6 ms·

My perception, as a child of the 90s, is that the quality of mainstream news has dropped a lot since then, especially in the last ten years or so. I wonder if t

My perception, as a child of the 90s, is that the quality of mainstream news has dropped a lot since then, especially in the last ten years or so. I wonder if that’s really true though, or if its just the product of my own age and the availability of other sources of information.

bcrl 6y ago
Money has been sucked out of broadcast and printed media as ads have migrated online. It costs real money to support investigative journalism. Fewer ads = fewer dollars = lower quality.
- dabbledash 6y ago
  I can definitely see that being a factor, but to my eye the NYT in particular seems worse, and I think I’ve heard they made tons of money during the last few years. You definitely do see some great pieces that couldn’t be done without the resources of an institution like the Times, but it seems to be surrounded by a lot of schlock.
gizmo 6y ago
There is more high quality investigative journalism than in any other time in history. There is also a more rapid and sensationalistic news cycle, with non-stop coverage of “breaking news” and talking heads who contribute nothing. By analogy, the bigger the library the harder it is to find really great books.
- throwarayes 6y ago
  The investigative journalism is true at the national level, but locally it seems there’s not nearly as much as there used to be, with the void being filled with social media and activists
ghaff 6y ago
It's probably a bit of both. I'm not sure if the best print newspapers and magazines with global brands (NYT and WSJ in the US, The Economist in the UK) are obviously worse than they were a decade or decades back. But TV journalism is mostly a shadow its former self, the US weekly news magazines are basically gone, the local newspaper scene is mostly a shambles, etc. And, as you say, there are lots of other information sources that are far deeper on specific topics than mainstream journalism ever was.
tarboreus 6y ago
It has. Watch, for example, German national news and it's like we had 20 years ago. And they have issues similar to ours over there too, but certain kinds of trust are still (more) intact.

bcrl 6y ago

Money has been sucked out of broadcast and printed media as ads have migrated online. It costs real money to support investigative journalism. Fewer ads = fewer dollars = lower quality.

dabbledash 6y ago
I can definitely see that being a factor, but to my eye the NYT in particular seems worse, and I think I’ve heard they made tons of money during the last few years. You definitely do see some great pieces that couldn’t be done without the resources of an institution like the Times, but it seems to be surrounded by a lot of schlock.

gizmo 6y ago

There is more high quality investigative journalism than in any other time in history. There is also a more rapid and sensationalistic news cycle, with non-stop coverage of “breaking news” and talking heads who contribute nothing. By analogy, the bigger the library the harder it is to find really great books.

throwarayes 6y ago
The investigative journalism is true at the national level, but locally it seems there’s not nearly as much as there used to be, with the void being filled with social media and activists

ghaff 6y ago

It's probably a bit of both. I'm not sure if the best print newspapers and magazines with global brands (NYT and WSJ in the US, The Economist in the UK) are obviously worse than they were a decade or decades back. But TV journalism is mostly a shadow its former self, the US weekly news magazines are basically gone, the local newspaper scene is mostly a shambles, etc. And, as you say, there are lots of other information sources that are far deeper on specific topics than mainstream journalism ever was.

tarboreus 6y ago

It has. Watch, for example, German national news and it's like we had 20 years ago. And they have issues similar to ours over there too, but certain kinds of trust are still (more) intact.