6 ms·

This is what happens when you spend decades demonizing journalism. Instead of giving us insightful articles, the New York times is competing against Facebook an

This is what happens when you spend decades demonizing journalism. Instead of giving us insightful articles, the New York times is competing against Facebook and Twitter to grab your attention immediately. I have a feeling most people don't read an entire New York times article, the entire point is just to create headlines you can share on Facebook or Twitter, keep those clicks and kpis flowing! In a way this is fantastic, we shouldn't have two or three newspaper owners running almost all media under the vestedge of prestige.

reedjosh 6y ago
I think you have to go non-ad funded for real journalism. I like https://substack.com/ https://substack.com/, but there are plenty of other like sources available.
mc32 6y ago
Wonder if one wrote articles that contradict themselves (conclusion contradicts the initial thesis) how many people would have read to the end to discover that the end invalidates the initial idea.
zozin 6y ago
Not exactly sure what you mean by "decades demonizing journalism"? Who is doing the demonizing? Decades? Paper journalism's death has been exacerbated by the Internet, but it was dying long before the WWW was a thing. Radio, cinema, and television all played a role in killing off paper journalism. At the height of their popularity newspapers weren't just a method of conveying cold hard facts, they were a form of entertainment. It's not surprising that the least visually engaging medium is dying off when there are dozens of other more visually, and in turn emotionally engaging mediums, competing for eyeballs.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  This theory doesn't work because the decline has nothing to do with print. Look at where cable news is now -- it's somehow, seemingly impossibly, even worse than the NYT. It's as if CNN and MSNBC looked at Fox News and reacted with a jealously-based compulsion to outmatch their pathology.
underseacables 6y ago
I want news to return to the local level. Local news I am willing to pay for, because the information, and thus confidence in it, is closer to home and more identifiable. Reminds me of a book by John Grisham{1} about a young journalist who buys a small southern newspaper, and turns it around by focusing on actual news. {1}. The Last Juror
- function_seven 6y ago
  I don't think you're willing to pay what it would actually cost. Not calling you a liar, just noting that a truly local news source, operating at the level that they did 20 years ago, would cost so much more today. The revenue for a local paper used to come primarily from advertising that doesn't exist anymore. Movie theater listings, classified ads, auto dealership sections. The Real Estate "section". Each of those have been picked off by apps and websites. Craigslist, IMDB, Redfin/Zillow, etc. And it's a spiral. With each reduction in circulation, the attractiveness for advertisers drops. Any attempt to make up the shortfall with higher subscription rates just accelerates the downfall. So we get conglomerates that try to manage costs by being "local" in name only. They can't afford to employ reporters in every town with 75,000 residents. You instead get local papers that are just a reskin of a common wire feed. A few easy articles that could be GPT'd from the police blotter. Maybe a blogger or two.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I live in a fairly small town (7,000 people). A long time ago now, we had a sort of labor of love local paper that ended up shutting down. (The publisher fell ill.) The only remaining paper option was a "local" from one of the conglomerates. Pretty lousy overall and it mostly covered what was going on in a local small city and some bigger towns. Wouldn't have been worth subscribing to. Facebook and NextDoor is about the best I can do although even those aren't very active.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    This is ignoring the traditional economics though. Newspapers would charge for a subscription and sell advertising. The subscription fee would essentially just pay for printing and distribution of the physical newspaper, and then advertising provided the margin. Now advertising is in the dumps but the internet has removed the capital and operating costs of a printing press and physically delivering dead tree pages to doorsteps. Traditional newspaper subscriptions were something like $10/month. If you have 50,000 local subscribers and negligible printing costs, that's $6,000,000/year. You can fit a full staff of journalists into that budget. Or you can go it alone, charge the same $10/month and be making $120,000/year with 1000 subscribers.
kyle_martin1 6y ago
I agree. Centralized media equals a controlled narrative. Gone are the days of investigating prestige and bi-partisan reporting. Maybe it never really existing though... It's clear that the majority of reporters lean center to far left politically. When it comes to topics that will make their "side" look bad, there's usually a lack of intellectual curiosity for the truth. This happens on both sides, of course, but the frequency and instances are much greater on the left-leaning reporting. There's daily examples of where political narratives override digging in the truth. Project Veritas covers a lot examples of this: https://www.projectveritas.com/search/videos/?query=new%20york%20times&page=1 https://www.projectveritas.com/search/videos/?query=new%20yo... No matter what you believe in, the publisher should be honest about their viewpoint instead of pretending they are not biased. Ben Shapiro is a good example of this. You know who he is and he clearly lays out the framework of evaluation. If you know where someone is coming from, you can then properly evaluate their points at a rational level rather than an emotional level.
- cuillevel3 6y ago
  Wikipedia says Project Veritas is a far right activists group, you could have honestly mentioned that.
  - Grim-444 6y ago
    They're a far right activist group according to the leftists who write that definition, yes. It's all so tiring, it's straight out of 1984. Isn't it interesting that you'll never once ever read the phrase "far left activist group"? Why does it only go one way?
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      > Isn't it interesting that you'll never once ever read the phrase "far left activist group"? Why does it only go one way? I hear that phrase a lot, but then I'm probably more sensitive to that.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
BitwiseFool 6y ago
'Demonizing journalism' and having to adapt content in the wake of Facebook and Twitter are two separate things. Mainstream journalism has been maligned for centuries (muckraking, yellow journalism, etc) and it seems to me that the main driver changing journalism today is the social media landscape. I just don't see the connection between demonizing newspapers and the change in how they write.
konjin 6y ago
Who exactly forced the NYT to support the Bush administrations preposterous claims about WMD? If journalists want to be lionized instead of demonized they should perhaps stand up to power, and not only when their friends don't like the people in power. News is dying because they whored themselves out decades ago. Facebook and google are excuses for the final stages of the decline, but they weren't there in the 90s when quality started to slide and papers were being bought out.
symlinkk 6y ago
Or maybe they should just adapt to the times? Just get to the point, don’t write thousand word articles just because that’s tradition?
asdff 6y ago
What is most jarring is reading about a given topic in a paper like NYT. You will start to have all sorts of deja vu before you realize that they sometimes self plagiarize entire paragraphs to fill in the meat of these articles. Then it becomes apparent the entire piece was written by someone stressed out who must have had 10 minutes to put it out.

reedjosh 6y ago

I think you have to go non-ad funded for real journalism. I like https://substack.com/ https://substack.com/, but there are plenty of other like sources available.

mc32 6y ago

Wonder if one wrote articles that contradict themselves (conclusion contradicts the initial thesis) how many people would have read to the end to discover that the end invalidates the initial idea.

zozin 6y ago

Not exactly sure what you mean by "decades demonizing journalism"? Who is doing the demonizing? Decades? Paper journalism's death has been exacerbated by the Internet, but it was dying long before the WWW was a thing. Radio, cinema, and television all played a role in killing off paper journalism. At the height of their popularity newspapers weren't just a method of conveying cold hard facts, they were a form of entertainment. It's not surprising that the least visually engaging medium is dying off when there are dozens of other more visually, and in turn emotionally engaging mediums, competing for eyeballs.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
This theory doesn't work because the decline has nothing to do with print. Look at where cable news is now -- it's somehow, seemingly impossibly, even worse than the NYT. It's as if CNN and MSNBC looked at Fox News and reacted with a jealously-based compulsion to outmatch their pathology.

underseacables 6y ago

I want news to return to the local level. Local news I am willing to pay for, because the information, and thus confidence in it, is closer to home and more identifiable. Reminds me of a book by John Grisham{1} about a young journalist who buys a small southern newspaper, and turns it around by focusing on actual news. {1}. The Last Juror

function_seven 6y ago
I don't think you're willing to pay what it would actually cost. Not calling you a liar, just noting that a truly local news source, operating at the level that they did 20 years ago, would cost so much more today. The revenue for a local paper used to come primarily from advertising that doesn't exist anymore. Movie theater listings, classified ads, auto dealership sections. The Real Estate "section". Each of those have been picked off by apps and websites. Craigslist, IMDB, Redfin/Zillow, etc. And it's a spiral. With each reduction in circulation, the attractiveness for advertisers drops. Any attempt to make up the shortfall with higher subscription rates just accelerates the downfall. So we get conglomerates that try to manage costs by being "local" in name only. They can't afford to employ reporters in every town with 75,000 residents. You instead get local papers that are just a reskin of a common wire feed. A few easy articles that could be GPT'd from the police blotter. Maybe a blogger or two.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I live in a fairly small town (7,000 people). A long time ago now, we had a sort of labor of love local paper that ended up shutting down. (The publisher fell ill.) The only remaining paper option was a "local" from one of the conglomerates. Pretty lousy overall and it mostly covered what was going on in a local small city and some bigger towns. Wouldn't have been worth subscribing to. Facebook and NextDoor is about the best I can do although even those aren't very active.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  This is ignoring the traditional economics though. Newspapers would charge for a subscription and sell advertising. The subscription fee would essentially just pay for printing and distribution of the physical newspaper, and then advertising provided the margin. Now advertising is in the dumps but the internet has removed the capital and operating costs of a printing press and physically delivering dead tree pages to doorsteps. Traditional newspaper subscriptions were something like $10/month. If you have 50,000 local subscribers and negligible printing costs, that's $6,000,000/year. You can fit a full staff of journalists into that budget. Or you can go it alone, charge the same $10/month and be making $120,000/year with 1000 subscribers.

kyle_martin1 6y ago

I agree. Centralized media equals a controlled narrative. Gone are the days of investigating prestige and bi-partisan reporting. Maybe it never really existing though... It's clear that the majority of reporters lean center to far left politically. When it comes to topics that will make their "side" look bad, there's usually a lack of intellectual curiosity for the truth. This happens on both sides, of course, but the frequency and instances are much greater on the left-leaning reporting. There's daily examples of where political narratives override digging in the truth. Project Veritas covers a lot examples of this: https://www.projectveritas.com/search/videos/?query=new%20york%20times&page=1 https://www.projectveritas.com/search/videos/?query=new%20yo... No matter what you believe in, the publisher should be honest about their viewpoint instead of pretending they are not biased. Ben Shapiro is a good example of this. You know who he is and he clearly lays out the framework of evaluation. If you know where someone is coming from, you can then properly evaluate their points at a rational level rather than an emotional level.

cuillevel3 6y ago
Wikipedia says Project Veritas is a far right activists group, you could have honestly mentioned that.
- Grim-444 6y ago
  They're a far right activist group according to the leftists who write that definition, yes. It's all so tiring, it's straight out of 1984. Isn't it interesting that you'll never once ever read the phrase "far left activist group"? Why does it only go one way?
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    > Isn't it interesting that you'll never once ever read the phrase "far left activist group"? Why does it only go one way? I hear that phrase a lot, but then I'm probably more sensitive to that.
- alisonkisk 6y ago

BitwiseFool 6y ago

'Demonizing journalism' and having to adapt content in the wake of Facebook and Twitter are two separate things. Mainstream journalism has been maligned for centuries (muckraking, yellow journalism, etc) and it seems to me that the main driver changing journalism today is the social media landscape. I just don't see the connection between demonizing newspapers and the change in how they write.

konjin 6y ago

Who exactly forced the NYT to support the Bush administrations preposterous claims about WMD? If journalists want to be lionized instead of demonized they should perhaps stand up to power, and not only when their friends don't like the people in power. News is dying because they whored themselves out decades ago. Facebook and google are excuses for the final stages of the decline, but they weren't there in the 90s when quality started to slide and papers were being bought out.

symlinkk 6y ago

Or maybe they should just adapt to the times? Just get to the point, don’t write thousand word articles just because that’s tradition?

asdff 6y ago

What is most jarring is reading about a given topic in a paper like NYT. You will start to have all sorts of deja vu before you realize that they sometimes self plagiarize entire paragraphs to fill in the meat of these articles. Then it becomes apparent the entire piece was written by someone stressed out who must have had 10 minutes to put it out.