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Your argument doesn’t apply. Carmakers supplanted horses: that’s their objective. Consider the societal positive externalities that commercial news journalism h

Your argument doesn’t apply. Carmakers supplanted horses: that’s their objective. Consider the societal positive externalities that commercial news journalism has in society (yeah, I’d rather we had non-commercial news journalism too, but Google isn’t non-profit either). Google and Facebook aren’t supplanting journalism - they benefit from it: while responsible citizens like you and me may prefer to read a news article rather than skim the headline or article preview and post a take on our timelines - I can assure you the majority of the “news”-consuming public definitely prefers the latter. Yes, I’m fully aware AUS’ draft laws were Establishment (read: Murdoch) scummy bollocks, but we need to come to a reckoning of the need for a self-sufficient journalistic estate. For all the clickbait that Buzzfeed posts - they use the profits from that to fund real legitimate investigative reporting - that certainly isn’t cheap to run - and only profitable if it results in some politician getting fired. I’m arguing that it’s sucks that idealistic reporters and fact-finders have to sell shit (and shit is the word) to the public to support the good they do. I don’t think bowing, unquestionably, to the altar of the free-market is in any of our long-term interests. There’s a reason I still pay my UK TV License fee despite being non-resident: quality-journalism is worth tenfold what we pay for it (well, that, and so I don’t feel guilty when I torrent new episodes of QI...)

concordDance 6y ago
> Consider the societal positive externalities that commercial news journalism has in society Maybe I'm biased by the past ten years, but from where I'm sitting commercial news "journalism" has been mostly negative externalities, corrupting democracies in all sorts of ways while misinforming the public about many other things (the news stories I have personal knowledge of have all been grossly misleading).
UncleMeat 6y ago
If journalism is important, maybe the winning strategy is to have it be funded by taxpayers who have some control over what journalism exists. Because I wouldn't exactly call Murdoch's empire "good journalism" and that is where the "river of gold" would flow towards in this case. "Journalism used to be funded by ads, ads are now being spent on Google/Facebook, therefore Google/Facebook must fund journalism" is bogus, IMO.
curryst 6y ago
I was going to post a similar reply, but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure that we're going to get the old sense of journalism back. I'm not sure what the future is, but I don't think it will look like the past. > Google and Facebook aren’t supplanting journalism - they benefit from it: while responsible citizens like you and me may prefer to read a news article rather than skim the headline or article preview and post a take on our timelines - I can assure you the majority of the “news”-consuming public definitely prefers the latter. Google and Facebook are, for the reason you point out at the end: people only read the headlines. You never actually leave Facebook or Google. Facebook and Google are your source of news. We've just accepted that "news" translates to "headlines republished on Google or Facebook". We're having an existential crisis in journalism because Google and Facebook are supplanting the news. More than all of that, though, is that I don't think people actually care about the news anymore, or the news of old anymore. There's not enough demand for balanced investigative journalism anymore. People are pretty happy with the status quo of grassroots efforts and extremely hyperbolic reporting (on both sides, it's not a partisan effort). I strongly suspect that if I asked 100 people to pick their favorite newspaper or news program and then asked them how they decided, I would get 0 responses that say "because I looked into it and they have the shortest record of inaccurate reporting". Or maybe I'm just getting jaded as I get older. Journalism is going to have to fundamentally change. We can legislate revenue to these organizations, but that's not going to force people to read them. Which is the root issue in many ways; people aren't reading them. The Fourth Estate is still dead if they exist but nobody pays attention. We need a new way to keep people informed. Something that can pull people's attention like clickbait, but with a better quality of information. Perhaps if we can figure out a way to film news events in VR, that will have enough novelty to bring people back for a while. News about rocket strikes in Syria would be a lot more attention-grabbing if the news could make you appear to actually be in the street when the rocket strikes. Although I guess then we have to deal with the fallout of that; not to be a luddite but I have to wonder how close we can get to actually putting people in violent situations before it starts having similar effects to actually having been there.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Retric 6y ago
I strongly disagree as I personally flat out avoid the news. It’s simply not relevant that some school shooting happened somewhere yesterday or some pundits got upset over latest issue. As far as the general public is concerned newspapers etc where and are simply another form of entertainment. As such, cat videos are just as much competition as whatever a famous person did yesterday. Becoming informed the week before an election is one thing, getting sucked in a year+ from an election is a waste. Now direct sources like the National Weather Service and CDC are useful. However, channel X news isn’t funding that, tax payers are. PS: I suspect many will have a strong options that I am wrong, but please post an objective justification for your viewpoint.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Punditry isn't news. It's editorializing. As for shootings or other things that are news, they are critical for a functioning democracy. What's happening around you should be informing your decisions come election day.
  - pb7 6y ago
    > What's happening around you should be informing your decisions come election day. Should it? Isn't that how we got into this mess where every single publication and topic is politicized? There's no chance this isn't why public trust in media is dropping aggressively.
    - hobs 6y ago
      Your proposed alternate is to ignore information to vote, which seem obviously worse?
      - Retric 6y ago
        Personally, no. You can easily look up actual crime statistics for example and become informed, watching the news doesn’t make you actually informed about anything particularly relevant. Put another way, the news cycle is a thin slice of time and news organizations filter things based on what’s important to them in the moment. A mass shooting for example might only make the news because it happened to follow some other even larger mass shooting.
brokenkebab 6y ago
>societal positive externalities This argument walks on a very thin ice. In imaginary world journalists are accurate, and trurhful, and therefore societally positive, and should be exempted from normal market. In real empirically observed world journalists produce more inaccurate, and biased information then anything else. Also, it seems to be built around logical fallacy that we get news because of media, and if these poor guys will not get more coins we will be left uninformed. In fact, they are serving naturally existing demand (we are social animals) as any usual business does. With the internet competition increased, and this leads smaller profits, and some journalists being laid off. Which is ok. Neither of this creates any real societal dangers in a way which media biz tries to present it.
- bosswipe 6y ago
  > In real empirically observed world journalists produce more inaccurate, and biased information then anything else. That is just not true. If I go to google news right now the top story is Tiger Woods was in a crash. How is that inaccurate or biased? You're on Hacker News right now because you get some value out of the work of journalists. The exaggerated ideological attack on "the media" is what is inaccurate and biased.
  - brokenkebab 6y ago
    Sorry, you cannot take one example to prove me wrong as I didn't make claims about all reporting. Btw, you cannot be sure it's accurate unless it's your field - you may like to google for Knoll's law. I worked in media-related project, and have very clear understanding how things constantly getting warped for clickbaiteness, and to fit main audience tastes. >The ideological exagerated attack You're projecting here. I mentioned no ideological labels, and made no distinction on that grounds. I wrote about business incentives essentially. I'm also not sure if my view that media industry is not exceptional among other industries constitute an "attack" in any reasonable meaning of the word.
    - bosswipe 6y ago
      Weird, I've always heard it called Gell Mann amnesia, not Knoll's law. Anyway, I think it's bullshit. I'm in tech and read tech news and most of the stuff I've read where I had personal experience has been accurate. Journalists generally are just people trying to do their jobs within the constraints they are given. The attacks on the media are ideologically driven by people that want to impose their view of the world on everyone else and don't want journalists ruining that.

concordDance 6y ago

> Consider the societal positive externalities that commercial news journalism has in society Maybe I'm biased by the past ten years, but from where I'm sitting commercial news "journalism" has been mostly negative externalities, corrupting democracies in all sorts of ways while misinforming the public about many other things (the news stories I have personal knowledge of have all been grossly misleading).

UncleMeat 6y ago

If journalism is important, maybe the winning strategy is to have it be funded by taxpayers who have some control over what journalism exists. Because I wouldn't exactly call Murdoch's empire "good journalism" and that is where the "river of gold" would flow towards in this case. "Journalism used to be funded by ads, ads are now being spent on Google/Facebook, therefore Google/Facebook must fund journalism" is bogus, IMO.

curryst 6y ago

I was going to post a similar reply, but the more I think about it, the more I'm not sure that we're going to get the old sense of journalism back. I'm not sure what the future is, but I don't think it will look like the past. > Google and Facebook aren’t supplanting journalism - they benefit from it: while responsible citizens like you and me may prefer to read a news article rather than skim the headline or article preview and post a take on our timelines - I can assure you the majority of the “news”-consuming public definitely prefers the latter. Google and Facebook are, for the reason you point out at the end: people only read the headlines. You never actually leave Facebook or Google. Facebook and Google are your source of news. We've just accepted that "news" translates to "headlines republished on Google or Facebook". We're having an existential crisis in journalism because Google and Facebook are supplanting the news. More than all of that, though, is that I don't think people actually care about the news anymore, or the news of old anymore. There's not enough demand for balanced investigative journalism anymore. People are pretty happy with the status quo of grassroots efforts and extremely hyperbolic reporting (on both sides, it's not a partisan effort). I strongly suspect that if I asked 100 people to pick their favorite newspaper or news program and then asked them how they decided, I would get 0 responses that say "because I looked into it and they have the shortest record of inaccurate reporting". Or maybe I'm just getting jaded as I get older. Journalism is going to have to fundamentally change. We can legislate revenue to these organizations, but that's not going to force people to read them. Which is the root issue in many ways; people aren't reading them. The Fourth Estate is still dead if they exist but nobody pays attention. We need a new way to keep people informed. Something that can pull people's attention like clickbait, but with a better quality of information. Perhaps if we can figure out a way to film news events in VR, that will have enough novelty to bring people back for a while. News about rocket strikes in Syria would be a lot more attention-grabbing if the news could make you appear to actually be in the street when the rocket strikes. Although I guess then we have to deal with the fallout of that; not to be a luddite but I have to wonder how close we can get to actually putting people in violent situations before it starts having similar effects to actually having been there.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Retric 6y ago

I strongly disagree as I personally flat out avoid the news. It’s simply not relevant that some school shooting happened somewhere yesterday or some pundits got upset over latest issue. As far as the general public is concerned newspapers etc where and are simply another form of entertainment. As such, cat videos are just as much competition as whatever a famous person did yesterday. Becoming informed the week before an election is one thing, getting sucked in a year+ from an election is a waste. Now direct sources like the National Weather Service and CDC are useful. However, channel X news isn’t funding that, tax payers are. PS: I suspect many will have a strong options that I am wrong, but please post an objective justification for your viewpoint.

alistairSH 6y ago
Punditry isn't news. It's editorializing. As for shootings or other things that are news, they are critical for a functioning democracy. What's happening around you should be informing your decisions come election day.
- pb7 6y ago
  > What's happening around you should be informing your decisions come election day. Should it? Isn't that how we got into this mess where every single publication and topic is politicized? There's no chance this isn't why public trust in media is dropping aggressively.
  - hobs 6y ago
    Your proposed alternate is to ignore information to vote, which seem obviously worse?
    - Retric 6y ago
      Personally, no. You can easily look up actual crime statistics for example and become informed, watching the news doesn’t make you actually informed about anything particularly relevant. Put another way, the news cycle is a thin slice of time and news organizations filter things based on what’s important to them in the moment. A mass shooting for example might only make the news because it happened to follow some other even larger mass shooting.

brokenkebab 6y ago

>societal positive externalities This argument walks on a very thin ice. In imaginary world journalists are accurate, and trurhful, and therefore societally positive, and should be exempted from normal market. In real empirically observed world journalists produce more inaccurate, and biased information then anything else. Also, it seems to be built around logical fallacy that we get news because of media, and if these poor guys will not get more coins we will be left uninformed. In fact, they are serving naturally existing demand (we are social animals) as any usual business does. With the internet competition increased, and this leads smaller profits, and some journalists being laid off. Which is ok. Neither of this creates any real societal dangers in a way which media biz tries to present it.

bosswipe 6y ago
> In real empirically observed world journalists produce more inaccurate, and biased information then anything else. That is just not true. If I go to google news right now the top story is Tiger Woods was in a crash. How is that inaccurate or biased? You're on Hacker News right now because you get some value out of the work of journalists. The exaggerated ideological attack on "the media" is what is inaccurate and biased.
- brokenkebab 6y ago
  Sorry, you cannot take one example to prove me wrong as I didn't make claims about all reporting. Btw, you cannot be sure it's accurate unless it's your field - you may like to google for Knoll's law. I worked in media-related project, and have very clear understanding how things constantly getting warped for clickbaiteness, and to fit main audience tastes. >The ideological exagerated attack You're projecting here. I mentioned no ideological labels, and made no distinction on that grounds. I wrote about business incentives essentially. I'm also not sure if my view that media industry is not exceptional among other industries constitute an "attack" in any reasonable meaning of the word.
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    Weird, I've always heard it called Gell Mann amnesia, not Knoll's law. Anyway, I think it's bullshit. I'm in tech and read tech news and most of the stuff I've read where I had personal experience has been accurate. Journalists generally are just people trying to do their jobs within the constraints they are given. The attacks on the media are ideologically driven by people that want to impose their view of the world on everyone else and don't want journalists ruining that.