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This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They

This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India alone. Your "whatabboutism" based on Substack, a tool that few outside the US bubble even know or care about, is really missing the mark here. I've lost count on how many massively complex investigations I've helped journalists work on to expose everything from war crimes to Trump's finances. Sometimes dozens of people working on it at a time, multiple countries, a few different news outlets, skills ranging from investigation to IT, with centuries of experience between everyone involved, over months or years. No way in hell a glorified blog is going to replace that.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.
- smoe 6y ago
  It is not the journalists that are dying, but the system that supported their work. Journalism takes a lot of resources. If you starve it of it, you kill it's integrity and end up with a least effort / highest impact product. Firing the fact checkers, because in "digital" you can fix stuff after publishing; reduce correspondents networks because you can now just copy stuff from some random person on Twitter that is supposedly there; offer people money to send in pictures of events so you don't have to pay a photographer/agency; maximizing reuse of content; hire journalists based on their klout score to increase reach; racing which outlet is the first to send the push notification and follow up story after an event, etc. Independent journalists on blogs or Youtube, no matter how well their intentions, can not easily replace it. You don't have a legal department backing you up for critical stories; extensive network of sources and experts; you can't work extended periods of time on a single story because the algorithm overlords demand high frequency short form content. So they often end up doing not much more than summarizing what others have written. Which is valuable, but it is not where the heavy lifting is done. I do hope, new, better forms of journalism evolve from it, but I'm a bit skeptical, given that so far it seems, that to be successful monetarily, the key ingredients are being loud, controversial and highly opinionated.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I agree with most of this. “Journalists (of integrity) are dying out” is a simplification. To your point, the whole of journalism is changing—as you mention, fact checkers are being fired and so on, but to my point, newsrooms are hiring and promoting the journalists (and editors, etc) who show a penchant for sensationalism and/or partisanship because that’s the new business model. And the journalists with integrity are increasingly relegated toward obscurity (although of course there are exceptions who prove the rule). That’s the sense in which I meant “journalists with integrity/bravery are a dying breed”. I also agree that Substack isn’t going to reinvent the Walter Cronkite era of journalism overnight if ever. Replacing sickly institutions (which evolved over many centuries) is hard, especially when those institutions’ illness is derived at least in part from the same cultural pathogens that the new platform is likewise subject to. On the other hand, it feels necessary to at least try something different than the mainstream toxicity. I doubt Substack will be the answer, but I think it could either be a first step toward a new media landscape or perhaps the threat that causes the established media to shape up.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kodah 6y ago
> whatabboutism First, Substack isn't even mentioned, but I'll assume the author removed it, which likely means it wasn't core to their argument and you missed the forest for the trees. Second, whatabboutism implies a certain level of intent to derail a conversation in my eyes, it's not about simply saying "what about". One of the problems I've noticed with modern discourse is that everybody has this narrative in their mind that the "others" are here in bad faith and have some box of psychological trickery at their disposal. In this way, maybe it's more expedient to people to attack the presenter instead of the idea, but it's impact on discourse is palpable.
zarkov99 6y ago
Policeman, fireman, soldiers, all get killed doing what they do. Your average journalist, trolling for outrage porn on Twitter is not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence. The fact that Substack is a threat to "journalism" and the defensiveness of your post is another indicator it indeed is, should give you a clue as to how badly the journalistic class has fallen. Their best people, the ones that have any integrity and independence are leaving in troves to places like substack, despite the lack of resources you correctly point out. All that will be left in a few years are a bunch of middle-aged, navel gazing pseudo-activists, writing for each other, all wallowing on their own special brand of poison.

throwaway894345 6y ago

> This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.

smoe 6y ago
It is not the journalists that are dying, but the system that supported their work. Journalism takes a lot of resources. If you starve it of it, you kill it's integrity and end up with a least effort / highest impact product. Firing the fact checkers, because in "digital" you can fix stuff after publishing; reduce correspondents networks because you can now just copy stuff from some random person on Twitter that is supposedly there; offer people money to send in pictures of events so you don't have to pay a photographer/agency; maximizing reuse of content; hire journalists based on their klout score to increase reach; racing which outlet is the first to send the push notification and follow up story after an event, etc. Independent journalists on blogs or Youtube, no matter how well their intentions, can not easily replace it. You don't have a legal department backing you up for critical stories; extensive network of sources and experts; you can't work extended periods of time on a single story because the algorithm overlords demand high frequency short form content. So they often end up doing not much more than summarizing what others have written. Which is valuable, but it is not where the heavy lifting is done. I do hope, new, better forms of journalism evolve from it, but I'm a bit skeptical, given that so far it seems, that to be successful monetarily, the key ingredients are being loud, controversial and highly opinionated.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I agree with most of this. “Journalists (of integrity) are dying out” is a simplification. To your point, the whole of journalism is changing—as you mention, fact checkers are being fired and so on, but to my point, newsrooms are hiring and promoting the journalists (and editors, etc) who show a penchant for sensationalism and/or partisanship because that’s the new business model. And the journalists with integrity are increasingly relegated toward obscurity (although of course there are exceptions who prove the rule). That’s the sense in which I meant “journalists with integrity/bravery are a dying breed”. I also agree that Substack isn’t going to reinvent the Walter Cronkite era of journalism overnight if ever. Replacing sickly institutions (which evolved over many centuries) is hard, especially when those institutions’ illness is derived at least in part from the same cultural pathogens that the new platform is likewise subject to. On the other hand, it feels necessary to at least try something different than the mainstream toxicity. I doubt Substack will be the answer, but I think it could either be a first step toward a new media landscape or perhaps the threat that causes the established media to shape up.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

kodah 6y ago

> whatabboutism First, Substack isn't even mentioned, but I'll assume the author removed it, which likely means it wasn't core to their argument and you missed the forest for the trees. Second, whatabboutism implies a certain level of intent to derail a conversation in my eyes, it's not about simply saying "what about". One of the problems I've noticed with modern discourse is that everybody has this narrative in their mind that the "others" are here in bad faith and have some box of psychological trickery at their disposal. In this way, maybe it's more expedient to people to attack the presenter instead of the idea, but it's impact on discourse is palpable.

zarkov99 6y ago

Policeman, fireman, soldiers, all get killed doing what they do. Your average journalist, trolling for outrage porn on Twitter is not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence. The fact that Substack is a threat to "journalism" and the defensiveness of your post is another indicator it indeed is, should give you a clue as to how badly the journalistic class has fallen. Their best people, the ones that have any integrity and independence are leaving in troves to places like substack, despite the lack of resources you correctly point out. All that will be left in a few years are a bunch of middle-aged, navel gazing pseudo-activists, writing for each other, all wallowing on their own special brand of poison.