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How can we fix that? Many of my family members and friends have little to no interest in reading or learning, although they do have strong opinions on just abou

How can we fix that? Many of my family members and friends have little to no interest in reading or learning, although they do have strong opinions on just about every topic. In my mind, demand for journalism and quality journalism is going to be difficult when folks don’t want or don’t care to read. They have enough things trying to grab their attention that provide an instant gratification — whereas journalism or reading some well researched or written article requires mental effort and investment and almost an appreciation. I personally didn’t appreciate good journalism or writers until I tried writing (mostly technical documents). I learned two things quickly. Not only did I need to know the subject matter but I needed to convey it in some form that made sense, didn’t just lead to unrelated questions that derail what I’m trying to achieve, and didn’t put the reader to sleep. This is a hard problem, in my opinion.

ghaff 5y ago
>How can we fix that? There are a great many people who would like to know the answer to that question but, for the most part, almost no one has. (Almost because there are a few global brands, especially those that provide financial reporting, that are doing OK but most aren't. There are a lot of reasons, not least of all that the Internet broke the newspaper bundle that forced people advertising in the classifieds for roommates or the local car dealership advertising a sale to effectively subsidize the paper's prestige foreign bureaus and investigative journalism because where else were they going to advertise? Plus, you don't need a subscription to SI any longer to keep up with whatever is going on in the world of sports.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"How can we fix that? ... demand for journalism and quality journalism is going to be difficult when folks don’t want or don’t care to read." The education system needs to be radically reformed to teach kids to value reading, knowledge, and learning for its own sake and not just to pass tests and get in to schools that will get them high paying jobs. Critical reading and thinking skills also need to be taught more effectively. Unfortunately, such reform is difficult to undertake in a society which mostly doesn't value any of that, and when politicians consider critical thinking among their voters to be detrimental to their own interests.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  I agree. Its not in decision makers interest to fix education. It's a lot of work and elections won't wait for you to finish. A crap education might even be politically expedient - and I'm sure politicians have been campaigning to fix it for over 5 decades at this point.
- tryonenow 5y ago
  The presumption that the average person is interested in learning, or can be taught to be interested in learning, especially regarding difficult subjects like science and math, is completely false. The average person is fundamentally incompetent and lazy, and that's the danger of excessively optimistic and unrealistically empowering western culture - you end up with an army of ignoramuses who drastically overestimate their knowledge and abilities, and simultaneously as a consequence become less able to recognize competence or it's value in, for example, politicians or authority figures. I think this is one of the major accelerants in the decay of western society, at least in the US.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
I think the point of maximum leverage is making it easier to support good journalism via tools that don't have a corruptible middleman. It's impossible to support truly independent journalists via platforms like Patreon when those platforms are in bed with institutions like Vice, anyone who is truly independent and covering dangerous stories is subject to being memory-holed. But the desire to directly support real journalism is there, I think it just needs a robust payment system which is also robust to corruption in its own organization.

ghaff 5y ago

>How can we fix that? There are a great many people who would like to know the answer to that question but, for the most part, almost no one has. (Almost because there are a few global brands, especially those that provide financial reporting, that are doing OK but most aren't. There are a lot of reasons, not least of all that the Internet broke the newspaper bundle that forced people advertising in the classifieds for roommates or the local car dealership advertising a sale to effectively subsidize the paper's prestige foreign bureaus and investigative journalism because where else were they going to advertise? Plus, you don't need a subscription to SI any longer to keep up with whatever is going on in the world of sports.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"How can we fix that? ... demand for journalism and quality journalism is going to be difficult when folks don’t want or don’t care to read." The education system needs to be radically reformed to teach kids to value reading, knowledge, and learning for its own sake and not just to pass tests and get in to schools that will get them high paying jobs. Critical reading and thinking skills also need to be taught more effectively. Unfortunately, such reform is difficult to undertake in a society which mostly doesn't value any of that, and when politicians consider critical thinking among their voters to be detrimental to their own interests.

vagrantJin 5y ago
I agree. Its not in decision makers interest to fix education. It's a lot of work and elections won't wait for you to finish. A crap education might even be politically expedient - and I'm sure politicians have been campaigning to fix it for over 5 decades at this point.
tryonenow 5y ago
The presumption that the average person is interested in learning, or can be taught to be interested in learning, especially regarding difficult subjects like science and math, is completely false. The average person is fundamentally incompetent and lazy, and that's the danger of excessively optimistic and unrealistically empowering western culture - you end up with an army of ignoramuses who drastically overestimate their knowledge and abilities, and simultaneously as a consequence become less able to recognize competence or it's value in, for example, politicians or authority figures. I think this is one of the major accelerants in the decay of western society, at least in the US.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

I think the point of maximum leverage is making it easier to support good journalism via tools that don't have a corruptible middleman. It's impossible to support truly independent journalists via platforms like Patreon when those platforms are in bed with institutions like Vice, anyone who is truly independent and covering dangerous stories is subject to being memory-holed. But the desire to directly support real journalism is there, I think it just needs a robust payment system which is also robust to corruption in its own organization.