6 ms·

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamen

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamentally broken.

afastow 7y ago
I don't think anyone argues that journalism is in a healthy place today, but what is the alternative? The problem is that real news costs real money to produce. Newspapers could be not-for-profit but their reporters would still need a salary to do their jobs.
- _delirium 7y ago
  Some good publications are nonpaywalled nonprofits that rely on donations. Not sure you can make that work in every niche, but two examples: https://www.quantamagazine.org/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/, https://www.texastribune.org/ https://www.texastribune.org/
  - danharaj 7y ago
    Quanta has the Simons foundation behind it. How free is a press if it can only live off the good will of a billionaire?
    - levythe 7y ago
      While your question isn't wrong, how is that fundamentally different from how things were before? How can news be free if it relies upon paying readership for its sustained production?
      - danharaj 7y ago
        There was a brief golden age of newspapers that went away with industrialization. It hasn't been Ben Franklin's game for a long time and I think people need to think about what that has meant and will mean.
        liability 7y ago
        It's my impression that early in Benjamin Franklin's publishing career he published newspapers so he could put ads in them to sell more books. And that later in his publishing career, he used his newspapers more to promote his revolutionary agenda. The man wasn't a journalist.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - atotic 7y ago
      Extreme freemium model! Free for everyone, except for that one billionaire :-)
- profalseidol 7y ago
  DemocracyNow[1] is a good one. 100% free. Noam Chomsky is a regular guest here. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow I wonder how they make money. Checked wikipedia: Democracy Now Productions, the independent nonprofit organization which produces Democracy Now!, is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations such as the Ford Foundation,[failed verification] Lannan Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund,[4] [5][6][unreliable source?] and does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting or government funding.[7] The remark from Bill Clinton is a fun bit: Clinton defended his administration's policies and charged Goodman with being "hostile and combative".[51]
burtonator 7y ago
I wrote a post about this last week that's somewhat related: https://getpolarized.io/2019/07/26/Minimizing-Defection-Might-be-the-Solution-to-the-Tragedy-of-the-Commons.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/07/26/Minimizing-Defection-Migh... I think it's an issue of tragedy of the commons. No one wants to pay for news because of defection.
hyperbovine 7y ago
No, their model is fine. Sell a decent product for money. The problem lies squarely with hordes of credulous morons who either don’t know or don’t care that their news is fake, and aren’t willing to shell out for quality content. Whether that exposes a deeper flaw in human nature, or is just an oddity of our times, is left to you to decide.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  If your Plan for Saving the World requires on changing human nature, overall intelligence,[1] or mass social behaviour, you're going to be Having a Bad Time. Markets and information play poorly. Always have, always will. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Also known as the Lake Wobegon Fallacy. All the children aren't above average.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  Newspapers don't know how to sell properly and it's the users' fault for not buying?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    People, through their actions, have proven they want free and easy sensationalism. Not in-depth investigative reporting. You can't really just sell into that.
    - Spivak 7y ago
      The popularity of investigative journalism podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, ProPublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, etc. seem to disprove this theory. Outside of a few exceptional pieces the typical content on print "news" sites is utter garbage. The pressure to have a bunch of different columns publishing multiple stories a day seems like it really drives the quality down. All the super cool long-form investigative journalism gets totally buried by "stories" or "updates" that are basically just a headline and a sentence or two of actual content.
      - 7y ago
jotto 7y ago
or the problem is aggregators (reddit, HN, twitter, fb)
userbinator 7y ago
The purpose of fake news is to spread, the purpose of real news is to make its creators money. It's not surprising what spreads more..
david_ar 7y ago
I'm curious as to when this mythical age of widespread access to "real news" existed. George Orwell dated it to at least 80 years ago ("History stopped in 1936")...
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Arguably ~1930 - 1980. A sea change began with Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, seen as birthing modern, generally impartial, journalism. Not absolutely, but relative to earlier periods, quite. Ironically, widespread national advertising assisted in much of. this, at least for stories not adversely concerning national advertisers. But local squelching of critical news was limited, and occasional nationally critical stories could appear. Watergate was arguably the high-water mark. Corporate ownership massively diluted effectiveness, especially after 1980, though exceptions remain. Bookending Orwell and Lippmann, I'd suggest I.F. Stone (who calls the 1970s as a high-water mark) and Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909). I.F. Stone, interview: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g textsCommercialism and journalism https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft Further reading: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_advertising_sustainability_externalities/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...
- lbatx 7y ago
  There's a huge difference between biased or inaccurate coverage and flat out made up stories. The NYT publishes very few of the latter. Fake news sites publish 100% of the latter. That's a pretty significant difference.
  - david_ar 7y ago
    My point is that people have been making the same complaint for a very long time, even back when people paid for news printed on sheets of paper. "This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. [...] I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable." --- George Orwell, 1942
lunias 7y ago
I agree... not only did the internet enable access to all the information, but it also provided the most convenient interface (removing the possibility of collecting a profit margin from the production of physical goods). I'm not sure how a corporation can compete with that; they are simply not lean enough, but I feel like individuals still can. Become a good writer, do solid research, offer unique insights, and build a fanbase. Then sell T-shirts.

So real news continues to make their content harder to read, while fake news does everything they can to spread far and wide. Journalism for profit is fundamentally broken.

afastow 7y ago

I don't think anyone argues that journalism is in a healthy place today, but what is the alternative? The problem is that real news costs real money to produce. Newspapers could be not-for-profit but their reporters would still need a salary to do their jobs.

_delirium 7y ago
Some good publications are nonpaywalled nonprofits that rely on donations. Not sure you can make that work in every niche, but two examples: https://www.quantamagazine.org/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/, https://www.texastribune.org/ https://www.texastribune.org/
- danharaj 7y ago
  Quanta has the Simons foundation behind it. How free is a press if it can only live off the good will of a billionaire?
  - levythe 7y ago
    While your question isn't wrong, how is that fundamentally different from how things were before? How can news be free if it relies upon paying readership for its sustained production?
    - danharaj 7y ago
      There was a brief golden age of newspapers that went away with industrialization. It hasn't been Ben Franklin's game for a long time and I think people need to think about what that has meant and will mean.
      - liability 7y ago
        It's my impression that early in Benjamin Franklin's publishing career he published newspapers so he could put ads in them to sell more books. And that later in his publishing career, he used his newspapers more to promote his revolutionary agenda. The man wasn't a journalist.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - atotic 7y ago
    Extreme freemium model! Free for everyone, except for that one billionaire :-)
profalseidol 7y ago
DemocracyNow[1] is a good one. 100% free. Noam Chomsky is a regular guest here. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow https://www.youtube.com/user/democracynow I wonder how they make money. Checked wikipedia: Democracy Now Productions, the independent nonprofit organization which produces Democracy Now!, is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations such as the Ford Foundation,[failed verification] Lannan Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund,[4] [5][6][unreliable source?] and does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting or government funding.[7] The remark from Bill Clinton is a fun bit: Clinton defended his administration's policies and charged Goodman with being "hostile and combative".[51]

burtonator 7y ago

I wrote a post about this last week that's somewhat related: https://getpolarized.io/2019/07/26/Minimizing-Defection-Might-be-the-Solution-to-the-Tragedy-of-the-Commons.html https://getpolarized.io/2019/07/26/Minimizing-Defection-Migh... I think it's an issue of tragedy of the commons. No one wants to pay for news because of defection.

hyperbovine 7y ago

No, their model is fine. Sell a decent product for money. The problem lies squarely with hordes of credulous morons who either don’t know or don’t care that their news is fake, and aren’t willing to shell out for quality content. Whether that exposes a deeper flaw in human nature, or is just an oddity of our times, is left to you to decide.

dredmorbius 7y ago
If your Plan for Saving the World requires on changing human nature, overall intelligence,[1] or mass social behaviour, you're going to be Having a Bad Time. Markets and information play poorly. Always have, always will. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Also known as the Lake Wobegon Fallacy. All the children aren't above average.
literallycancer 7y ago
Newspapers don't know how to sell properly and it's the users' fault for not buying?
- manigandham 7y ago
  People, through their actions, have proven they want free and easy sensationalism. Not in-depth investigative reporting. You can't really just sell into that.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    The popularity of investigative journalism podcasts from NPR, Gimlet, ProPublica, Center for Investigative Reporting, etc. seem to disprove this theory. Outside of a few exceptional pieces the typical content on print "news" sites is utter garbage. The pressure to have a bunch of different columns publishing multiple stories a day seems like it really drives the quality down. All the super cool long-form investigative journalism gets totally buried by "stories" or "updates" that are basically just a headline and a sentence or two of actual content.
    - 7y ago

jotto 7y ago

or the problem is aggregators (reddit, HN, twitter, fb)

userbinator 7y ago

The purpose of fake news is to spread, the purpose of real news is to make its creators money. It's not surprising what spreads more..

david_ar 7y ago

I'm curious as to when this mythical age of widespread access to "real news" existed. George Orwell dated it to at least 80 years ago ("History stopped in 1936")...

dredmorbius 7y ago
Arguably ~1930 - 1980. A sea change began with Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, seen as birthing modern, generally impartial, journalism. Not absolutely, but relative to earlier periods, quite. Ironically, widespread national advertising assisted in much of. this, at least for stories not adversely concerning national advertisers. But local squelching of critical news was limited, and occasional nationally critical stories could appear. Watergate was arguably the high-water mark. Corporate ownership massively diluted effectiveness, especially after 1980, though exceptions remain. Bookending Orwell and Lippmann, I'd suggest I.F. Stone (who calls the 1970s as a high-water mark) and Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909). I.F. Stone, interview: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g textsCommercialism and journalism https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft Further reading: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_advertising_sustainability_externalities/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...
lbatx 7y ago
There's a huge difference between biased or inaccurate coverage and flat out made up stories. The NYT publishes very few of the latter. Fake news sites publish 100% of the latter. That's a pretty significant difference.
- david_ar 7y ago
  My point is that people have been making the same complaint for a very long time, even back when people paid for news printed on sheets of paper. "This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. [...] I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable." --- George Orwell, 1942

lunias 7y ago

I agree... not only did the internet enable access to all the information, but it also provided the most convenient interface (removing the possibility of collecting a profit margin from the production of physical goods). I'm not sure how a corporation can compete with that; they are simply not lean enough, but I feel like individuals still can. Become a good writer, do solid research, offer unique insights, and build a fanbase. Then sell T-shirts.