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Background: I'm an engineer who has previously worked on research related to misinformation and built data tooling for news organizations, and I now work at a n

by whakim 7y ago

Background: I'm an engineer who has previously worked on research related to misinformation and built data tooling for news organizations, and I now work at a news organization myself. Journalism is in a bad place in the United States. The number of journalists has shrunk dramatically, particularly at the local level, over the past decade. (In case it isn't immediately clear that journalism is a public good, the decline of local news has been linked to increases in local corruption and borrowing costs/debt as well as a decline in civic engagement in communities: see https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/local-newspapers-civic-engagement/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/l... for a roundup). I think there's a lot of work to be done from a number of angles in this space, including exploring new and innovative business models for news organizations; leveraging advances in technology and data science to improve existing products; and encouraging shifts in consumer attitude (similar to the way that attitudes towards paid entertainment content - movies, music, etc. - have shifted over the past 15 years).

WarOnPrivacy 7y ago
I sincerely believe news orgs are hugely (not wholly) responsible for their own demise. I'll explain using print news as an example. For newspapers, the internet changed the competition field, from one or two competitors to dozens (maybe hundreds). When that happened, US news consumers noticed some things. A multitude of (or maybe most) editors & journalists are profoundly, unconscionably lazy. I'll offer some Examples. 1) Lots of ink but not a lot of news gathering: Most (hundreds?) US news orgs all lead w/ the same ½doz headlines - and those are likely Reuters/AP/UPI reprints. How many national stories are in play any given day? Six? I think there are dozens and dozens - and they're all ignored in favor for whatever editors think is sexy. (I suppose editors tend to have similar tastes.) Local stories are likely to be original. Well, except when they're parroting press releases. Or worse - they're parroting PR without any analysis or historical context. In this case the readers are given no tools to tell if the PR is crap or not. This turns the journalist into the official spokesbot of the police, government or local corporation. It's publishing but it isn't journalism. 2) Fluff: Sports journalism. Celeb journalism. etc. Is it journalism? Lets go in that direction some more. Stamp collecting journalism. Paint swirl journalism. Concrete curing journalism. There are people who like those things. Is that enough? Consider this. Journalists are afforded extra 1st Amendment protections, to encourage them to unearth and reveal misdeeds by the powerful. The intent seems to be to help citizens learn where their rights and liberties might be being eroded. Reporting that depends on those protections would seem to be a strong candidate for what constitutes journalism. I suggest that reporting on paint swirls and sport stats is probably a pretty safe thing. 3) Lastly, uneducated journalists: One example. During the Obama administration I'd participate in journalism chats. I had a regular question. Did the reporters know that Pres Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all previous presidents combined? Now this could be a good or bad stat, depending on one's perspective. Regardless, it was an undeniably powerful, historical statistic. Depressingly, that stat wasn't well known by journalists. In fact most journalists seemed resistant to believing it or they felt the stat misrepresented some larger situation. This lapse was a terrible thing. Whistleblowers have always been a incalculably valuable to journalists, who were oblivious to what seemed to be a crackdown by that administration. (Fortunately, that's changing a bit & whistleblowers are suddenly revered again. Or at least that's the lip service.) Conclusion: To me, if news orgs want to survive, they each need to bring something to the table. Some do. Some are exceptional. Some are consistently exceptional. Some screw it up occasionally but that's reasonable in the larger context. But if news orgs are largely reprinting others' content, then they are largely not serving a critical public function. Worse, they're abdicating the duty inferred by their extra constitutional protections. I believe those news orgs should die.
- whakim 7y ago
  I think your reply misses a powerful factor: economics. Newspapers used to rely on print advertising to make the majority of their money. And they made enough of it to do a good job. It's much harder to report original stories when you have no revenue. Nowadays, advertising revenue is mostly driven by clicks, hence the rise in clickbait, reprinting of Reuters/AP/etc. (as opposed to "real" local stories) and fluff journalism as you mention. Local news has been hit the hardest because these newspapers made more of their money, percentage-wise, from advertising and classifieds. (Also, worth noting: the link I provided contains studies showing that local news nowadays provides an important net good to society. So while you may be of the opinion - anecdotally - that all local news is just PR, that hasn't been found to be true in the academic literature.) As to your third point, the prosecution of whistleblowers was heavily covered during the Obama administration. While I obviously can't speak to the specific conversations and interactions you had, it seems to me that you're tarring journalism with an incredibly broad brush by calling journalists uneducated based on a few chats (also, journalists cover a wide variety of subjects - were the journalists you were chatting with covering national politics?). There are more and less educated journalists, just as there are in every profession. Obviously the old models don't work for journalism, and a lot of the onus is on journalism to change and to innovate. But if we value journalism as a society, some of it is also on us to change the way society works. I think the challenge is not dissimilar to what we saw with movies/music in the early 00's when piracy was rampant. The rise of streaming and the willingness of the general public to pay for entertainment media again has been a game-changer in that industry.
  - WarOnPrivacy 7y ago
    The flaws and issues I brought up weren't caused by post-1995 realities. They were what news consumers had been given for a long time, in exchange for their subscription dollars & eyeball time. The demise of news kingdoms happened when it became impossible for us to ignore what we were getting for our money. Going forward, the economics issues are as stark and complex as you say. A new challenge is they're being used to justify feeding us the same diet of crap (not exclusively - wonderful exceptions abound) that our parents were served. In the midst of all this is a comprehensive lack of self-awareness by news orgs who exist to state reality in helpful terms. Step One should be clearly stating the core reasons that quiet Americans lost their trust in the press. It's been 20 years and news orgs are still unable (again, lots of exceptions like CJR) to discuss these crippling flaws. How can any economic solutions help if news orgs offer little more than fluff, recycled content and 1st-impression reporting?

by whakim 7y ago

WarOnPrivacy 7y ago

I sincerely believe news orgs are hugely (not wholly) responsible for their own demise. I'll explain using print news as an example. For newspapers, the internet changed the competition field, from one or two competitors to dozens (maybe hundreds). When that happened, US news consumers noticed some things. A multitude of (or maybe most) editors & journalists are profoundly, unconscionably lazy. I'll offer some Examples. 1) Lots of ink but not a lot of news gathering: Most (hundreds?) US news orgs all lead w/ the same ½doz headlines - and those are likely Reuters/AP/UPI reprints. How many national stories are in play any given day? Six? I think there are dozens and dozens - and they're all ignored in favor for whatever editors think is sexy. (I suppose editors tend to have similar tastes.) Local stories are likely to be original. Well, except when they're parroting press releases. Or worse - they're parroting PR without any analysis or historical context. In this case the readers are given no tools to tell if the PR is crap or not. This turns the journalist into the official spokesbot of the police, government or local corporation. It's publishing but it isn't journalism. 2) Fluff: Sports journalism. Celeb journalism. etc. Is it journalism? Lets go in that direction some more. Stamp collecting journalism. Paint swirl journalism. Concrete curing journalism. There are people who like those things. Is that enough? Consider this. Journalists are afforded extra 1st Amendment protections, to encourage them to unearth and reveal misdeeds by the powerful. The intent seems to be to help citizens learn where their rights and liberties might be being eroded. Reporting that depends on those protections would seem to be a strong candidate for what constitutes journalism. I suggest that reporting on paint swirls and sport stats is probably a pretty safe thing. 3) Lastly, uneducated journalists: One example. During the Obama administration I'd participate in journalism chats. I had a regular question. Did the reporters know that Pres Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all previous presidents combined? Now this could be a good or bad stat, depending on one's perspective. Regardless, it was an undeniably powerful, historical statistic. Depressingly, that stat wasn't well known by journalists. In fact most journalists seemed resistant to believing it or they felt the stat misrepresented some larger situation. This lapse was a terrible thing. Whistleblowers have always been a incalculably valuable to journalists, who were oblivious to what seemed to be a crackdown by that administration. (Fortunately, that's changing a bit & whistleblowers are suddenly revered again. Or at least that's the lip service.) Conclusion: To me, if news orgs want to survive, they each need to bring something to the table. Some do. Some are exceptional. Some are consistently exceptional. Some screw it up occasionally but that's reasonable in the larger context. But if news orgs are largely reprinting others' content, then they are largely not serving a critical public function. Worse, they're abdicating the duty inferred by their extra constitutional protections. I believe those news orgs should die.

whakim 7y ago
I think your reply misses a powerful factor: economics. Newspapers used to rely on print advertising to make the majority of their money. And they made enough of it to do a good job. It's much harder to report original stories when you have no revenue. Nowadays, advertising revenue is mostly driven by clicks, hence the rise in clickbait, reprinting of Reuters/AP/etc. (as opposed to "real" local stories) and fluff journalism as you mention. Local news has been hit the hardest because these newspapers made more of their money, percentage-wise, from advertising and classifieds. (Also, worth noting: the link I provided contains studies showing that local news nowadays provides an important net good to society. So while you may be of the opinion - anecdotally - that all local news is just PR, that hasn't been found to be true in the academic literature.) As to your third point, the prosecution of whistleblowers was heavily covered during the Obama administration. While I obviously can't speak to the specific conversations and interactions you had, it seems to me that you're tarring journalism with an incredibly broad brush by calling journalists uneducated based on a few chats (also, journalists cover a wide variety of subjects - were the journalists you were chatting with covering national politics?). There are more and less educated journalists, just as there are in every profession. Obviously the old models don't work for journalism, and a lot of the onus is on journalism to change and to innovate. But if we value journalism as a society, some of it is also on us to change the way society works. I think the challenge is not dissimilar to what we saw with movies/music in the early 00's when piracy was rampant. The rise of streaming and the willingness of the general public to pay for entertainment media again has been a game-changer in that industry.
- WarOnPrivacy 7y ago
  The flaws and issues I brought up weren't caused by post-1995 realities. They were what news consumers had been given for a long time, in exchange for their subscription dollars & eyeball time. The demise of news kingdoms happened when it became impossible for us to ignore what we were getting for our money. Going forward, the economics issues are as stark and complex as you say. A new challenge is they're being used to justify feeding us the same diet of crap (not exclusively - wonderful exceptions abound) that our parents were served. In the midst of all this is a comprehensive lack of self-awareness by news orgs who exist to state reality in helpful terms. Step One should be clearly stating the core reasons that quiet Americans lost their trust in the press. It's been 20 years and news orgs are still unable (again, lots of exceptions like CJR) to discuss these crippling flaws. How can any economic solutions help if news orgs offer little more than fluff, recycled content and 1st-impression reporting?