4 ms·

I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some

by wrsh07 6y ago

I tend to think that the business model of a cable news room is pretty fundamentally broken. Insofar as you value investigative journalism or pieces with some depth, you will be disappointed by organizations that host ESPN style shout fests, but they're produced for exactly the same reasons. It's cheap to make garbage filler content. When you see that all of the channels are deeply flawed, it's because they're incentivized to be flawed in exactly the way that they are. Curiously, John Oliver (say what you will about his biases) has found a way to fund real investigative journalism. This marks an interesting counterpoint to the 24 hour news room which extends what comedy central (daily show etc) had begun

strategyanalyst 6y ago
John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Find a business model that works for independent journalism, then. Advertising pays more with more controversy. Patronage (having a rich person pay the journalists) comes with strings. Consumers appear willing to pay for journalism only when it supports their political beliefs.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    Yeah, the solution isn't to find a single fount of truth we can all sup from. We are where we are because that mid-century model was fragile. Not to mention it allowed Americans to overlook any wrongs that didn't blip on the radar of the NorthEast intellectual hegemony. The real solution is a healthy ecosystem of independent news.
  - jaredwiener 6y ago
    We're trying! https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/ https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Interesting! What business model are you going for?
      - jaredwiener 6y ago
        Think of it sort of Twitter-meets-Substack. It's still advertising/freemium, but with some big differences. We syndicate out the internal updates that reporters are already writing within their own newsroom, so while they work on their current formats, we just piggyback off of existing work. Then we revenue share from those ads/subscriptions back to support the reporters and news orgs doing the reporting. There is money being spent on ads now, its just going to the wrong people. We're trying to fix that -- and align the incentives back so that everyone -- readers, reporters, us -- succeeds when we have good journalism, not clickbait.
        marcus_holmes 6y ago
        That's interesting. I used to run a newspaper a couple of years ago and have spent a lot of time thinking about business models for it since. The main problem with advertising is it monetises engagement, which means that it massively favours controversial or emotional content. How are you going to avoid this? If you have a good journalist writing great journalism, and a hack writing clickbait, how are you going to avoid the hack getting more ad revenue?
        jaredwiener 6y ago
        Because we aren't monetizing the views, per se. Since we're posting _updates_ rather than full articles, it's more like Twitter. We can display ads in between the updates -- something print newspapers used to (and still) do all the time. Then we just take the revenue share from any specific market, divide it up by the number of updates contributed, and go from there. It's not perfect, and we may still want to tweak, but the hope is that we can then incentivize lots of hard news reporting, and not "5 celebrities without makeup."
- nomel 6y ago
  > upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US. The current news stations are reporting from the same, truthful, reality. It's the spin, slant, and selective omission when they're presented that is different. Having some true source, that dryly presents this reality, will be devoid of these biases, but they'll still picked up and presented in an almost certainly more entertaining, vastly more popular, biased way as they are now. I think the problem is, and always has been, that people fundamentally prefer similar viewpoint rather than raw presentation of facts. I also assume this is why there are exactly 0, for profit, widely watched, media outlets that present information in this relatively boring way.
- wrsh07 6y ago
  > There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop I completely agree I also agree that John Oliver has a liberal bias! What I don't think, however, is that his bias is required by his business model. (Curiously, as we discuss the daily show hosts, my very conservative parents both really like Trevor Noah. However, I don't think comedy central is to be our information salvation)
autokad 6y ago
John Oliver? are you kidding me? he purposely takes things out of context, cartoonizes and dehumanizes the opposition, uses comedy as a shield to make substantial counter points, etc etc. His goal is less about engagement (like a news media) and more abut driving a deeper wedge between people. John Oliver is a curse upon humanity, he makes this world worse.
- amrangaye 6y ago
  “A curse upon humanity”? Aren’t you getting a bit carried away? You may not like the contents of the show but fact is he presents a lot of really complex issues in an easily digestible, shareable format, for people who only follow the 24/7 (shallow) news cycle and get their understanding from sound bites. Not to mention the hyperbole of “all of humanity” - his audience is not even all of America :)

by wrsh07 6y ago

strategyanalyst 6y ago

John Oliver is also focused on a sub-segment and is also at least misleading at times. There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop. We really need a source that can at least be relied upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
Find a business model that works for independent journalism, then. Advertising pays more with more controversy. Patronage (having a rich person pay the journalists) comes with strings. Consumers appear willing to pay for journalism only when it supports their political beliefs.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  Yeah, the solution isn't to find a single fount of truth we can all sup from. We are where we are because that mid-century model was fragile. Not to mention it allowed Americans to overlook any wrongs that didn't blip on the radar of the NorthEast intellectual hegemony. The real solution is a healthy ecosystem of independent news.
- jaredwiener 6y ago
  We're trying! https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/ https://blog.nillium.com/why-were-building-forth/
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    Interesting! What business model are you going for?
    - jaredwiener 6y ago
      Think of it sort of Twitter-meets-Substack. It's still advertising/freemium, but with some big differences. We syndicate out the internal updates that reporters are already writing within their own newsroom, so while they work on their current formats, we just piggyback off of existing work. Then we revenue share from those ads/subscriptions back to support the reporters and news orgs doing the reporting. There is money being spent on ads now, its just going to the wrong people. We're trying to fix that -- and align the incentives back so that everyone -- readers, reporters, us -- succeeds when we have good journalism, not clickbait.
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago
        That's interesting. I used to run a newspaper a couple of years ago and have spent a lot of time thinking about business models for it since. The main problem with advertising is it monetises engagement, which means that it massively favours controversial or emotional content. How are you going to avoid this? If you have a good journalist writing great journalism, and a hack writing clickbait, how are you going to avoid the hack getting more ad revenue?
        jaredwiener 6y ago
        Because we aren't monetizing the views, per se. Since we're posting _updates_ rather than full articles, it's more like Twitter. We can display ads in between the updates -- something print newspapers used to (and still) do all the time. Then we just take the revenue share from any specific market, divide it up by the number of updates contributed, and go from there. It's not perfect, and we may still want to tweak, but the hope is that we can then incentivize lots of hard news reporting, and not "5 celebrities without makeup."
nomel 6y ago
> upon as accurate source by 70-80% to avoid total collapse of democratic order in US. The current news stations are reporting from the same, truthful, reality. It's the spin, slant, and selective omission when they're presented that is different. Having some true source, that dryly presents this reality, will be devoid of these biases, but they'll still picked up and presented in an almost certainly more entertaining, vastly more popular, biased way as they are now. I think the problem is, and always has been, that people fundamentally prefer similar viewpoint rather than raw presentation of facts. I also assume this is why there are exactly 0, for profit, widely watched, media outlets that present information in this relatively boring way.
wrsh07 6y ago
> There are no sources of information that are credible with more than 45-55% of US Gen pop I completely agree I also agree that John Oliver has a liberal bias! What I don't think, however, is that his bias is required by his business model. (Curiously, as we discuss the daily show hosts, my very conservative parents both really like Trevor Noah. However, I don't think comedy central is to be our information salvation)

autokad 6y ago

John Oliver? are you kidding me? he purposely takes things out of context, cartoonizes and dehumanizes the opposition, uses comedy as a shield to make substantial counter points, etc etc. His goal is less about engagement (like a news media) and more abut driving a deeper wedge between people. John Oliver is a curse upon humanity, he makes this world worse.

amrangaye 6y ago
“A curse upon humanity”? Aren’t you getting a bit carried away? You may not like the contents of the show but fact is he presents a lot of really complex issues in an easily digestible, shareable format, for people who only follow the 24/7 (shallow) news cycle and get their understanding from sound bites. Not to mention the hyperbole of “all of humanity” - his audience is not even all of America :)