10 ms·

They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the

They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the world? Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?). Weird puff pieces, drama on the editorial pages (what else would there be?), declining standards, you could find the same complaints any year since the first newspaper. I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery. [1] https://www.nytco.com/journalism/journalists-on-the-ground/ https://www.nytco.com/journalism/journalists-on-the-ground/

rur73u3yry 6y ago
> Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?). < Reuters, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and Fox News all come to mind for the metrics you've brought up. The NYT is not a peerless entity. I'm sure people will bemoan Fox News being on that list but they're none the less one of the largest news orgs in the country and their actual news segments aren't wildly different from what other orgs pump out.
0x8BADF00D 6y ago
> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery. There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.
- api 6y ago
  > There is an alternative. It is you and I. How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll? Conventional journalism of course is not perfectly trustworthy, but at least there is some penalty for extreme untrustworthiness in the form of loss of reputation of the paper and its brand. The NYT is an illustrative case. My opinion of that paper dropped significantly after its role in providing only the most softball criticism of the (then impending) Iraq invasion. I'm not the only person I've heard say this. NYT paid a price for cheerleading for that disaster.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    I'm not sure there's a penalty. NYT subscriptions have been going up, not down, despite it frequently reporting things that are bizarre or factually wrong. Same is true for many other papers. That makes sense: people often buy newspapers for the analysis that reconfirms their own world views, and gives them intellectual ammo for their pre-conceived notions. With citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) they start out with no pre-existing reputation so tend to depend on other ways to quickly build credibility, like using lots of hyperlinks to sources so you can check their claims, or leaving comments open so commenters can criticise and respond. Even today in 2020 it's standard for news articles to provide no citations or hyperlinks at all, even when e.g. the entire report is about a research paper, and often comment sections are now closed. Exactly because so many commenters would often point out flaws in the articles!
  - banads 6y ago
    >How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll? Critical thinking skills, independent research, and open dialogue
    - orwin 6y ago
      > Critical thinking skills A lot of people stay at the dunning-Kruger peak on that for a very long time and over-evaluate their (i for sure did for several years at least). > independent research Those who have the time to do this for half the semi-important issues in the world are lucky(like most of of on HN i think). And i started 2 month ago informing myself about climate change and what does it mean to stop using oil, i did not have any time for myself between that and work until recently. Research takes a long, long time if you wnat to do it well. I'm still not certain about anything. > open dialogue Yes if it mean what i think, this is very helpful. Paper journal used to offer opportunities for that.
      - gregimba 6y ago
        > I'm still not certain about anything. You captured a facet of climate change I feel few can properly articulate. Modeling and digesting complex systems is incredibly difficult and at this point I share the same position. It seems to be we have no clue how severe the impacts of climate change will be but based on gut feelings we are in for the same problem as technology development. > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.[0] [0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara)
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  >> The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. Ah yes, citizen journalists such as Michael Tracey, who will enlighten us with their insanely dishonest, disingenuous and bad takes on every single issue. Really looking forward to it.
- shuntress 6y ago
  Aha! Yes!! The most obvious first step is to form a leadership group to manage coordination. Different people to be in charge of printing/hosting and distribution, payroll, HR, research, etc, etc.
  - 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
    Sure. Except it’s decentralized.
    - computerphage 6y ago
      Looks like you missed the sarcasm
  - stale2002 6y ago
    No, we don't need any of that. If someone wants to publish news, they don't need those things. Just publish it.
- wwright 6y ago
  And the citizen engineers will solve P = NP, and the citizen doctors will cure cancer, and the citizen citizen political scientists will create a perfect voting system…
twirlock 6y ago
It doesn't matter what kind of discovery they do if it's all framed by a predetermined worldview and agenda, but yeah. All the big outlets are obviously trash these days. No escaping, you're right.
rbecker 6y ago
Even ten times that many journalists will do you no good, when what they report is filtered according to some pre-concieved view of the world (or the journalists themselves are only hired if they share that view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8 ).
- jrumbut 6y ago
  Noam Chomsky says a lot of interesting stuff but he published his writings on 9/11 a couple months after the attacks (and he certainly has his own ideological filters). He's an essayist, a linguist, but not a news source. I'm looking for the better alternative to the NYT here. Where would you go for information if I told you about some surprising event occurred and people on Twitter are posting very different statements of fact?
  - rbecker 6y ago
    You are asking for a cure, but I can only offer a diagnosis.
  - arminiusreturns 6y ago
    I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Stop trusting outlets. Find journalists with integrity and follow everything they do, no matter the outlet.
    - everdrive 6y ago
      I've been saying somewhat similar things lately. Although, I do believe some worthwhile outlets exist. But, do you believe this is a new problem? Was it always bad to trust outlets?
      - arminiusreturns 6y ago
        It has gotten worse, but increasingly the more I dig into old media the more I understand it's been around for a long time. That said, the explosion of the internet as a new branch of old media in particular has gotten worse as the oligarchs catch up.
banads 6y ago
>alternative that does the work of collective discovery. The library
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Unfortunately libraries are also subject to the same pressures of ideological warfare and selection bias (see https://www.advocate.com/news/2005/10/07/texas-group-pressures-libraries-remove-childrens-books-gay-content https://www.advocate.com/news/2005/10/07/texas-group-pressur... or https://www.theepochtimes.com/norwegian-library-rejects-chinese-request-to-remove-book-about-banned-spiritual-practice-falun-gong_3193767.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/norwegian-library-rejects-chin... or http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks...).
- jimbokun 6y ago
  By buying a subscription to the Times for its patrons?
  - banads 6y ago
    Studying human history and philosophy provides much greater insights into human affairs than reading click bait or partisan propaganda
acituan 6y ago
> They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries ... to gather facts around the world Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus. It is our sense making and relevance deciding apparatus based on those facts. If we don't have good journalists providing those functions, we are left with the ersatz, AI based versions to decide what to pay attention to; twitter's, youtube's recommendation algorithms, google's ranking algorithms etc. None of which is good at saying "this is the most important thing we should pay attention right now as a society", "this is how you should approach this complex topic". Algorithms only serve one god and that is the god of engagement. But the amount of engagement they drive doesn't match their performance in affording us an ability to make sense of our world. This is precisely what Weiss criticizes, that crucial human wisdom function is now subjugated by what those algorithms promote to be relevant; twitter being the worst offender. This makes us collectively foolish, and we see the results in our society with our inability to cohere and dialog as adults. Our collective intelligence approximates that of a tantrum throwing child, because our most used discourse engine that is twitter can only sustain that level of sophistication.
- HeavyStorm 6y ago
  I completely disagree - the main purpose of the journal is to expose _facts_. It's, of course, impossible to dissociate those facts from opinions they are always written by people, and people will always hold an opinion over subjects, whether they want or not. But the best journalists thrive to separate their opinion from facts and make it clear to readers when it's one or the other.
- notmyfriend 6y ago
  Thats only one thing she is saying. The other thing she is saying is that there is no room for anyone who falls outside the orthodoxy of the new progressive religion.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    She's politicizing a totally nonpolitical issue. She was totally fine until she live-tweeted public insults about her co workers during a company meeting. If it were not for her politicizing the issue she would be immediately fired.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I get the point you're making, but when such a tenured and large scale organization is subject to increasing ideological bias, couldn't we also cast the entire 'fact collection' activity as being in support of that bias? Who's to know if the facts are being selectively reported, or stitched together to tell one narrative instead of the whole truth? A similar argument applies to academia - biased researchers will selectively explore certain angles or tell certain stories, and the sheen of academia (the trust given to it) causes the results to be accepted even if they are incorrect.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  What's the alternative? What is the best source of information available to the public? It's easy to take potshots, show me a news source that's better.
  - rbecker 6y ago
    The absence of a better news source doesn't mean we should be blind to its faults.
    - jrumbut 6y ago
      Sure, but the grandparent doesn't say "I read the NYT but here are some flaws..." or "The Houston Chronicle is better because..." it says the entire enterprise has been directed "in support of bias". I am arguing against being blind to the news source's virtues. If we don't want to be blind to the world we have to pick our poison(s).
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        Fair enough. I find that Wall Street journal, Reuters, and NPR all do better jobs (in roughly that order) with respect to reigning-in their biases than the NYT.
        zzleeper 6y ago
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
the FT do a pretty good job, without as much of the problematic editorials. Probably not as useful to you if you're US based, but I find it really useful for living in Europe.
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I wish I could award you several upvotes for answering my question. I really like FT myself. I am not in business so much but I think business news sources often get at a lot of interesting angles that others miss.
  - bgorman 6y ago
    Absolutely, most journalists do not understand basic quantitative reasoning or economic principles. For example, I read a BBC article a while back about a sand shortage in India. It turns out the government imposed a price-ceiling, and there was no shortage at all (sand was available in the black market) - there was just a shortage at the government mandated price point. Any economics 101 student can tell you that if you set a price-ceiling there will be a shortage. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50386515 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50386515
    - sukilot 6y ago
      "Econ 101" is pejorative term for making simplistic proclamations that ignore the complexities of a situation.
    - tomjakubowski 6y ago
      Like the article says, sand was actually more widely available when the government had capped the price at $0. The Econ 101 student is blind to the interesting parts of this story.
    - psds2 6y ago
      There was a (temporary) sand shortage due to a monsoon and availability does not imply sufficient supply. If there was no shortage of sand, even on the black market, the price would not have risen unless it was controlled by a cartel. Price capping is a good way to fight this kind of cartel because they were cornering the market by taking in all of the available supply and then raising the price.
sillypuddy 6y ago
Bloomberg had 2,300 editors and reporters in 72 countries in 2010. The Wall Street Journal had 2,000 journalists in 85 news bureaus across 51 countries in 2012.
- Taikonerd 6y ago
  The WSJ and Bloomberg are OK, although they tend to have business-heavy coverage. I feel like there's a real market opening here, for a centrist, general-interest newspaper. (Suggested slogan: "Like the NYT Was 20 Years Ago.")
  - Nerdfest 6y ago
    I've seen some pretty right-wing stuff on WSJ in the last few months.
    - manigandham 6y ago
      Centrist does not mean right-wing, nor does it mean just mixing both political extremes.
cm2187 6y ago
News agencies (Reuters, AFP, AP, Bloomberg, etc) and without (or at least with a lot less) pontification and political bias.
hintymad 6y ago
It's not just about number of journalists, but more about the culture of NYT. NYT made a garage handle much larger than it actually was by using telescope camera on the article on so-called noose. And is this truth-finding? NYT published opinions like "Yes, we literally mean abolish police". They published articles like "Are protests unsafe? What experts say may depend on who's protesting what". Of course they didn't lie. They just publish one side of the sotry. Oh, and that 4000 opinions that the orange man is evil? Great, I guess, and what policies and executive orders did the orange man signs and pushes? What are the motivations behind the controversial policies based on facts and data? Where are the debates of the implications of the policies? No no no, those are wrong questions. All I need to know is that the orange man is evil, right? That's the truth ,right? Or am I a bigot, a racist, an evil person, a xenophobia just because I'm curious about the details of what the orange man did in his presidency?
Rick1 6y ago
Let's say they're gathering facts. I don't know the numbers but let's assume this is correct. Are they perhaps also exaggerating and wording stories to get something that sells? And perhaps adding an ideological filter? Maybe choosing what to report and what not. E.g., all negative stories about some people will be reported and all positive stories about others will be reported. Just because they're gathering facts does not mean they accurately describe reality.
erikerikson 6y ago
You get a different bias from The Economist but I'm fairly happy reading it. Not sure on the numbers of personnel or their distribution.
- RachelF 6y ago
  The Economist is still one of the best, but they have also deteriorated in the last 3 years, and continue slowly descending into NewSpeak.
JeremyNT 6y ago
> They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the world? Reuters [0], for one, which boasts "2500 journalists and 600 photojournalists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters A key thing to understand about the editorial / news hybrids like the NYT, CNN, or Fox News is that they're selling multiple products under the same umbrella: the "reporting" product is side-by-side with the "editorial" product. The editorial content is almost always useless garbage, and it exists solely to generate clicks/views/etc. A lot of the whining about cancel culture is from people who tend to write editorial content, and I don't shed any tears for them, but the failure mode of these orgs is that the editorial section has developed such a strong brand (and their audiences are increasingly polarized), such that their now Twitter-policed editorial viewpoint is increasingly expected to be enforced in the "real" news products, too. If you want less biased reporting, there are outlets that provide it, but they tend to not publish as much inflammatory clickbait and thus tend to go under the radar of many information consumers.
- AxiomCloNe 6y ago
  what are some of these outlets you know of? I've been trying to ironclad my news sources after getting into Chomsky recently but have only found Democracy Now! and Novara media, as well as a couple other small speciality podcasts that seem potentially good. Would appreciate pointers.
  - bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
    If you like Chomsky check out What's Left (podcast) if you haven't yet. It's very good and will only deepen your skepticism of the corporate press.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Reuters and frankly the websites of the local TV stations (Sinclair notwithstanding). Al Jazeera, mostly. ProPublica is OK but falling from grace as it leans harder into manipulating heartstrings.
  - 6y ago

rur73u3yry 6y ago

> Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?). < Reuters, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and Fox News all come to mind for the metrics you've brought up. The NYT is not a peerless entity. I'm sure people will bemoan Fox News being on that list but they're none the less one of the largest news orgs in the country and their actual news segments aren't wildly different from what other orgs pump out.

0x8BADF00D 6y ago

> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery. There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.

api 6y ago
> There is an alternative. It is you and I. How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll? Conventional journalism of course is not perfectly trustworthy, but at least there is some penalty for extreme untrustworthiness in the form of loss of reputation of the paper and its brand. The NYT is an illustrative case. My opinion of that paper dropped significantly after its role in providing only the most softball criticism of the (then impending) Iraq invasion. I'm not the only person I've heard say this. NYT paid a price for cheerleading for that disaster.
- thu2111 6y ago
  I'm not sure there's a penalty. NYT subscriptions have been going up, not down, despite it frequently reporting things that are bizarre or factually wrong. Same is true for many other papers. That makes sense: people often buy newspapers for the analysis that reconfirms their own world views, and gives them intellectual ammo for their pre-conceived notions. With citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) they start out with no pre-existing reputation so tend to depend on other ways to quickly build credibility, like using lots of hyperlinks to sources so you can check their claims, or leaving comments open so commenters can criticise and respond. Even today in 2020 it's standard for news articles to provide no citations or hyperlinks at all, even when e.g. the entire report is about a research paper, and often comment sections are now closed. Exactly because so many commenters would often point out flaws in the articles!
- banads 6y ago
  >How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll? Critical thinking skills, independent research, and open dialogue
  - orwin 6y ago
    > Critical thinking skills A lot of people stay at the dunning-Kruger peak on that for a very long time and over-evaluate their (i for sure did for several years at least). > independent research Those who have the time to do this for half the semi-important issues in the world are lucky(like most of of on HN i think). And i started 2 month ago informing myself about climate change and what does it mean to stop using oil, i did not have any time for myself between that and work until recently. Research takes a long, long time if you wnat to do it well. I'm still not certain about anything. > open dialogue Yes if it mean what i think, this is very helpful. Paper journal used to offer opportunities for that.
    - gregimba 6y ago
      > I'm still not certain about anything. You captured a facet of climate change I feel few can properly articulate. Modeling and digesting complex systems is incredibly difficult and at this point I share the same position. It seems to be we have no clue how severe the impacts of climate change will be but based on gut feelings we are in for the same problem as technology development. > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.[0] [0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara)
enraged_camel 6y ago
>> The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. Ah yes, citizen journalists such as Michael Tracey, who will enlighten us with their insanely dishonest, disingenuous and bad takes on every single issue. Really looking forward to it.
shuntress 6y ago
Aha! Yes!! The most obvious first step is to form a leadership group to manage coordination. Different people to be in charge of printing/hosting and distribution, payroll, HR, research, etc, etc.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y ago
  Sure. Except it’s decentralized.
  - computerphage 6y ago
    Looks like you missed the sarcasm
- stale2002 6y ago
  No, we don't need any of that. If someone wants to publish news, they don't need those things. Just publish it.
wwright 6y ago
And the citizen engineers will solve P = NP, and the citizen doctors will cure cancer, and the citizen citizen political scientists will create a perfect voting system…

twirlock 6y ago

It doesn't matter what kind of discovery they do if it's all framed by a predetermined worldview and agenda, but yeah. All the big outlets are obviously trash these days. No escaping, you're right.

rbecker 6y ago

Even ten times that many journalists will do you no good, when what they report is filtered according to some pre-concieved view of the world (or the journalists themselves are only hired if they share that view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nBx-37c3c8 ).

jrumbut 6y ago
Noam Chomsky says a lot of interesting stuff but he published his writings on 9/11 a couple months after the attacks (and he certainly has his own ideological filters). He's an essayist, a linguist, but not a news source. I'm looking for the better alternative to the NYT here. Where would you go for information if I told you about some surprising event occurred and people on Twitter are posting very different statements of fact?
- rbecker 6y ago
  You are asking for a cure, but I can only offer a diagnosis.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Stop trusting outlets. Find journalists with integrity and follow everything they do, no matter the outlet.
  - everdrive 6y ago
    I've been saying somewhat similar things lately. Although, I do believe some worthwhile outlets exist. But, do you believe this is a new problem? Was it always bad to trust outlets?
    - arminiusreturns 6y ago
      It has gotten worse, but increasingly the more I dig into old media the more I understand it's been around for a long time. That said, the explosion of the internet as a new branch of old media in particular has gotten worse as the oligarchs catch up.

banads 6y ago

>alternative that does the work of collective discovery. The library

throwawaysea 6y ago
Unfortunately libraries are also subject to the same pressures of ideological warfare and selection bias (see https://www.advocate.com/news/2005/10/07/texas-group-pressures-libraries-remove-childrens-books-gay-content https://www.advocate.com/news/2005/10/07/texas-group-pressur... or https://www.theepochtimes.com/norwegian-library-rejects-chinese-request-to-remove-book-about-banned-spiritual-practice-falun-gong_3193767.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/norwegian-library-rejects-chin... or http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks...).
jimbokun 6y ago
By buying a subscription to the Times for its patrons?
- banads 6y ago
  Studying human history and philosophy provides much greater insights into human affairs than reading click bait or partisan propaganda

acituan 6y ago

> They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries ... to gather facts around the world Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus. It is our sense making and relevance deciding apparatus based on those facts. If we don't have good journalists providing those functions, we are left with the ersatz, AI based versions to decide what to pay attention to; twitter's, youtube's recommendation algorithms, google's ranking algorithms etc. None of which is good at saying "this is the most important thing we should pay attention right now as a society", "this is how you should approach this complex topic". Algorithms only serve one god and that is the god of engagement. But the amount of engagement they drive doesn't match their performance in affording us an ability to make sense of our world. This is precisely what Weiss criticizes, that crucial human wisdom function is now subjugated by what those algorithms promote to be relevant; twitter being the worst offender. This makes us collectively foolish, and we see the results in our society with our inability to cohere and dialog as adults. Our collective intelligence approximates that of a tantrum throwing child, because our most used discourse engine that is twitter can only sustain that level of sophistication.

HeavyStorm 6y ago
I completely disagree - the main purpose of the journal is to expose _facts_. It's, of course, impossible to dissociate those facts from opinions they are always written by people, and people will always hold an opinion over subjects, whether they want or not. But the best journalists thrive to separate their opinion from facts and make it clear to readers when it's one or the other.
notmyfriend 6y ago
Thats only one thing she is saying. The other thing she is saying is that there is no room for anyone who falls outside the orthodoxy of the new progressive religion.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  She's politicizing a totally nonpolitical issue. She was totally fine until she live-tweeted public insults about her co workers during a company meeting. If it were not for her politicizing the issue she would be immediately fired.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I get the point you're making, but when such a tenured and large scale organization is subject to increasing ideological bias, couldn't we also cast the entire 'fact collection' activity as being in support of that bias? Who's to know if the facts are being selectively reported, or stitched together to tell one narrative instead of the whole truth? A similar argument applies to academia - biased researchers will selectively explore certain angles or tell certain stories, and the sheen of academia (the trust given to it) causes the results to be accepted even if they are incorrect.

jrumbut 6y ago
What's the alternative? What is the best source of information available to the public? It's easy to take potshots, show me a news source that's better.
- rbecker 6y ago
  The absence of a better news source doesn't mean we should be blind to its faults.
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    Sure, but the grandparent doesn't say "I read the NYT but here are some flaws..." or "The Houston Chronicle is better because..." it says the entire enterprise has been directed "in support of bias". I am arguing against being blind to the news source's virtues. If we don't want to be blind to the world we have to pick our poison(s).
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      Fair enough. I find that Wall Street journal, Reuters, and NPR all do better jobs (in roughly that order) with respect to reigning-in their biases than the NYT.
      - zzleeper 6y ago

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

the FT do a pretty good job, without as much of the problematic editorials. Probably not as useful to you if you're US based, but I find it really useful for living in Europe.

jrumbut 6y ago
I wish I could award you several upvotes for answering my question. I really like FT myself. I am not in business so much but I think business news sources often get at a lot of interesting angles that others miss.
- bgorman 6y ago
  Absolutely, most journalists do not understand basic quantitative reasoning or economic principles. For example, I read a BBC article a while back about a sand shortage in India. It turns out the government imposed a price-ceiling, and there was no shortage at all (sand was available in the black market) - there was just a shortage at the government mandated price point. Any economics 101 student can tell you that if you set a price-ceiling there will be a shortage. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50386515 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50386515
  - sukilot 6y ago
    "Econ 101" is pejorative term for making simplistic proclamations that ignore the complexities of a situation.
  - tomjakubowski 6y ago
    Like the article says, sand was actually more widely available when the government had capped the price at $0. The Econ 101 student is blind to the interesting parts of this story.
  - psds2 6y ago
    There was a (temporary) sand shortage due to a monsoon and availability does not imply sufficient supply. If there was no shortage of sand, even on the black market, the price would not have risen unless it was controlled by a cartel. Price capping is a good way to fight this kind of cartel because they were cornering the market by taking in all of the available supply and then raising the price.

sillypuddy 6y ago

Bloomberg had 2,300 editors and reporters in 72 countries in 2010. The Wall Street Journal had 2,000 journalists in 85 news bureaus across 51 countries in 2012.

Taikonerd 6y ago
The WSJ and Bloomberg are OK, although they tend to have business-heavy coverage. I feel like there's a real market opening here, for a centrist, general-interest newspaper. (Suggested slogan: "Like the NYT Was 20 Years Ago.")
- Nerdfest 6y ago
  I've seen some pretty right-wing stuff on WSJ in the last few months.
  - manigandham 6y ago
    Centrist does not mean right-wing, nor does it mean just mixing both political extremes.

cm2187 6y ago

News agencies (Reuters, AFP, AP, Bloomberg, etc) and without (or at least with a lot less) pontification and political bias.

hintymad 6y ago

It's not just about number of journalists, but more about the culture of NYT. NYT made a garage handle much larger than it actually was by using telescope camera on the article on so-called noose. And is this truth-finding? NYT published opinions like "Yes, we literally mean abolish police". They published articles like "Are protests unsafe? What experts say may depend on who's protesting what". Of course they didn't lie. They just publish one side of the sotry. Oh, and that 4000 opinions that the orange man is evil? Great, I guess, and what policies and executive orders did the orange man signs and pushes? What are the motivations behind the controversial policies based on facts and data? Where are the debates of the implications of the policies? No no no, those are wrong questions. All I need to know is that the orange man is evil, right? That's the truth ,right? Or am I a bigot, a racist, an evil person, a xenophobia just because I'm curious about the details of what the orange man did in his presidency?

Rick1 6y ago

Let's say they're gathering facts. I don't know the numbers but let's assume this is correct. Are they perhaps also exaggerating and wording stories to get something that sells? And perhaps adding an ideological filter? Maybe choosing what to report and what not. E.g., all negative stories about some people will be reported and all positive stories about others will be reported. Just because they're gathering facts does not mean they accurately describe reality.

erikerikson 6y ago

You get a different bias from The Economist but I'm fairly happy reading it. Not sure on the numbers of personnel or their distribution.

RachelF 6y ago
The Economist is still one of the best, but they have also deteriorated in the last 3 years, and continue slowly descending into NewSpeak.

JeremyNT 6y ago

> They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the world? Reuters [0], for one, which boasts "2500 journalists and 600 photojournalists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters A key thing to understand about the editorial / news hybrids like the NYT, CNN, or Fox News is that they're selling multiple products under the same umbrella: the "reporting" product is side-by-side with the "editorial" product. The editorial content is almost always useless garbage, and it exists solely to generate clicks/views/etc. A lot of the whining about cancel culture is from people who tend to write editorial content, and I don't shed any tears for them, but the failure mode of these orgs is that the editorial section has developed such a strong brand (and their audiences are increasingly polarized), such that their now Twitter-policed editorial viewpoint is increasingly expected to be enforced in the "real" news products, too. If you want less biased reporting, there are outlets that provide it, but they tend to not publish as much inflammatory clickbait and thus tend to go under the radar of many information consumers.

AxiomCloNe 6y ago
what are some of these outlets you know of? I've been trying to ironclad my news sources after getting into Chomsky recently but have only found Democracy Now! and Novara media, as well as a couple other small speciality podcasts that seem potentially good. Would appreciate pointers.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y ago
  If you like Chomsky check out What's Left (podcast) if you haven't yet. It's very good and will only deepen your skepticism of the corporate press.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Reuters and frankly the websites of the local TV stations (Sinclair notwithstanding). Al Jazeera, mostly. ProPublica is OK but falling from grace as it leans harder into manipulating heartstrings.
- 6y ago