7 ms·

Publishing Is Back to the Future

78 points by ZaidMalhis 6y ago

te_chris 6y ago
There’s some good here but to talk only of business models misses the point. News provides public goods too and in examples like nyt, politico etc. they’re evaporating in favour of elite news for the elites. Now, the Australian bill is almost certainly at the behest of the Murdoch press, and so is likely shit...but if society, expressed through govt., decides that it values the public good of news, then society is entitled to find ways to fund that public good.
- interestica 6y ago
  I didn't think of publishing focusing on business models as something in opposition to the public good. I think, if anything, it demonstrates just how valuable and powerful and necessary these elements are for a well-functioning society. And as integral parts, it would likely need a stronger relationship with government to better ensure it serves the public good. And when, for many, sites like Facebook at the primary source of news, it means that govt has to address it as more than just a "private business".
- 0xy 6y ago
  Corporate media provides the opposite of public good. In the case of NYT, they lied about WMDs in Iraq which helped sell the war that killed thousands of people. It's not obvious to me why they should be let off the hook for beating the blood-soaked war drums.
  - Proziam 6y ago
    I see that you're being downvoted, presumably by people who aren't aware of the history of that subject.
lbarrow 6y ago
I'm struck by how much Ben's description of what the NYT is becoming - an opinionated, subscriber-focused institution - matches up with how I think about Substack and Patreon. I wouldn't be surprised if in the long run we basically end up with two types of news and media institutions: the advertising-focused ones who go for incredibly broad and often low-quality work, and the subscribed-focused ones who are more narrow.
- tabtab 6y ago
  NYT should more clearly split news from op-eds. Op-eds are supposed to be opinionated by definition.
gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
they got a sugar high with clubhouse and now they think they can scale their medium investor scam media up. probably also motivated by /r/wsb latest forays.
- yuy910616 6y ago
  are you referring to a16z?
  - gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
    Yes, assumed that was in the title :) the article does start with "Andreessen Horowitz is going direct"
13415 6y ago
Today, Youtube suggested to me to watch a 15 s Hitler speech. Why? I have not the slightest idea. But I clicked out of curiosity, just to see once more how "good" ol' Hitler spoke. It was one of his better speeches. Comments disabled. I'd say that's the problem of modern journalism. They have to compete with algorithms that maximize clicks and engagement, no matter what content. I hope I'm wrong but I see no way how this battle can be won in the long run. Maybe a bill to make big tech pay for the content they "appropriate" (or synthesize from sources with AI) would at least be a try.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > I hope I'm wrong but I see no way how this battle can be won in the long run. I mean, this problem is actually very simple to fix: make advertising a felony. There's no way that's ever going to happen, but it is simple, easy to see, and effective.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  I can see that NYT could have an online front-page that shows me kinds of stories I am interested in. Still they need not be fake news, like lot of Facebook posts are about(?). Just makes sense. If they're not working towards that I don't know why. Adapt NYT to the possibilities of per customer customization
amoorthy 6y ago
This is the best part of Ben's article: > I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet…the New York Times doesn’t have the truth, but then again, neither do I, and neither does Amazon. This is the key insight in news today. You cannot rely on any one source for the full story. You must read multiple perspectives, ideally from different points in the political spectrum. My father, and likely others who grew up pre-internet, knew this intuitively and always read multiple papers. We should do the same and stop expecting our favourite source to be the final word on a story.
- citizenkeen 6y ago
  I remember my father used to listen to Dr. Laura every day on his commute. My father is every bit a Massachusetts progressive. He used to arrange his schedule to make sure he could hear things like Dr. Farrakhan's speech at the Million Man March. He'd read the Wall Street Journal and get frustrated. I once asked why, and he said "It's important to know what other people think, even if they're wrong. Because every once in a while, you're the one who's wrong."
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    And at least you can be right about what other people think, you can be right about how other people are wrong
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    > He'd read the Wall Street Journal and get frustrated. I'm frustrated with the WSJ too. What used to be a conservative but respected publication has over the years turned to little more than pop news and sensationalism.
- toyg 6y ago
  I was taught this by my dad and my schoolteachers too. Up until the ‘90s, in Italy you knew in advance whose editorial perspective you were getting from any given newspaper or tv bulletin; so it was deemed necessary to survey a plurality of them to figure out the most likely scenario for any given piece of news. In the end, though, only the most politically engaged would actually do that, and typically in order to know “what the enemy thinks” for tactical reasons. Nowadays it’s all a bit murky - traditional big-money owners are not interested in paying for a dying media, and political parties are chronically broke and often short-lived, so even the biggest properties can quickly change hands from chancer to chancer.
Booktrope 6y ago
A shallow, one-sided take on what happened to the news business. I mean, here's a guy who quotes himself (!) saying, "I’d go further: I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet" As his example of this, he appears to the New York Times as his exemplar of a company that's been relatively successful online. Relative to newspapers that have basically failed that is. Comparted to Breitbart, Fox News, and other non-fact based journalism, relatively, well, less successful. Google is in a sense an aggregator but according to algorithms that it's careful to keep secret. Its main financial goal in doing this is to maximize ad revenue it can extract from the feed, and Google is more successful in that regard than any of the sources of the news it aggregates. Leaving other concerns aside, this does drain ever more revenue out of the business of creating news, since advertisers now choose between buying ads from the aggegator or ads from the source, and no, Google's work hasn't doubled marketing budgets of advertisers. Facebook controls what people see -- it doesn't aggregate, it segregates. You see what Facebook has determined you want to see, and usually they're right (It would be much better for us as a community if they were wrong much more often and showed everyone things they don't want to see.) Facebook financial goal in choosing what to put in user feeds is maximizing ad revenue for Facebook. This has further drained ad revenue away from sources of content. The piece claims, hey, the internet was making it harder on news sources before the ascendency of Facebook and Google, though as late as the 1990's newspapers were still a very profitable business. Yeah, Craig's List grabbed a huge share of the classified ad business which traditionally was a major part of newspaper revenue, and newspapers stupidly failed to mount any significant effort to get that revenue back. But Google and Facebook have vastly more effective methods of siphoning off revenue as they've dominated market share and therefore become indispensable for all news outlets. It not only starves news sources of revenue but favors sources that tell people what they want to hear in a way that excites the audience. In other words, the current sorry state of our political world.
- derefr 6y ago
  > It would be much better for us as a community if they were wrong much more often and showed everyone things they don't want to see. Tangent to this, "Tumblr is the best social media site of 2021": https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/639134013230088192/i-love-tumblr-i-love-that-tumblr-is-the-best https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/639134013230088192/i-l...
app4soft 6y ago
> This Bill establishes a mandatory code of conduct to help... The Future would be restricted just by more CoCs.
closeparen 6y ago
Ignorance of the business side is not childish or haphazard. Editorial independence - that the news should not be influenced by business concerns - is as important to journalists as "do no harm" is to doctors. Separation between newsroom and ad business staff is maintained intentionally as a matter of ethics. It is the same sort of animal as the separation between proprietary trading and advisory services at a bank. The "Chinese wall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
- mchusma 6y ago
  "do no harm" is a horrible moral framework. It led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands this last year, where we routinely and repeatedly do things that are expected to cause more harm because we haven't first proven "no harm". Examples include banning the many safe and effective vaccines, prioritizing 2nd doses over first doses, and prioritizing people who have had COVID equally to those who have not.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    That may be the case, but it may be not. Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map? Could be puzzling.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      > Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map? Correlation does not imply causation. Vaccine makers prefer to test in regions with high infection activity because statistically significant results can be obtained faster. And mutations are more likely to occur in regions with high infection activity because mutations are a numbers game. Most likely we're just seeing two effects with the same root cause, without those two effects being causally linked.
      - 6y ago

78 points by ZaidMalhis 6y ago

There’s some good here but to talk only of business models misses the point. News provides public goods too and in examples like nyt, politico etc. they’re evaporating in favour of elite news for the elites. Now, the Australian bill is almost certainly at the behest of the Murdoch press, and so is likely shit...but if society, expressed through govt., decides that it values the public good of news, then society is entitled to find ways to fund that public good.

interestica 6y ago
I didn't think of publishing focusing on business models as something in opposition to the public good. I think, if anything, it demonstrates just how valuable and powerful and necessary these elements are for a well-functioning society. And as integral parts, it would likely need a stronger relationship with government to better ensure it serves the public good. And when, for many, sites like Facebook at the primary source of news, it means that govt has to address it as more than just a "private business".
0xy 6y ago
Corporate media provides the opposite of public good. In the case of NYT, they lied about WMDs in Iraq which helped sell the war that killed thousands of people. It's not obvious to me why they should be let off the hook for beating the blood-soaked war drums.
- Proziam 6y ago
  I see that you're being downvoted, presumably by people who aren't aware of the history of that subject.

lbarrow 6y ago

I'm struck by how much Ben's description of what the NYT is becoming - an opinionated, subscriber-focused institution - matches up with how I think about Substack and Patreon. I wouldn't be surprised if in the long run we basically end up with two types of news and media institutions: the advertising-focused ones who go for incredibly broad and often low-quality work, and the subscribed-focused ones who are more narrow.

tabtab 6y ago
NYT should more clearly split news from op-eds. Op-eds are supposed to be opinionated by definition.

gcblkjaidfj 6y ago

they got a sugar high with clubhouse and now they think they can scale their medium investor scam media up. probably also motivated by /r/wsb latest forays.

yuy910616 6y ago
are you referring to a16z?
- gcblkjaidfj 6y ago
  Yes, assumed that was in the title :) the article does start with "Andreessen Horowitz is going direct"

13415 6y ago

Today, Youtube suggested to me to watch a 15 s Hitler speech. Why? I have not the slightest idea. But I clicked out of curiosity, just to see once more how "good" ol' Hitler spoke. It was one of his better speeches. Comments disabled. I'd say that's the problem of modern journalism. They have to compete with algorithms that maximize clicks and engagement, no matter what content. I hope I'm wrong but I see no way how this battle can be won in the long run. Maybe a bill to make big tech pay for the content they "appropriate" (or synthesize from sources with AI) would at least be a try.

a1369209993 6y ago
> I hope I'm wrong but I see no way how this battle can be won in the long run. I mean, this problem is actually very simple to fix: make advertising a felony. There's no way that's ever going to happen, but it is simple, easy to see, and effective.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
I can see that NYT could have an online front-page that shows me kinds of stories I am interested in. Still they need not be fake news, like lot of Facebook posts are about(?). Just makes sense. If they're not working towards that I don't know why. Adapt NYT to the possibilities of per customer customization

amoorthy 6y ago

This is the best part of Ben's article: > I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet…the New York Times doesn’t have the truth, but then again, neither do I, and neither does Amazon. This is the key insight in news today. You cannot rely on any one source for the full story. You must read multiple perspectives, ideally from different points in the political spectrum. My father, and likely others who grew up pre-internet, knew this intuitively and always read multiple papers. We should do the same and stop expecting our favourite source to be the final word on a story.

citizenkeen 6y ago
I remember my father used to listen to Dr. Laura every day on his commute. My father is every bit a Massachusetts progressive. He used to arrange his schedule to make sure he could hear things like Dr. Farrakhan's speech at the Million Man March. He'd read the Wall Street Journal and get frustrated. I once asked why, and he said "It's important to know what other people think, even if they're wrong. Because every once in a while, you're the one who's wrong."
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  And at least you can be right about what other people think, you can be right about how other people are wrong
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  > He'd read the Wall Street Journal and get frustrated. I'm frustrated with the WSJ too. What used to be a conservative but respected publication has over the years turned to little more than pop news and sensationalism.
toyg 6y ago
I was taught this by my dad and my schoolteachers too. Up until the ‘90s, in Italy you knew in advance whose editorial perspective you were getting from any given newspaper or tv bulletin; so it was deemed necessary to survey a plurality of them to figure out the most likely scenario for any given piece of news. In the end, though, only the most politically engaged would actually do that, and typically in order to know “what the enemy thinks” for tactical reasons. Nowadays it’s all a bit murky - traditional big-money owners are not interested in paying for a dying media, and political parties are chronically broke and often short-lived, so even the biggest properties can quickly change hands from chancer to chancer.

Booktrope 6y ago

A shallow, one-sided take on what happened to the news business. I mean, here's a guy who quotes himself (!) saying, "I’d go further: I think we as a society are in a far stronger place when it comes to knowing the truth than we have ever been previously, and that is thanks to the Internet" As his example of this, he appears to the New York Times as his exemplar of a company that's been relatively successful online. Relative to newspapers that have basically failed that is. Comparted to Breitbart, Fox News, and other non-fact based journalism, relatively, well, less successful. Google is in a sense an aggregator but according to algorithms that it's careful to keep secret. Its main financial goal in doing this is to maximize ad revenue it can extract from the feed, and Google is more successful in that regard than any of the sources of the news it aggregates. Leaving other concerns aside, this does drain ever more revenue out of the business of creating news, since advertisers now choose between buying ads from the aggegator or ads from the source, and no, Google's work hasn't doubled marketing budgets of advertisers. Facebook controls what people see -- it doesn't aggregate, it segregates. You see what Facebook has determined you want to see, and usually they're right (It would be much better for us as a community if they were wrong much more often and showed everyone things they don't want to see.) Facebook financial goal in choosing what to put in user feeds is maximizing ad revenue for Facebook. This has further drained ad revenue away from sources of content. The piece claims, hey, the internet was making it harder on news sources before the ascendency of Facebook and Google, though as late as the 1990's newspapers were still a very profitable business. Yeah, Craig's List grabbed a huge share of the classified ad business which traditionally was a major part of newspaper revenue, and newspapers stupidly failed to mount any significant effort to get that revenue back. But Google and Facebook have vastly more effective methods of siphoning off revenue as they've dominated market share and therefore become indispensable for all news outlets. It not only starves news sources of revenue but favors sources that tell people what they want to hear in a way that excites the audience. In other words, the current sorry state of our political world.

derefr 6y ago
> It would be much better for us as a community if they were wrong much more often and showed everyone things they don't want to see. Tangent to this, "Tumblr is the best social media site of 2021": https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/639134013230088192/i-love-tumblr-i-love-that-tumblr-is-the-best https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/639134013230088192/i-l...

app4soft 6y ago

> This Bill establishes a mandatory code of conduct to help... The Future would be restricted just by more CoCs.

closeparen 6y ago

Ignorance of the business side is not childish or haphazard. Editorial independence - that the news should not be influenced by business concerns - is as important to journalists as "do no harm" is to doctors. Separation between newsroom and ad business staff is maintained intentionally as a matter of ethics. It is the same sort of animal as the separation between proprietary trading and advisory services at a bank. The "Chinese wall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall

mchusma 6y ago
"do no harm" is a horrible moral framework. It led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands this last year, where we routinely and repeatedly do things that are expected to cause more harm because we haven't first proven "no harm". Examples include banning the many safe and effective vaccines, prioritizing 2nd doses over first doses, and prioritizing people who have had COVID equally to those who have not.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  That may be the case, but it may be not. Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map? Could be puzzling.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    > Have you compared the sites where Astra-Zeneca played fast and loose with its vaccine experiments, and the occurence of the more contagious mutations after on a map? Correlation does not imply causation. Vaccine makers prefer to test in regions with high infection activity because statistically significant results can be obtained faster. And mutations are more likely to occur in regions with high infection activity because mutations are a numbers game. Most likely we're just seeing two effects with the same root cause, without those two effects being causally linked.
    - 6y ago