4 ms·

> I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories It is deeper than that (no pun intended); many journ

> I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories It is deeper than that (no pun intended); many journalists seem to be lacking the critical thinking skills required to judge whether a story passes a basic sniff test when it comes to science and technology. The Proteus project is not the ISS of the Sea, it is a vanity project. Clickbait from cnet is par for the course but I guess I expect more from a publication with "Smithsonian" on the masthead. The previous HN thread Proteus: Underwater research lab worthy of a Bond villain [1] points out that this is not just a questionable idea but a really bad one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23985772

robomartin 6y ago
At some level I think we should stop calling it "journalism". The state of journalism in general is pretty sad, not just with regards to science and technology. The amount of effort required to get down to actual information after reading most stories (about anything) is not trivial. In other words, they are now in the mode of writing click-bait pieces for traffic and letting interested readers to the work real journalists used to do in order to produce substantive material. The simplest example of this are very short articles with an enticing subject line and lots of ads on the page. After reading such articles (and feeling cheated) you immediately go to Goggle and have to track down such things as the company URL, research papers, historical context, current state of the art, supporting documentation/legislation/whatever, and then apply some critical thinking. Yeah, what we have today, at many levels and kinds of organizations, is far from what I would call "journalism".
- libraryatnight 6y ago
  and what little journalism is presented is drowned in a sea of opinion pieces trying to tell me how angry or scared I should be.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Easy publishing has removed a few kinds of signaling that we used to have. An article in the Wall Street Journal (chosen at random to have a proper noun) had a different gravitas than the hand-stapled 15 lb paper booklet the scruffy guy shoved at you in front of the market. Now the scruffy guy got shave and a haircut, has access to equipment that is almost but not quite as good, and the "WSJs" have reacted by engaging in a race to the bottom - more ads, less attention to detail. The signalling is gone.
    - robomartin 6y ago
      A 12 year old has the same reach and visibility as a real journalist. Normally this would be a good thing. The problem is that the audience has no way to discriminate across almost any intellectual plane. I have seen this happen in local Facebook groups. I remember an instance where a dreadful, spiteful, verbally violent exchange of hundreds of posts was triggered by this community member starting a thread. Neighbors saying the ugliest things imaginable to each other. It was truly sad to witness. Nobody bothered to see who started the thread. It was someone who had just finished high school. In other words, a 17 to 18 year old, maybe a bit older. The subject isn't important, what is important is that someone with exactly zero life experience, zero responsibility for herself or others, decided she could actually post one of the most ridiculous thoughts on a subject she could not possibly comprehend for many years. People got launched into the most vile verbal battle I've seen in a long time because nobody took a moment to consider the source. Had this comment been offered in person, in the context of a town hall meeting, she likely would have been told to please sit down, listen, learn and come back once she had a kid or two, a mortgage, a job and the realities that come with adult life. The internet has allowed this kind of thing to happen. It isn't about age, it's about a range of variables that used to create categories of trust. You had to earn this ranking over time in order to have reach. Today no such thing exists. Google, YouTube, FB, Twitter, TikTok and others will gladly hand you an audience of billions of people, truth and other standards of quality, in this context, are meaningless.
hinkley 6y ago
I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? Maybe the cycles are too quick, it's too easy to convince yourself that you can fix a mistake post-publication, and you don't interact with as many experienced coworkers throughout the process. Are we the baddies?
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  The internet destroyed the economics of journalism, without cash, where are the resources to hire?
- reaperducer 6y ago
  I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? They don't, but the roots run deeper than that. College journalism departments used to stand on their own, or be part of a Communications department. Now, a lot of them are part of marketing departments because that's where the donor money is. For example, one of the "Big J" journalism schools used to be Medill at Northwestern University. A decade or so ago it changed to become the "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications." I used to mentor interns from that school. The first few years after the switch we started getting students who didn't know the first thing about journalism. They were being taught how to edit videos for YouTube, not how to find out how a congressman voted on a particular topic. We had students about to graduate who didn't know important recent historical figures. Couldn't tell you what party any president belonged to earlier the current one, and his predecessor. It goes along with a long-running theme on HN: That universities are no longer about education. They're only in it for the big money now.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

robomartin 6y ago

At some level I think we should stop calling it "journalism". The state of journalism in general is pretty sad, not just with regards to science and technology. The amount of effort required to get down to actual information after reading most stories (about anything) is not trivial. In other words, they are now in the mode of writing click-bait pieces for traffic and letting interested readers to the work real journalists used to do in order to produce substantive material. The simplest example of this are very short articles with an enticing subject line and lots of ads on the page. After reading such articles (and feeling cheated) you immediately go to Goggle and have to track down such things as the company URL, research papers, historical context, current state of the art, supporting documentation/legislation/whatever, and then apply some critical thinking. Yeah, what we have today, at many levels and kinds of organizations, is far from what I would call "journalism".

libraryatnight 6y ago
and what little journalism is presented is drowned in a sea of opinion pieces trying to tell me how angry or scared I should be.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Easy publishing has removed a few kinds of signaling that we used to have. An article in the Wall Street Journal (chosen at random to have a proper noun) had a different gravitas than the hand-stapled 15 lb paper booklet the scruffy guy shoved at you in front of the market. Now the scruffy guy got shave and a haircut, has access to equipment that is almost but not quite as good, and the "WSJs" have reacted by engaging in a race to the bottom - more ads, less attention to detail. The signalling is gone.
  - robomartin 6y ago
    A 12 year old has the same reach and visibility as a real journalist. Normally this would be a good thing. The problem is that the audience has no way to discriminate across almost any intellectual plane. I have seen this happen in local Facebook groups. I remember an instance where a dreadful, spiteful, verbally violent exchange of hundreds of posts was triggered by this community member starting a thread. Neighbors saying the ugliest things imaginable to each other. It was truly sad to witness. Nobody bothered to see who started the thread. It was someone who had just finished high school. In other words, a 17 to 18 year old, maybe a bit older. The subject isn't important, what is important is that someone with exactly zero life experience, zero responsibility for herself or others, decided she could actually post one of the most ridiculous thoughts on a subject she could not possibly comprehend for many years. People got launched into the most vile verbal battle I've seen in a long time because nobody took a moment to consider the source. Had this comment been offered in person, in the context of a town hall meeting, she likely would have been told to please sit down, listen, learn and come back once she had a kid or two, a mortgage, a job and the realities that come with adult life. The internet has allowed this kind of thing to happen. It isn't about age, it's about a range of variables that used to create categories of trust. You had to earn this ranking over time in order to have reach. Today no such thing exists. Google, YouTube, FB, Twitter, TikTok and others will gladly hand you an audience of billions of people, truth and other standards of quality, in this context, are meaningless.

hinkley 6y ago

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? Maybe the cycles are too quick, it's too easy to convince yourself that you can fix a mistake post-publication, and you don't interact with as many experienced coworkers throughout the process. Are we the baddies?

mensetmanusman 6y ago
The internet destroyed the economics of journalism, without cash, where are the resources to hire?
reaperducer 6y ago
I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? They don't, but the roots run deeper than that. College journalism departments used to stand on their own, or be part of a Communications department. Now, a lot of them are part of marketing departments because that's where the donor money is. For example, one of the "Big J" journalism schools used to be Medill at Northwestern University. A decade or so ago it changed to become the "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications." I used to mentor interns from that school. The first few years after the switch we started getting students who didn't know the first thing about journalism. They were being taught how to edit videos for YouTube, not how to find out how a congressman voted on a particular topic. We had students about to graduate who didn't know important recent historical figures. Couldn't tell you what party any president belonged to earlier the current one, and his predecessor. It goes along with a long-running theme on HN: That universities are no longer about education. They're only in it for the big money now.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]