4 ms·

This is very true. It's also easy to blame this on profit motive and clickbait driven advertising but a lot of these journalists are ideologically motivated in

This is very true. It's also easy to blame this on profit motive and clickbait driven advertising but a lot of these journalists are ideologically motivated in large part due to their ironically upper middle class liberal arts education (read privileged).

save_ferris 8y ago
I'm not a journalist and I've only ever worked for one news publication in my career, so I obviously can't speak for all journalists. That said, we can't ignore the impact that traffic quotas have had on the industry since the collapse of print media. I worked for a paper in 2016 on their software team and saw how much of an impact that Trump's name in a headline had on the traffic an article received. Everyone on the outside was screaming about why the media was giving him so much attention while the industry, in the middle of a financial crisis, was less than interested to leave money on the table. In the age of internet journalism, orgs are heavily incentivized to produce what they think the community wants, and that has some really dangerous long-term implications. People don't realize how bad the financial situation is for newspapers across America, and how desperately print media orgs are trying (and in many cases, failing) to stay afloat.
- repolfx 8y ago
  I think this is where I do my usual comment and observe that print media isn't struggling to stay afloat. There are plenty of publications that are profitable. This is invariably ignored and a 'crisis' generalised to the entire industry because the profitable papers tend to be owned by Rupert Murdoch, and they tend to be profitable because they put up paywalls and charge money for their analysis and opinions rather than give them away for free. This doesn't jive with the agenda of most journalists, who very much want to "change the world" and "do what is right not what is easy", etc. They see a big part of their job as guiding readers to the correct decisions and protecting them from false ideas, but of course if you throw up a paywall and charge money, you're much less able to do that. I used to be quite sympathetic to the plight of the news industry - it wasn't their fault that times were changing, that they were now all competing with each other, that Craigslist outdid them on classified ads etc. But then some papers started turning things around financially, I realised nobody forced these papers to put all their content online for free, and I became much more aware of the extent to which journalists try to manipulate their reader base. My sympathy is now gone: newspapers are businesses, and they need to turn a profit by charging for their services. If that means giving up influence, well hey, welcome to the world the rest of us live in.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    > There are plenty of publications that are profitable. Many that do achieve profitability do so at tremendous sacrifice to the service they provide to the community. A perfect example of this is Alden Capital Group, which owns over 100 papers. They're infamous in the industry for reducing the newsroom headcount by up to 50% and replacing them with sales. Not only that, they're now trying to offload their entire new portfolio because this model of profitability actually devalues the papers in the marketplace, largely because they can't serve their communities.[0] The papers they print are essentially worthless because they can't put resources into writing important local stories. > I realised nobody forced these papers to put all their content online for free The model of the internet forced them to do this. Had local newspapers held firm and implemented paywalls, a huge number of them would've gone out of business very quickly. Ad platforms by companies like Google were the best way for them to monetize, but in doing so they gave up all control. It was a die quickly or die slowly scenario. Most chose the latter. [0]: https://nypost.com/2019/01/25/cost-cutting-fund-alden-global-wants-to-sell-digital-first-media/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/25/cost-cutting-fund-alden-global...
    - repolfx 8y ago
      Nobody forced them to create websites at all, certainly not "the model of the internet" which can't make anyone do anything. And of those websites, nobody forced them to not implement paywalls. You seem to be claiming that there is some dichotomy between serving a community and charging money for things, but there isn't. Lots of local businesses successfully serve their local community whilst still being financially sustainable. All the market is telling the news industry is that it's way overstaffed. Too many journalists doing too little work that anyone actually values, too badly managed, often because their idea of an important local story isn't really aligned with what local people think is important. Your case study of Alden seems to back this up. They're private equity, their purpose in life is to turn around failing businesses and make them sustainable, which they have done. The difficulty selling the resulting business is blamed in the final paragraphs on pension liabilities i.e. the hangover of an era when they were fiscally mismanaged; not on their inability to put resources into writing important local stories. With a 15% profit margin they should be able to easily find a buyer regardless of their perceived journalistic quality, but a huge pensions liability will definitely kill the attractiveness of the businesses.
PaulHoule 8y ago
Yeah, the pundits always have the same thing to say to the Democrats, which is "move to the right" but they never say the Republicans should "move to the left". Go figure.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  I think it's less "move to the right" and more "admit you've already moved to the right". Democrat attitudes feel increasingly puritan instead of actually liberal to me (as demonstrated by the continued insistence on everyone aligning to a specific moral framework), while Republican attitudes feel increasingly laissez-faire instead of actually conservative (as demonstrated by the continued insistence on destroying our environment instead of, you know, conserving it). The reality is that the political spectrum is not one-dimensional, or even two-dimensional.
  - krapp 8y ago
    To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans claim to have moral high ground over the other. Evangelical Christians tend to vote Republican because that party has successfully sold itself as the party defending traditional Christian morality and American culture.
    - malvosenior 8y ago
      What is now happening though is that the right is now gaining people who are not religious but are pro-free speech and a host of other related but not religious issues. I used to consider myself pretty far on the left. In the 80s and 90s the Evangelical Christians were the problem. They tried to censor music, video games... Now the censorship and dogma comes from the left. What's very interesting is that those same Christians who I thought were very intolerant of others views (and make no mistake they were and sometimes still are) have accepted people like me. Some of it is that we now have a common enemy but it also feels like they've realized that religion is no longer mainstream and thus have come to accept other less than mainstream opinions even if they don't agree with them.

save_ferris 8y ago

I'm not a journalist and I've only ever worked for one news publication in my career, so I obviously can't speak for all journalists. That said, we can't ignore the impact that traffic quotas have had on the industry since the collapse of print media. I worked for a paper in 2016 on their software team and saw how much of an impact that Trump's name in a headline had on the traffic an article received. Everyone on the outside was screaming about why the media was giving him so much attention while the industry, in the middle of a financial crisis, was less than interested to leave money on the table. In the age of internet journalism, orgs are heavily incentivized to produce what they think the community wants, and that has some really dangerous long-term implications. People don't realize how bad the financial situation is for newspapers across America, and how desperately print media orgs are trying (and in many cases, failing) to stay afloat.

repolfx 8y ago
I think this is where I do my usual comment and observe that print media isn't struggling to stay afloat. There are plenty of publications that are profitable. This is invariably ignored and a 'crisis' generalised to the entire industry because the profitable papers tend to be owned by Rupert Murdoch, and they tend to be profitable because they put up paywalls and charge money for their analysis and opinions rather than give them away for free. This doesn't jive with the agenda of most journalists, who very much want to "change the world" and "do what is right not what is easy", etc. They see a big part of their job as guiding readers to the correct decisions and protecting them from false ideas, but of course if you throw up a paywall and charge money, you're much less able to do that. I used to be quite sympathetic to the plight of the news industry - it wasn't their fault that times were changing, that they were now all competing with each other, that Craigslist outdid them on classified ads etc. But then some papers started turning things around financially, I realised nobody forced these papers to put all their content online for free, and I became much more aware of the extent to which journalists try to manipulate their reader base. My sympathy is now gone: newspapers are businesses, and they need to turn a profit by charging for their services. If that means giving up influence, well hey, welcome to the world the rest of us live in.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  > There are plenty of publications that are profitable. Many that do achieve profitability do so at tremendous sacrifice to the service they provide to the community. A perfect example of this is Alden Capital Group, which owns over 100 papers. They're infamous in the industry for reducing the newsroom headcount by up to 50% and replacing them with sales. Not only that, they're now trying to offload their entire new portfolio because this model of profitability actually devalues the papers in the marketplace, largely because they can't serve their communities.[0] The papers they print are essentially worthless because they can't put resources into writing important local stories. > I realised nobody forced these papers to put all their content online for free The model of the internet forced them to do this. Had local newspapers held firm and implemented paywalls, a huge number of them would've gone out of business very quickly. Ad platforms by companies like Google were the best way for them to monetize, but in doing so they gave up all control. It was a die quickly or die slowly scenario. Most chose the latter. [0]: https://nypost.com/2019/01/25/cost-cutting-fund-alden-global-wants-to-sell-digital-first-media/ https://nypost.com/2019/01/25/cost-cutting-fund-alden-global...
  - repolfx 8y ago
    Nobody forced them to create websites at all, certainly not "the model of the internet" which can't make anyone do anything. And of those websites, nobody forced them to not implement paywalls. You seem to be claiming that there is some dichotomy between serving a community and charging money for things, but there isn't. Lots of local businesses successfully serve their local community whilst still being financially sustainable. All the market is telling the news industry is that it's way overstaffed. Too many journalists doing too little work that anyone actually values, too badly managed, often because their idea of an important local story isn't really aligned with what local people think is important. Your case study of Alden seems to back this up. They're private equity, their purpose in life is to turn around failing businesses and make them sustainable, which they have done. The difficulty selling the resulting business is blamed in the final paragraphs on pension liabilities i.e. the hangover of an era when they were fiscally mismanaged; not on their inability to put resources into writing important local stories. With a 15% profit margin they should be able to easily find a buyer regardless of their perceived journalistic quality, but a huge pensions liability will definitely kill the attractiveness of the businesses.

PaulHoule 8y ago

Yeah, the pundits always have the same thing to say to the Democrats, which is "move to the right" but they never say the Republicans should "move to the left". Go figure.

yellowapple 8y ago
I think it's less "move to the right" and more "admit you've already moved to the right". Democrat attitudes feel increasingly puritan instead of actually liberal to me (as demonstrated by the continued insistence on everyone aligning to a specific moral framework), while Republican attitudes feel increasingly laissez-faire instead of actually conservative (as demonstrated by the continued insistence on destroying our environment instead of, you know, conserving it). The reality is that the political spectrum is not one-dimensional, or even two-dimensional.
- krapp 8y ago
  To be fair, both Democrats and Republicans claim to have moral high ground over the other. Evangelical Christians tend to vote Republican because that party has successfully sold itself as the party defending traditional Christian morality and American culture.
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    What is now happening though is that the right is now gaining people who are not religious but are pro-free speech and a host of other related but not religious issues. I used to consider myself pretty far on the left. In the 80s and 90s the Evangelical Christians were the problem. They tried to censor music, video games... Now the censorship and dogma comes from the left. What's very interesting is that those same Christians who I thought were very intolerant of others views (and make no mistake they were and sometimes still are) have accepted people like me. Some of it is that we now have a common enemy but it also feels like they've realized that religion is no longer mainstream and thus have come to accept other less than mainstream opinions even if they don't agree with them.