10 ms·

When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? This entire article could have been cut down to the last few paragraphs and no

by Youden 6y ago

When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? This entire article could have been cut down to the last few paragraphs and nothing of value would have been lost. Look at The New York Times in 1921 [0]. Generally the stories are factual and to the point. The entire front page seems to be pure news. There's very little storytelling here, at most there are a few timelines of events. Look at The New York Times today [1]. There's a bunch of factual and useful Coronavirus information but ~15% of the page is dedicated to "Opinion", the second article appears to be pure speculation, the third article is a bunch of storytime fluff around a little bit of news and the front page has a mix of actual news and opinion pieces being passed off as news. When did this happen? Why? Did people lose interest in actual news? Is there less actual news to report? Perhaps this is regional? Take for example the story about the San Quentin prison. NYTimes [2] has the same drawn out nonsense as this Google story while Aljazeera [3] adds a lot of background but sticks to factual reporting. [0]: https://archive.org/details/NYTimes_jul16_31_1921 https://archive.org/details/NYTimes_jul16_31_1921 [1]: http://archive.is/oiiXU http://archive.is/oiiXU [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/san-quentin-prison-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/us/san-quentin-prison-cor... [3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/san-quentin-prison-sees-600-coronavirus-cases-5-days-200701192059040.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/san-quentin-prison-se...

Aloha 6y ago
Opinion masquerading as news sells, see Fox News, MSNBC, et al.
pgbi 6y ago
Because pure news are pretty much free today. So newspaper need to provide something else: analysis, opinions, etc. to be able to sell something.
- kulahan 6y ago
  Not to mention we have metrics which tell us exactly what kind of reporting is most likely to have good reader engagement (and thus higher ad payouts). Most news sources are just giving us exactly what the majority of people want.
  - nurettin 6y ago
    Even HN does this. It is the magic of the reply button. As a result, they pull more screen time and have a stickier crowd to show "we are hiring" ads.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
galacticaactual 6y ago
I view this phenomenon as a sort of sociological entropy. Anything bad that can happen will happen if the people tolerate it. Same with shitty politicians, encroaching of rights, etc. Its all just a matter of time.
- gretch 6y ago
  This theory doesn't hold up against the test of time. We used to have tyrant monarchs - Genghis Khan would roam the steppe and cutting people's heads off and that would be normal every day life. There are still bad things today, but more people have more rights and a higher quality of life.
  - e15ctr0n 6y ago
    > Genghis Khan Genghis Khan was neither a tyrant nor a monarch, nor was cutting off heads a part of his everyday life. He actually got more Mongol people more rights and a higher quality of life. I would request you to read a detailed and accurate account of his life by a historian. For example, Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy by Frank McLynn https://amzn.com/B00X2ZW5ZI https://amzn.com/B00X2ZW5ZI
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Do you find the following inaccurate or biased, and if so, for the uninformed, briefly why? "Campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Khwarezmia, and the Western Xia and Jin dynasties, and raids into Medieval Georgia, the Kievan Rus', and Volga Bulgaria. These campaigns were often accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations, especially in the Khwarazmian- and Western Xia–controlled lands. Because of this brutality, which left millions dead, he is considered by many to have been a brutal ruler"
      - totony 6y ago
        From what I've seen Ganghis Khan was brutal against non-surrendering nations, but beneficial for those who followed him. E.g. you woulsn't see him cutting his subjects heads, and his brutality was pretty much an intimidation tactic so others army would join him.
deno 6y ago
No to take away from your point, which I think is valid, but the NYT in 1921 is _the_ Internet. We’ve gone from being starved for information to being overloaded. So really you’re comparing apples to oranges they just happen to be named the same thing.
axlee 6y ago
If you want the "pure" news as in 1921, subscribe directly to AP/AFP/Reuters/EFE. The world has changed, and most of the added value of newspapers now comes from contextualization that you seem to disregard to having no value, despite being the higher journalistic effort. It's easy to report that a chicken died crossing the road, it's a lot harder to explain what chain of events led to a chicken dying crossing the road.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > The world has changed, and most of the added value of newspapers now comes from contextualization that you seem to disregard to having no value, despite being the higher journalistic effort. But that's not what most of them are doing anymore. It's not so much context as it is agenda. The stories are written to lead you to a particular conclusion. From right now: NY Times: Republicans are abruptly pushing Americans to wear masks, despite President Trump’s resistance. Fox News: 'Looked like the Lone Ranger': Trump jokes about wearing mask, supports it And that's not even getting into how the stories are chosen or prioritized. NY Times: Some States and Cities Halt Reopenings As U.S. Cases Surge Fox News: Media narrative of peaceful Seattle CHOP zone turned upside down They've chosen sides. Maybe they always had, but it seems more blatant now. They're not even pretending anymore.
  - mc32 6y ago
    I agree. Before it was a more or less united America vs the commies and the commies were bad and we weren’t perfect and we had some housecleaning to do... Now it’s all narrative and the focus is pannational. Not much has a local flavor. It’s not what’s good for Canadians or Ghanaians, it’s what can Canadians and Ghanaians do to make the world better (despite there being lots of things Ghanaians and Canadians could be doing in their own backyards to improve the life of their own downtrodden. It feels like a recast comintern.
  - jussij 6y ago
    I would say Fox News is a classic example of a Rupert Murdoch news outlet. And since Murdoch likes to run his news outlets with an iron fist, these news outlets tend to report the news in a manner that strongly reflects Murdoch's thinking at the time. Any thing Murdoch has owned and run has always comes with a level of Murdoch bias.
supernova87a 6y ago
Maybe you don't know this, but the "A-hed" article of the WSJ is the humorous, light-hearted take on some cultural phenomenon that appears every couple of days. It's got a distinct separation (graphically) from the rest of the news, and is written not to be taken too seriously. (It's not so apparent in the online version, if you haven't read it before). So you don't have to worry that it's some broad decline in journalistic standards (at least based on this)... The WSJ is one of the few quite reputable news rooms out there. You can read about A-hed articles here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303362404575580494180594982 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303362404575580... And there was even a book published a few years ago with collections of these kinds of amusing stories: https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Off-Page-Stories-Journals/dp/074322664X https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Off-Page-Stories-Journals/dp...
- milliondollar 6y ago
  Amen. Learning how to read the news is a skill just like everything else. The direct links of the internet make it harder, but one still needs to try and understand the context of the publication and how the article is presented. A-heads are entertainment.
  - VonGallifrey 6y ago
    This is the "You are holding it wrong" opinion I guess. If A-heads are entertainment then why does it say A-head and not Entertainment? I am not at fault here if I don't know what the hell A-head is supposed to mean and just think that this news site is kinda garbage. What exactly about the presentation of this article was I supposed to pick up on and see that it is entertainment. It is the exact same presentation than their "U.S. Seeks to Seize Iranian Fuel Bound for Venezuela" article. Is that one news or is it also entertainment?
    - milliondollar 6y ago
      This is a very literal approach. I assume that when you watch network TV you assume everything is coming at you with the same purpose and intent (news, talking head show, some documentary like 60 minutes.) Just because you want everything you read online to be "hard news" doesn't mean it will be. It takes a bit of work to understand the context of what you are seeing. So yes, you are holding it wrong.
ebg13 6y ago
I'm sure that it predates Fox News Channel by a lot, after all, news business are business first and news second, but it would be misguided to ignore the fact that FNC has completely dominated viewership numbers in the US almost since its inception by doing exactly what you're complaining about. Opinion is a format that engages large numbers of people and therefore makes money extremely well.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > FNC has completely dominated viewership numbers in the US almost since its inception by doing exactly what you're complaining about. To be fair, they mostly dominate viewership numbers by being the only right-leaning news network available, so they get half the viewing public to themselves while their competitors fight over the other half. Sort of an indictment of the efficient market hypothesis that nobody has figured that out and gone into competition with them.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Are you really complaining about 15% of their front page featuring their opinion section? Your 1921 NYT example has "Broker is Slain at Bride's Door By Her Gardener", which the Times would never feature prominently today, because it's basically yellow press. It also features some French pilot's unverified claims about a new record – something that would see HN storm the barricades today. There's a story there, right at the top, about a group of visitors of the Capitol being disappointed. I'm not entirely sure if it's trying to make fun of the congresswoman it mentions. But it does sound a lot more like today's opinion pieces than a straight news story.
KennethSRoberts 6y ago
> When did this happen? Why? Did people lose interest in actual news? Is there less actual news to report? 1. Search engines prioritized longer content. 2. People are less aware of longer-lasting events and most people land on news stories from social media as a one-off. The additional context is needed.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? As radio and then TV (both of which favor emotion over information) displaced print as the major avenues for “news”, shaping expectations even of print media.
URSpider94 6y ago
This is an example of what’s called literary journalism. Some people (including myself) consider this a high art form. If you want to study up on the classics, read Joan Didion and John McPhee - and Tom Wolfe, the titan of creative nonfiction. There is no crime in making a creative story that people enjoy reading out of a true event.
Ed314159 6y ago
In 1999 the "Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism" [0] was instituted with an endowment from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Who is "Eric Breindel" ... well Wikipedia includes this, as his legacy: "In 1988, Spy magazine ran a feature that depicted Breindel as a ruthlessly career-driven opportunist whose career was effectively ended by his drug bust" And regardless of accuracy, I consider this to be an excellent definition for whatever "Opinion Journalism" must be. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Breindel_Award_for_Excellence_in_Opinion_Journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Breindel_Award_for_Excell...
jollofricepeas 6y ago
When has journalism ever stuck to facts? When has the “news” been more than short stories and opinion? Hint: Never Read: A History of News by Mitchell Stephens https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>When did this happen? Why? Did people lose interest in actual news? Is there less actual news to report? Social media happened. People have been made to think that they have got what they needed from a news article from just the title, image, summary as the next shiny news article was just waiting below to scroll. News media are under tremendous pressure to entertain the few who actually clicked the article and is reading it. World over only those news media which started out as traditional newspaper have some journalism integrity left and are serving news as it is. They are paying for that by going bankrupt, getting sued, journalists getting murdered etc. More over people are getting news only from those sources which gives the news 'they like', rather than going to source which reports factual news.
WalterGR 6y ago
We rehash this every time a NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc. submission gets popular. It’s off-topic.

by Youden 6y ago

Aloha 6y ago

Opinion masquerading as news sells, see Fox News, MSNBC, et al.

pgbi 6y ago

Because pure news are pretty much free today. So newspaper need to provide something else: analysis, opinions, etc. to be able to sell something.

kulahan 6y ago
Not to mention we have metrics which tell us exactly what kind of reporting is most likely to have good reader engagement (and thus higher ad payouts). Most news sources are just giving us exactly what the majority of people want.
- nurettin 6y ago
  Even HN does this. It is the magic of the reply button. As a result, they pull more screen time and have a stickier crowd to show "we are hiring" ads.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

galacticaactual 6y ago

I view this phenomenon as a sort of sociological entropy. Anything bad that can happen will happen if the people tolerate it. Same with shitty politicians, encroaching of rights, etc. Its all just a matter of time.

gretch 6y ago
This theory doesn't hold up against the test of time. We used to have tyrant monarchs - Genghis Khan would roam the steppe and cutting people's heads off and that would be normal every day life. There are still bad things today, but more people have more rights and a higher quality of life.
- e15ctr0n 6y ago
  > Genghis Khan Genghis Khan was neither a tyrant nor a monarch, nor was cutting off heads a part of his everyday life. He actually got more Mongol people more rights and a higher quality of life. I would request you to read a detailed and accurate account of his life by a historian. For example, Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy by Frank McLynn https://amzn.com/B00X2ZW5ZI https://amzn.com/B00X2ZW5ZI
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Do you find the following inaccurate or biased, and if so, for the uninformed, briefly why? "Campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Khwarezmia, and the Western Xia and Jin dynasties, and raids into Medieval Georgia, the Kievan Rus', and Volga Bulgaria. These campaigns were often accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations, especially in the Khwarazmian- and Western Xia–controlled lands. Because of this brutality, which left millions dead, he is considered by many to have been a brutal ruler"
    - totony 6y ago
      From what I've seen Ganghis Khan was brutal against non-surrendering nations, but beneficial for those who followed him. E.g. you woulsn't see him cutting his subjects heads, and his brutality was pretty much an intimidation tactic so others army would join him.

deno 6y ago

No to take away from your point, which I think is valid, but the NYT in 1921 is _the_ Internet. We’ve gone from being starved for information to being overloaded. So really you’re comparing apples to oranges they just happen to be named the same thing.

axlee 6y ago

If you want the "pure" news as in 1921, subscribe directly to AP/AFP/Reuters/EFE. The world has changed, and most of the added value of newspapers now comes from contextualization that you seem to disregard to having no value, despite being the higher journalistic effort. It's easy to report that a chicken died crossing the road, it's a lot harder to explain what chain of events led to a chicken dying crossing the road.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> The world has changed, and most of the added value of newspapers now comes from contextualization that you seem to disregard to having no value, despite being the higher journalistic effort. But that's not what most of them are doing anymore. It's not so much context as it is agenda. The stories are written to lead you to a particular conclusion. From right now: NY Times: Republicans are abruptly pushing Americans to wear masks, despite President Trump’s resistance. Fox News: 'Looked like the Lone Ranger': Trump jokes about wearing mask, supports it And that's not even getting into how the stories are chosen or prioritized. NY Times: Some States and Cities Halt Reopenings As U.S. Cases Surge Fox News: Media narrative of peaceful Seattle CHOP zone turned upside down They've chosen sides. Maybe they always had, but it seems more blatant now. They're not even pretending anymore.
- mc32 6y ago
  I agree. Before it was a more or less united America vs the commies and the commies were bad and we weren’t perfect and we had some housecleaning to do... Now it’s all narrative and the focus is pannational. Not much has a local flavor. It’s not what’s good for Canadians or Ghanaians, it’s what can Canadians and Ghanaians do to make the world better (despite there being lots of things Ghanaians and Canadians could be doing in their own backyards to improve the life of their own downtrodden. It feels like a recast comintern.
- jussij 6y ago
  I would say Fox News is a classic example of a Rupert Murdoch news outlet. And since Murdoch likes to run his news outlets with an iron fist, these news outlets tend to report the news in a manner that strongly reflects Murdoch's thinking at the time. Any thing Murdoch has owned and run has always comes with a level of Murdoch bias.

supernova87a 6y ago

Maybe you don't know this, but the "A-hed" article of the WSJ is the humorous, light-hearted take on some cultural phenomenon that appears every couple of days. It's got a distinct separation (graphically) from the rest of the news, and is written not to be taken too seriously. (It's not so apparent in the online version, if you haven't read it before). So you don't have to worry that it's some broad decline in journalistic standards (at least based on this)... The WSJ is one of the few quite reputable news rooms out there. You can read about A-hed articles here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303362404575580494180594982 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303362404575580... And there was even a book published a few years ago with collections of these kinds of amusing stories: https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Off-Page-Stories-Journals/dp/074322664X https://www.amazon.com/Floating-Off-Page-Stories-Journals/dp...

milliondollar 6y ago
Amen. Learning how to read the news is a skill just like everything else. The direct links of the internet make it harder, but one still needs to try and understand the context of the publication and how the article is presented. A-heads are entertainment.
- VonGallifrey 6y ago
  This is the "You are holding it wrong" opinion I guess. If A-heads are entertainment then why does it say A-head and not Entertainment? I am not at fault here if I don't know what the hell A-head is supposed to mean and just think that this news site is kinda garbage. What exactly about the presentation of this article was I supposed to pick up on and see that it is entertainment. It is the exact same presentation than their "U.S. Seeks to Seize Iranian Fuel Bound for Venezuela" article. Is that one news or is it also entertainment?
  - milliondollar 6y ago
    This is a very literal approach. I assume that when you watch network TV you assume everything is coming at you with the same purpose and intent (news, talking head show, some documentary like 60 minutes.) Just because you want everything you read online to be "hard news" doesn't mean it will be. It takes a bit of work to understand the context of what you are seeing. So yes, you are holding it wrong.

ebg13 6y ago

I'm sure that it predates Fox News Channel by a lot, after all, news business are business first and news second, but it would be misguided to ignore the fact that FNC has completely dominated viewership numbers in the US almost since its inception by doing exactly what you're complaining about. Opinion is a format that engages large numbers of people and therefore makes money extremely well.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> FNC has completely dominated viewership numbers in the US almost since its inception by doing exactly what you're complaining about. To be fair, they mostly dominate viewership numbers by being the only right-leaning news network available, so they get half the viewing public to themselves while their competitors fight over the other half. Sort of an indictment of the efficient market hypothesis that nobody has figured that out and gone into competition with them.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

Are you really complaining about 15% of their front page featuring their opinion section? Your 1921 NYT example has "Broker is Slain at Bride's Door By Her Gardener", which the Times would never feature prominently today, because it's basically yellow press. It also features some French pilot's unverified claims about a new record – something that would see HN storm the barricades today. There's a story there, right at the top, about a group of visitors of the Capitol being disappointed. I'm not entirely sure if it's trying to make fun of the congresswoman it mentions. But it does sound a lot more like today's opinion pieces than a straight news story.

KennethSRoberts 6y ago

> When did this happen? Why? Did people lose interest in actual news? Is there less actual news to report? 1. Search engines prioritized longer content. 2. People are less aware of longer-lasting events and most people land on news stories from social media as a one-off. The additional context is needed.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> When and why did news cease being news and start being short stories and opinion? As radio and then TV (both of which favor emotion over information) displaced print as the major avenues for “news”, shaping expectations even of print media.

URSpider94 6y ago

This is an example of what’s called literary journalism. Some people (including myself) consider this a high art form. If you want to study up on the classics, read Joan Didion and John McPhee - and Tom Wolfe, the titan of creative nonfiction. There is no crime in making a creative story that people enjoy reading out of a true event.

Ed314159 6y ago

In 1999 the "Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism" [0] was instituted with an endowment from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Who is "Eric Breindel" ... well Wikipedia includes this, as his legacy: "In 1988, Spy magazine ran a feature that depicted Breindel as a ruthlessly career-driven opportunist whose career was effectively ended by his drug bust" And regardless of accuracy, I consider this to be an excellent definition for whatever "Opinion Journalism" must be. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Breindel_Award_for_Excellence_in_Opinion_Journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Breindel_Award_for_Excell...

jollofricepeas 6y ago

When has journalism ever stuck to facts? When has the “news” been more than short stories and opinion? Hint: Never Read: A History of News by Mitchell Stephens https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854941W/A_history_of_news Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism Read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>When did this happen? Why? Did people lose interest in actual news? Is there less actual news to report? Social media happened. People have been made to think that they have got what they needed from a news article from just the title, image, summary as the next shiny news article was just waiting below to scroll. News media are under tremendous pressure to entertain the few who actually clicked the article and is reading it. World over only those news media which started out as traditional newspaper have some journalism integrity left and are serving news as it is. They are paying for that by going bankrupt, getting sued, journalists getting murdered etc. More over people are getting news only from those sources which gives the news 'they like', rather than going to source which reports factual news.

WalterGR 6y ago

We rehash this every time a NYT, WaPo, WSJ, etc. submission gets popular. It’s off-topic.