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The phrase "yellow journalism" is over 100 years old now. The talking heads on cable news are well aware that their salaries and continued employment depend o

by Lazare 8y ago

The phrase "yellow journalism" is over 100 years old now. The talking heads on cable news are well aware that their salaries and continued employment depend on their ability to attract views. And there have been plenty of scandals in the "old school" serious print media of journalists making stuff up for prestige or renown (Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke). People look back with nostalgia on an era that never existed.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the phrase "yellow journalism" is over 100 years old I don’t know if anyone has studied the longitudinal accuracy of journalists. The 19th century brought unique economies of scale to mass-market journalism (through industrialised printing and steam-powered rail transport). “Realizing that they could expand their audience by abandoning politically polarized content, thus making more money off of advertising, American newspapers began to abandon their partisan politics in favor of less political reporting starting around 1900“ [1]. Quality thus increased, and remained increased, until the Internet made niche journalism profitable again. Journalism 150 years ago was crap. And a lot of journalism today is crap. It does not follow, however, that the intervening years were similarly dominated by dumbassery. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
- Lazare 8y ago
  > Quality thus increased, and remained increased, until the Internet made narrow-niche journalism profitable again. I basically agree with your overall point, but I think you may have that part backwards, actually. Advertising in general (and for newspapers, classified advertising in particular) represented an enormous torrent of money. The internet killed that. It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again (it never stopped; there have always been niche magazines and newsletters), it's that the internet stopped newspapers being profitable at all, and now all we're left with is the narrow niches that never went away. Are we worse off as a society now that all that money flows straight to Facebook and Google instead of the Village Voice and it's kin? Sure, maybe. But was journalism magically more ethical during that period? I see no evidence of such. And I don't think lying for a Pulitzer is any more noble than lying for some page views.
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again I think it has. Before industrial printing, printing a broadsheet was expensive. Before steam locomotion, quickly shipping it far was expensive. That limited the addressable market. Add in lower population densities and you have a narrowly-distributed product for which a high price must be charged. Enter industrial printing and steam locomotion. Economies of scale emerge. Those operating with scale can outcompete narrow operations on price. Apolitical news becoming cheaper meant partisan rags had to fight harder to justify their price premium. In the end, scale won. The Internet makes production and distribution cheaper. At the same time, it gut punched the majors by taking away their ad revenue. It’s the reverse of the above happening, and it’s newly enabling small, partisan publications to turn a profit. (They needed to appeal to a broader market, before, to pay for their fixed print and distribution costs.) > It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again This is a red herring.

by Lazare 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> the phrase "yellow journalism" is over 100 years old I don’t know if anyone has studied the longitudinal accuracy of journalists. The 19th century brought unique economies of scale to mass-market journalism (through industrialised printing and steam-powered rail transport). “Realizing that they could expand their audience by abandoning politically polarized content, thus making more money off of advertising, American newspapers began to abandon their partisan politics in favor of less political reporting starting around 1900“ [1]. Quality thus increased, and remained increased, until the Internet made niche journalism profitable again. Journalism 150 years ago was crap. And a lot of journalism today is crap. It does not follow, however, that the intervening years were similarly dominated by dumbassery. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism

Lazare 8y ago
> Quality thus increased, and remained increased, until the Internet made narrow-niche journalism profitable again. I basically agree with your overall point, but I think you may have that part backwards, actually. Advertising in general (and for newspapers, classified advertising in particular) represented an enormous torrent of money. The internet killed that. It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again (it never stopped; there have always been niche magazines and newsletters), it's that the internet stopped newspapers being profitable at all, and now all we're left with is the narrow niches that never went away. Are we worse off as a society now that all that money flows straight to Facebook and Google instead of the Village Voice and it's kin? Sure, maybe. But was journalism magically more ethical during that period? I see no evidence of such. And I don't think lying for a Pulitzer is any more noble than lying for some page views.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again I think it has. Before industrial printing, printing a broadsheet was expensive. Before steam locomotion, quickly shipping it far was expensive. That limited the addressable market. Add in lower population densities and you have a narrowly-distributed product for which a high price must be charged. Enter industrial printing and steam locomotion. Economies of scale emerge. Those operating with scale can outcompete narrow operations on price. Apolitical news becoming cheaper meant partisan rags had to fight harder to justify their price premium. In the end, scale won. The Internet makes production and distribution cheaper. At the same time, it gut punched the majors by taking away their ad revenue. It’s the reverse of the above happening, and it’s newly enabling small, partisan publications to turn a profit. (They needed to appeal to a broader market, before, to pay for their fixed print and distribution costs.) > It's not that the internet has made narrow-niche journalism profitable again This is a red herring.