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The point of science journalism is not to report on great science, or "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism). It is (like all other online publication

The point of science journalism is not to report on great science, or "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism). It is (like all other online publications) to get people to click on titles so they get shown adverts. It's not really got anything to do with how educated the readers are, it's just the business model. I read this after reading the article about banning "persuading" advertising. In my head the two are related. If we remove "supported by advertising" as a viable business model for journalism, then it has to go back to being paid for by readers. We would get much better journalism if this happened. In fact, if we removed "supported by advertising" for everything, we'd get much better everything. But, as TFA says, it's worrying that Nature published this crap. Nature is supported by a non-advertising business model, and although there are lots of problems with their business model, it should in theory produce good results. I wonder what happened for this article?

zdragnar 7y ago
> "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism) I think that might be a bit of wishful thinking. An "investigative journalist" might take that on as a motto, but it certainly isn't true of all journalism as a general goal.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  Interesting. What is the point of journalism then?
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    Obviously, that depends on where in the world you are. Assuming a press that is relatively free from government and adversarial editorial oversight, journalism can likely be summed up as "obtaining newsworthy information and publishing it to the public". According to Wikipedia, at least, there are at least 242 ethics standards for journalism worldwide, with something of a general consensus on truthfulness, accuracy, impartiality and fairness. "truth to power" may be a very narrow aspect (if, perhaps, an important one), but the simple fact is that there is plenty of newsworthy information that is fundamentally unrelated to struggles against powerful people, bureaucracies, political entities and companies. The "point" of journalism, then, is much simpler: gather information, attempt to filter it through a lens of accuracy and impartiality, and disseminate it. Not quite tautological, but there you have it.
    - marcus_holmes 7y ago
      Yeah. I guess most of that "information" aspect is now being done by t'intertubes. Maybe I should rephrase my original to be "the important point of journalism is speaking truth to power". Seeing what a farce the UK media is making of Assange's trial (sorry, extradition hearing), it seems we're nowhere near that at the moment.
vikramkr 7y ago
It looks like the tech they developed is at least scientifically interesting, or at least cool. Doesn't have to be practical to be publication worthy. Still weird that it made it through nature's editors that claim to want importance (which tends to invite p hackers and outrageous claims), but there is a role for fun clever research trying to solve silly problems, the tech developed could be useful elsewhere (under a waterfall on mars?).

zdragnar 7y ago

> "speak truth to power" (the point of journalism) I think that might be a bit of wishful thinking. An "investigative journalist" might take that on as a motto, but it certainly isn't true of all journalism as a general goal.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
Interesting. What is the point of journalism then?
- zdragnar 7y ago
  Obviously, that depends on where in the world you are. Assuming a press that is relatively free from government and adversarial editorial oversight, journalism can likely be summed up as "obtaining newsworthy information and publishing it to the public". According to Wikipedia, at least, there are at least 242 ethics standards for journalism worldwide, with something of a general consensus on truthfulness, accuracy, impartiality and fairness. "truth to power" may be a very narrow aspect (if, perhaps, an important one), but the simple fact is that there is plenty of newsworthy information that is fundamentally unrelated to struggles against powerful people, bureaucracies, political entities and companies. The "point" of journalism, then, is much simpler: gather information, attempt to filter it through a lens of accuracy and impartiality, and disseminate it. Not quite tautological, but there you have it.
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    Yeah. I guess most of that "information" aspect is now being done by t'intertubes. Maybe I should rephrase my original to be "the important point of journalism is speaking truth to power". Seeing what a farce the UK media is making of Assange's trial (sorry, extradition hearing), it seems we're nowhere near that at the moment.

vikramkr 7y ago

It looks like the tech they developed is at least scientifically interesting, or at least cool. Doesn't have to be practical to be publication worthy. Still weird that it made it through nature's editors that claim to want importance (which tends to invite p hackers and outrageous claims), but there is a role for fun clever research trying to solve silly problems, the tech developed could be useful elsewhere (under a waterfall on mars?).