what they want to believe in. This is human nature and we as consumers cannot easily change to act rationally because we have other better things to do in our lives than focusing every waking hour of our lives into useless political debate or whatever that's being marketed through the media. This is why I think this is journalism's job. I no longer can trust any one side coverage of a single story so have started following multiple sources just so i can make a sane judgment on anything that's happening around me. You should try that too, it's amazing how almost always different parties write extremely different interpretation of the same objective static fact that doesn't need to be sensationalized. Maybe many people may want to live in the matrix and just believe what they want to believe, but personally I do want to know exactly what I'm being fed and don't want to brainwashed with propaganda. I realize this is something that's not easily possible within the traditional centralized organizational structure (because they have to make money) which is why I think the new decentralized trust-less technologies may be able to help.
hkmurakami 9y ago
WSJ (ignore most of their opinion pieces) and Economist are supported by rich people for the reasons you describe. I stopped supporting NYT and the Atlantic once they became more sensationalist.
- rtpg 9y ago
  I wish that more people on the left would finance blatantly partisan outfits as efficiently as the right does. WSJ's opinion pieces (and some of their reporting too, to be honest) channel the Heritage Foundation way too much for my tastes. The opinion pieces' use of fancy words tend to obscure the fact that it's filled with junk economics that only very few people actually believe in. Then you have all these people on the right defend themselves with this, and journalists accept it because surely one side of the political spectrum couldn't possibly be guided by lies. Financing that does not make me a happy camper
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    Agreed that much of the WSJ's opinion pieces are basically trash wrapped in tinfoil. Also agreed that their front page articles have a noticeable fiscal conservative lean. I'll still support them as my news source where I don't have to see vitriolic, polarizing headlines.
    - rtpg 9y ago
      Yeah they have super interesting reporting, especially the business reports. Went on a bit of a rant but was subscribed for a long while. I'd like to say I cancelled out of principle but really it was more that I couldn't find time to read it anymore
pjc50 9y ago
> pay (say) $50/month for a news source that feels less of a need to pander That's about the price of a print subscription to the Financial Times, who are dry but reliable with good worldwide business-focused coverage. > I'm still financing a bunch of think pieces on the fashion industry, their cooking apps, "78 hours in X" articles, movie reviews, Bret Stephens op-eds That kind of stuff unfortunately pays for the serious stuff like the opioid crisis coverage.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Reliable by what metric? The FT panders just as hard, it has its own severe biases that result in deeply unreliable reporting. My go-to example of how unreliable the FT can be is an article they published before the Brexit referendum. It said the FT had polled a panel of over 100 "experts" and "leading thinkers". Every single one thought a vote to leave would damage economic growth. In fact economic growth accelerated. The FT, by the way, literally flies the EU flag above its offices in London. https://www.ft.com/content/1a86ab36-afbe-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6250 https://www.ft.com/content/1a86ab36-afbe-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6... In the FT’s annual poll of more than 100 leading thinkers, not one thought a vote for Brexit would enhance UK growth in 2016. Where is the line between spectacularly bad reporting and propaganda? If the FT really couldn't find a single "leading thinker" who could actually get it right in a pool of 100, and they didn't even realise that was a problem, how reliable can their coverage on other topics be? Like all newspapers the FT employs generalists who rely heavily on FT-identified 'leading thinkers' for analysis and facts. If they aren't able to spot self-created bias and groupthink on the topic of Europe then they surely cannot in other areas. I agree with rtpg - journalism seems to have a serious sickness and I'd pay for news sources that seemed to have real commitments and processes in place to ensure wide-angle reporting.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > In fact economic growth accelerated. Really? Are you sure? It's still in the fractional percentage points: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth And some of that article says "medium term". There is still no decision on what Brexit will look like and the number of businesses planning accordingly is increasing. > "Don Smith, deputy chief investment officer at Brown Shipley, said: “The uncertainty generated by a decision to leave the EU would undoubtedly be damaging for sterling assets across the board and, indeed, the value of sterling on foreign exchanges" Sterling was 1.3 to the euro just before the vote and is now 1.13.
matt4077 9y ago
ProPublica is pretty close to what you want. Other than that: The fluff you're complaining about has the fantastic benefit of being pretty cheap. Op-eds don't need days of calling people or at the courthouse. These parts of publishing may also work much like a non-profits advertisement, in that they look like a terrible waste of money that could be put to better use. Yet they bring in more than they cost, and are therefore in your interest even if you (don't want to read them/weren't attracted to the charity by the ad)

by rtpg 9y ago

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

I agree with you on everything except for the part about "Medium is already kinda this". Medium has also made the same mistake of introducing bias even though they claim to want to become a platform. A lot of people see Medium as a place where a bunch of self-important people, wannabe activists, growth hackers, social justice warriors live. You can see that by the type of posts they promote on their main page as well as their official Twitter account. It's really hard to become unbiased when the organization has a clear owner. I am hoping that the new decentralized technologies will inspire some people to come up with a completely transparent and non biased system for true journalism.

rtpg 9y ago
I don't really want an unbiased platform. I want a news source that accepts the postulates I accept. I don't want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I do want to read more things about labor issues, without the habitual "some people think that unions are actually bad!" stuff. I don't need the both sides fallacy, especially given the current state of politics. You wouldn't want to read a defense of homeopathy right? Why do I have to suffer through denial of climate change, defenses of trickle-down economics, or "increased economic growth will counterbalance the tax cuts!"?
- zdkl 9y ago
  > I don't really want an unbiased platform. I want a news source that accepts the postulates I accept. And this is why we can't hve nice things. The argument here is that we generally don't want an echo chamber focused on one family of postulates and that by wishing for one, the end effect is the depreciation in social value of information sources. Think of it like genetics/evolution. You want a broad gene/information pool rather than an intellectually inbred circle-jerking cesspool circling the drain of attention at the expense of knowledge and education.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  No, in fact I do want to read an interview with the Google Manifesto guy. I totally understand why you want to filter those out from your life, and I also want to filter a lot of things out of my life too. But that's our problem, not the media's. I think the job of journalism is to give you what needs to be heard instead of what you want to hear. Being unbiased is not easy so I think at least media needs to provide as many sides of the story as possible so that each value judgment cancels out and the consumer can make the right decision based on complete set of information. The problem with the current mainstream media is that every one of them has become "Buzzfeed"ified, which means they try very hard to optimize content AND their interpretation to cater to their existing audience. This is why you see acceleration in polarization. And this is why you see so many people sharing articles talking shit about Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. They just want to be reinforced with content AND value judgment of what they want to believe in. This is human nature and we as consumers cannot easily change to act rationally because we have other better things to do in our lives than focusing every waking hour of our lives into useless political debate or whatever that's being marketed through the media. This is why I think this is journalism's job. I no longer can trust any one side coverage of a single story so have started following multiple sources just so i can make a sane judgment on anything that's happening around me. You should try that too, it's amazing how almost always different parties write extremely different interpretation of the same objective static fact that doesn't need to be sensationalized. Maybe many people may want to live in the matrix and just believe what they want to believe, but personally I do want to know exactly what I'm being fed and don't want to brainwashed with propaganda. I realize this is something that's not easily possible within the traditional centralized organizational structure (because they have to make money) which is why I think the new decentralized trust-less technologies may be able to help.

hkmurakami 9y ago

WSJ (ignore most of their opinion pieces) and Economist are supported by rich people for the reasons you describe. I stopped supporting NYT and the Atlantic once they became more sensationalist.

rtpg 9y ago
I wish that more people on the left would finance blatantly partisan outfits as efficiently as the right does. WSJ's opinion pieces (and some of their reporting too, to be honest) channel the Heritage Foundation way too much for my tastes. The opinion pieces' use of fancy words tend to obscure the fact that it's filled with junk economics that only very few people actually believe in. Then you have all these people on the right defend themselves with this, and journalists accept it because surely one side of the political spectrum couldn't possibly be guided by lies. Financing that does not make me a happy camper
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Agreed that much of the WSJ's opinion pieces are basically trash wrapped in tinfoil. Also agreed that their front page articles have a noticeable fiscal conservative lean. I'll still support them as my news source where I don't have to see vitriolic, polarizing headlines.
  - rtpg 9y ago
    Yeah they have super interesting reporting, especially the business reports. Went on a bit of a rant but was subscribed for a long while. I'd like to say I cancelled out of principle but really it was more that I couldn't find time to read it anymore

pjc50 9y ago

> pay (say) $50/month for a news source that feels less of a need to pander That's about the price of a print subscription to the Financial Times, who are dry but reliable with good worldwide business-focused coverage. > I'm still financing a bunch of think pieces on the fashion industry, their cooking apps, "78 hours in X" articles, movie reviews, Bret Stephens op-eds That kind of stuff unfortunately pays for the serious stuff like the opioid crisis coverage.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Reliable by what metric? The FT panders just as hard, it has its own severe biases that result in deeply unreliable reporting. My go-to example of how unreliable the FT can be is an article they published before the Brexit referendum. It said the FT had polled a panel of over 100 "experts" and "leading thinkers". Every single one thought a vote to leave would damage economic growth. In fact economic growth accelerated. The FT, by the way, literally flies the EU flag above its offices in London. https://www.ft.com/content/1a86ab36-afbe-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6250 https://www.ft.com/content/1a86ab36-afbe-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6... In the FT’s annual poll of more than 100 leading thinkers, not one thought a vote for Brexit would enhance UK growth in 2016. Where is the line between spectacularly bad reporting and propaganda? If the FT really couldn't find a single "leading thinker" who could actually get it right in a pool of 100, and they didn't even realise that was a problem, how reliable can their coverage on other topics be? Like all newspapers the FT employs generalists who rely heavily on FT-identified 'leading thinkers' for analysis and facts. If they aren't able to spot self-created bias and groupthink on the topic of Europe then they surely cannot in other areas. I agree with rtpg - journalism seems to have a serious sickness and I'd pay for news sources that seemed to have real commitments and processes in place to ensure wide-angle reporting.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > In fact economic growth accelerated. Really? Are you sure? It's still in the fractional percentage points: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth And some of that article says "medium term". There is still no decision on what Brexit will look like and the number of businesses planning accordingly is increasing. > "Don Smith, deputy chief investment officer at Brown Shipley, said: “The uncertainty generated by a decision to leave the EU would undoubtedly be damaging for sterling assets across the board and, indeed, the value of sterling on foreign exchanges" Sterling was 1.3 to the euro just before the vote and is now 1.13.

matt4077 9y ago

ProPublica is pretty close to what you want. Other than that: The fluff you're complaining about has the fantastic benefit of being pretty cheap. Op-eds don't need days of calling people or at the courthouse. These parts of publishing may also work much like a non-profits advertisement, in that they look like a terrible waste of money that could be put to better use. Yet they bring in more than they cost, and are therefore in your interest even if you (don't want to read them/weren't attracted to the charity by the ad)