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Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the origi

Back then people were more willing to pay for news (newspapers and magazines), no one blocked ads, and people visited real websites where ads paid for the original content (rather than just skimming headlines on Reddit, Facebook, etc). What we're seeing today is journalism outfits that went out of business a long time ago and the remnants of the companies were acquired by a very different organization with very different goals. The problem is, this was done silently and no one ever acknowledged the transfer. It's partly the fault of the journalism outfits for buying into the clickbait stuff. It's partly the fault of aggregators (even including Hacker News). It's partly the fault of the readers/users for consuming their information in the laziest way possible. Everyone is to blame and the problem is surprisingly hard to solve, but what we can't do is point to articles like this and say "this is bad journalism", because it's not. It never was. Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it.

slantyyz 9y ago
>> Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. And the unfortunate outcome of that is infotainment and advertorials pretending to be news. Even worse is that more and more people take that stuff at face value.
ghaff 9y ago
>Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. With some exceptions. And there's also good tech commentary from various people who get food put on their plate from other sources which admittedly creates at least the potential for greater biases that aren't obvious. Although bias-free has always been an aspiration that generally hasn't existed in its purest form in practice. And a lot of popular science has always been pretty shallow.
- freehunter 9y ago
  >With some exceptions. I would argue, with very few exceptions. The NYT is capable of some great journalism. Same with WSJ and a number of other outfits. That doesn't change the fact that their opinion articles share the same domain and letterhead in an intentional effort to confuse facts with truth to gain clicks. To flip the argument around: Buzzfeed has some surprisingly good journalists working for it, including Pulitzer Prize winners. The only difference between Buzzfeed and NYT is that NYT is historically known for good journalism due to their long history of being a strong journalistic outfit, while Buzzfeed is known for trash tabloid nonsense and only recently had hired actual journalists. If I gave you just a headline, could you tell me which company it's from? >Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy Surprise. That's the top article on Buzzfeed.com right now. Not even cherry-picked, that's number one, the very first headline. >Is This the Golden Age of Drag? Yes. And No. Again, very first headline, number one, most important thing on the page, not cherry-picked. That's nytimes.com. There's absolutely nothing wrong with either of these articles or either of these websites. I'm just highlighting the fact that you can't tell them apart. Because journalists now work for tabloids and clickbait-generators. And tech journalism is owned by exclusives (which are paid for), access (which can be revoked if you write something bad), and advertisers (who will pull sponsorships to influence the news). If there are ads, there is no such thing as independent and unbiased news.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I don't really disagree with any of that. Richard Salant, the former president CBS News, supposedly once said "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they should have." Arguably it was a bit arrogant at the time but it's certainly not something I imagine coming out of the mouth of an executive at any clicks-driven mainstream news business today. I still get Time Magazine (though I'll probably let my subscription lapse soon) mostly out of habit because I've gotten it for decades. Is there still good writing and journalism there? Yeah but it's also got all sorts of infographics and fluffy opinion pieces and lifestyle articles. (Always has of course but the mix has certainly shifted.)

slantyyz 9y ago

>> Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. And the unfortunate outcome of that is infotainment and advertorials pretending to be news. Even worse is that more and more people take that stuff at face value.

ghaff 9y ago

>Journalism went out of business a long time ago because no one will buy it. With some exceptions. And there's also good tech commentary from various people who get food put on their plate from other sources which admittedly creates at least the potential for greater biases that aren't obvious. Although bias-free has always been an aspiration that generally hasn't existed in its purest form in practice. And a lot of popular science has always been pretty shallow.

freehunter 9y ago
>With some exceptions. I would argue, with very few exceptions. The NYT is capable of some great journalism. Same with WSJ and a number of other outfits. That doesn't change the fact that their opinion articles share the same domain and letterhead in an intentional effort to confuse facts with truth to gain clicks. To flip the argument around: Buzzfeed has some surprisingly good journalists working for it, including Pulitzer Prize winners. The only difference between Buzzfeed and NYT is that NYT is historically known for good journalism due to their long history of being a strong journalistic outfit, while Buzzfeed is known for trash tabloid nonsense and only recently had hired actual journalists. If I gave you just a headline, could you tell me which company it's from? >Investigators Are Scrutinizing Newly Uncovered Payments By The Russian Embassy Surprise. That's the top article on Buzzfeed.com right now. Not even cherry-picked, that's number one, the very first headline. >Is This the Golden Age of Drag? Yes. And No. Again, very first headline, number one, most important thing on the page, not cherry-picked. That's nytimes.com. There's absolutely nothing wrong with either of these articles or either of these websites. I'm just highlighting the fact that you can't tell them apart. Because journalists now work for tabloids and clickbait-generators. And tech journalism is owned by exclusives (which are paid for), access (which can be revoked if you write something bad), and advertisers (who will pull sponsorships to influence the news). If there are ads, there is no such thing as independent and unbiased news.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I don't really disagree with any of that. Richard Salant, the former president CBS News, supposedly once said "Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they should have." Arguably it was a bit arrogant at the time but it's certainly not something I imagine coming out of the mouth of an executive at any clicks-driven mainstream news business today. I still get Time Magazine (though I'll probably let my subscription lapse soon) mostly out of habit because I've gotten it for decades. Is there still good writing and journalism there? Yeah but it's also got all sorts of infographics and fluffy opinion pieces and lifestyle articles. (Always has of course but the mix has certainly shifted.)