5 ms·

Digital Media: What Went Wrong

37 points by dsr12 8y ago

mudil 8y ago
Legacy media such as NYT and WSJ are refusing to properly cover the real issue of surveillance capitalism duopoly of Google and Facebook. When Candy Crush knows your hometown and your hobbies, there is no need to serve ads on your local newspaper's website and there is no need for hobby websites, or professional sites, or smart sites for kids. So we have no content creation on internet outside of WSJ, NYT, Youtube, etc. And there are no investments in media. And there is no money in media. In turn we have a static internet and privacy scandals and fake news on a few swampy platforms. It's really bad for democracy and for us. And it's bad for startups.
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  Half the comments on HN lately are complaining that the NYT covers Facebook too much and that they’re reading it less as a result.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Personnally, I think it's too little too late. They should have told people that 10 years ago, when the IT community started to feel it would go this way, and begun to warn everybody about it. That's what journalist is about. Now, they are just repeating what's in everybody's mind. But society doesn't need parots as journalists. Surprise, we have social medias for that. It needs analysts, reporters, people that help them decrypt the world better. They completly failed at decrypting the IT world for the last 2 decades, and only started writting about things when a lot of people already understood it and paid the price. Basically, they don't do their job, and complain we are not supporting them anymore. Sorry but not sorry.
    - Angostura 8y ago
      > They should have told people that 10 years ago, when the IT community started to feel it would go this way, and begun to warn everybody about it. 10 years ago, you say? https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Longhorn-s-expulsion-shows-need-for-caution-on-1774465.php https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Longhorn-s-ex... https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/does-google-flu-trends-raises-new-privacy-risks/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/does-google-flu-tr... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7196803.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7196803.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.s... https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16ping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16ping.html https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88748673 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=887486... https://www.cnet.com/news/exclusive-the-next-facebook-privacy-scandal/ https://www.cnet.com/news/exclusive-the-next-facebook-privac... Journalists were writing about privacy concerns in mainstream media quite a lot.
      - sametmax 8y ago
        You are right. I have to think about this more.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
exogeny 8y ago
I mean, is it really this difficult? Cost of production plummeted to zero, vastly increasing supply. That increase of supply combined with additional sophistication of users meant that ads became exponentially less valuable. Getting desperate, they hitched their wagon on Facebook - and anyone who has lived through any era of the Internet knows that you never build your house on someone else's land. Most of them raised way, way, way too much as if they were tech plays and could scale like it. Vox only gets around it because they don't pay 90% of their writers.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Yes, and because cost of production were high, they didn't have much competition before, and so medias were easily bought, and could provide low value infos without consequences. Now everybody can provide low value or paid content. But medias had a reputation to be smart and respectable. However, smart and respectable institutions would have identified they messed up, and try to outcompete their low value / paid competition by providing outstanding value. After all, many start up did in other fields, and it worked. But that's not what happened. Instead, they complained, attacked competitors and users, used shady strategies but never, ever, changed the service their provided. I used to consume a lot of news, but the more I had access to various sources of informations, the more I travelled, the more I educated myself, the more I realized how much unreliable and not on my side the big medias were. And so I stoped trusting them. They didn't adapt. They didn't ask for forgiveness for their mistakes. They didn't try to fix anything. They just try to make it all ok for them again. And now they are dying. I have a hard time feeling compassion.
- quaunaut 8y ago
  > Vox only gets around it because they don't pay 90% of their writers. Is this true? Where can I learn more?
  - exogeny 8y ago
    It's unequivocally true in the case of SBNation, which is their most trafficked property. It follows the model originally brought to market by Bleacher Report, which used unpaid "contributors" creating low-grade SEO chum content in exchange for the nebulous concept of exposure. See more: https://deadspin.com/how-sb-nation-profits-off-an-army-of-exploited-workers-1797653841 https://deadspin.com/how-sb-nation-profits-off-an-army-of-ex...
remarkEon 8y ago
>For years, BuzzFeed seemed to be leading the journalism industry toward a brave new future. Serious question: did anyone honestly believe this to be true?
- cagenut 8y ago
  it was true, from a revenue perspective. it wasn't a good thing, but it was still a true thing.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  Buzzfeed's actual journalism (not the goofy lists and quizzes) is pretty good. Buzzfeed news also posts all their data for their articles on Github. https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews
  - djohnston 8y ago
    they didn't start with actual journalism though. they started with complete trash, and then used that clickbait revenue to fund actual investigative journalism
    - kyriee 8y ago
      Well, that was always the plan. A little bit like the classified and sports sections were paying for that Bagdad bureau.
alexashka 8y ago
In my mind - if you treat news as entertainment, you're finished. There are just too many entertaining things to do, that are free or almost free. The only news I'm interested in surviving, is intelligent, well educated people, talking to domain experts. HackerNews is a good example - I'm far more interested in getting the occasional insight from a quality comment, than anything that's actually posted on here. If only I didn't have to sift through 100 comments to encounter 1 gem - that should be the journalist. Trouble is - people view journalism as a job, it's not. Having education and life experience in a field, combined with decent journalism, is a job. Journalism on it's own is just not interesting - being a wordsmith is not more valuable than actually knowing what you're talking about.
- jancsika 8y ago
  > Journalism on it's own is just not interesting - being a wordsmith is not more valuable than actually knowing what you're talking about. Knowing what you're talking about and informing the public are two different things. Both are necessary parts of journalism, with neither sufficient alone to fulfill the vital role of the press as a check on the three branches of government.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- raarts 8y ago
  I agree. In addition to this I think that - since getting clicks is the business model - they will move towards publishing content that gets more people to click, enraging being the most profitable form of engaging. This has resulted in articles that put more value on getting an emotional response from as many people as possible, than putting out an honest, balanced and fact-checked news story. A good example of this would be the recent slandering of PewDiePie. And he debunked that quite effectively on his channel which has 83 million subscribers. This resulted in many people now looking at Vox, Buzzfeed with suspicion. Personally I went through a similar process when people I care about asked me what I thought of Jordan Peterson and I started looking into him, which for me ended in changing a lot of my views on the mainstream media. Which I now look at with a very suspicious eye.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Really from what I could tell the news was always largely pretty crappy just judging by all of the stupid moral panics they were pushing along with the well known phenomenon that anyone who knew their field knew they were getting reporting on it deeply wrong and not just in a 'only knowledge of the basics' way. The reason why bloggers could compete with them wasn't because bloggers were inherently awesome (although there are a few high quality writers) but because they were essentially crap. The internet made fact checking easier and they didn't take the opportunity instead just keeping their pipeline of crap going.

37 points by dsr12 8y ago

Legacy media such as NYT and WSJ are refusing to properly cover the real issue of surveillance capitalism duopoly of Google and Facebook. When Candy Crush knows your hometown and your hobbies, there is no need to serve ads on your local newspaper's website and there is no need for hobby websites, or professional sites, or smart sites for kids. So we have no content creation on internet outside of WSJ, NYT, Youtube, etc. And there are no investments in media. And there is no money in media. In turn we have a static internet and privacy scandals and fake news on a few swampy platforms. It's really bad for democracy and for us. And it's bad for startups.

Analemma_ 8y ago
Half the comments on HN lately are complaining that the NYT covers Facebook too much and that they’re reading it less as a result.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Personnally, I think it's too little too late. They should have told people that 10 years ago, when the IT community started to feel it would go this way, and begun to warn everybody about it. That's what journalist is about. Now, they are just repeating what's in everybody's mind. But society doesn't need parots as journalists. Surprise, we have social medias for that. It needs analysts, reporters, people that help them decrypt the world better. They completly failed at decrypting the IT world for the last 2 decades, and only started writting about things when a lot of people already understood it and paid the price. Basically, they don't do their job, and complain we are not supporting them anymore. Sorry but not sorry.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    > They should have told people that 10 years ago, when the IT community started to feel it would go this way, and begun to warn everybody about it. 10 years ago, you say? https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Longhorn-s-expulsion-shows-need-for-caution-on-1774465.php https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Longhorn-s-ex... https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/does-google-flu-trends-raises-new-privacy-risks/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/does-google-flu-tr... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7196803.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7196803.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.s... https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16ping.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16ping.html https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88748673 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=887486... https://www.cnet.com/news/exclusive-the-next-facebook-privacy-scandal/ https://www.cnet.com/news/exclusive-the-next-facebook-privac... Journalists were writing about privacy concerns in mainstream media quite a lot.
    - sametmax 8y ago
      You are right. I have to think about this more.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

exogeny 8y ago

I mean, is it really this difficult? Cost of production plummeted to zero, vastly increasing supply. That increase of supply combined with additional sophistication of users meant that ads became exponentially less valuable. Getting desperate, they hitched their wagon on Facebook - and anyone who has lived through any era of the Internet knows that you never build your house on someone else's land. Most of them raised way, way, way too much as if they were tech plays and could scale like it. Vox only gets around it because they don't pay 90% of their writers.

sametmax 8y ago
Yes, and because cost of production were high, they didn't have much competition before, and so medias were easily bought, and could provide low value infos without consequences. Now everybody can provide low value or paid content. But medias had a reputation to be smart and respectable. However, smart and respectable institutions would have identified they messed up, and try to outcompete their low value / paid competition by providing outstanding value. After all, many start up did in other fields, and it worked. But that's not what happened. Instead, they complained, attacked competitors and users, used shady strategies but never, ever, changed the service their provided. I used to consume a lot of news, but the more I had access to various sources of informations, the more I travelled, the more I educated myself, the more I realized how much unreliable and not on my side the big medias were. And so I stoped trusting them. They didn't adapt. They didn't ask for forgiveness for their mistakes. They didn't try to fix anything. They just try to make it all ok for them again. And now they are dying. I have a hard time feeling compassion.
quaunaut 8y ago
> Vox only gets around it because they don't pay 90% of their writers. Is this true? Where can I learn more?
- exogeny 8y ago
  It's unequivocally true in the case of SBNation, which is their most trafficked property. It follows the model originally brought to market by Bleacher Report, which used unpaid "contributors" creating low-grade SEO chum content in exchange for the nebulous concept of exposure. See more: https://deadspin.com/how-sb-nation-profits-off-an-army-of-exploited-workers-1797653841 https://deadspin.com/how-sb-nation-profits-off-an-army-of-ex...

remarkEon 8y ago

>For years, BuzzFeed seemed to be leading the journalism industry toward a brave new future. Serious question: did anyone honestly believe this to be true?

cagenut 8y ago
it was true, from a revenue perspective. it wasn't a good thing, but it was still a true thing.
RandallBrown 8y ago
Buzzfeed's actual journalism (not the goofy lists and quizzes) is pretty good. Buzzfeed news also posts all their data for their articles on Github. https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews https://github.com/BuzzFeedNews
- djohnston 8y ago
  they didn't start with actual journalism though. they started with complete trash, and then used that clickbait revenue to fund actual investigative journalism
  - kyriee 8y ago
    Well, that was always the plan. A little bit like the classified and sports sections were paying for that Bagdad bureau.

alexashka 8y ago

In my mind - if you treat news as entertainment, you're finished. There are just too many entertaining things to do, that are free or almost free. The only news I'm interested in surviving, is intelligent, well educated people, talking to domain experts. HackerNews is a good example - I'm far more interested in getting the occasional insight from a quality comment, than anything that's actually posted on here. If only I didn't have to sift through 100 comments to encounter 1 gem - that should be the journalist. Trouble is - people view journalism as a job, it's not. Having education and life experience in a field, combined with decent journalism, is a job. Journalism on it's own is just not interesting - being a wordsmith is not more valuable than actually knowing what you're talking about.

jancsika 8y ago
> Journalism on it's own is just not interesting - being a wordsmith is not more valuable than actually knowing what you're talking about. Knowing what you're talking about and informing the public are two different things. Both are necessary parts of journalism, with neither sufficient alone to fulfill the vital role of the press as a check on the three branches of government.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
raarts 8y ago
I agree. In addition to this I think that - since getting clicks is the business model - they will move towards publishing content that gets more people to click, enraging being the most profitable form of engaging. This has resulted in articles that put more value on getting an emotional response from as many people as possible, than putting out an honest, balanced and fact-checked news story. A good example of this would be the recent slandering of PewDiePie. And he debunked that quite effectively on his channel which has 83 million subscribers. This resulted in many people now looking at Vox, Buzzfeed with suspicion. Personally I went through a similar process when people I care about asked me what I thought of Jordan Peterson and I started looking into him, which for me ended in changing a lot of my views on the mainstream media. Which I now look at with a very suspicious eye.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Really from what I could tell the news was always largely pretty crappy just judging by all of the stupid moral panics they were pushing along with the well known phenomenon that anyone who knew their field knew they were getting reporting on it deeply wrong and not just in a 'only knowledge of the basics' way. The reason why bloggers could compete with them wasn't because bloggers were inherently awesome (although there are a few high quality writers) but because they were essentially crap. The internet made fact checking easier and they didn't take the opportunity instead just keeping their pipeline of crap going.