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Yes, but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists. Local journalism pays rates that make teachers look like kings, and local journ

Yes, but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists. Local journalism pays rates that make teachers look like kings, and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work a week. It's a job that requires passion, because there are far more of them who are making under minimum wage at an hourly rate than there are who are making six figures.

pessimizer 5y ago
Yes, but there are barely any of this type of journalist anymore, and barely any outlets for them to be published in. What there are are a lot of connected people who went from elite schools to exclusive unpaid internships, jobs in prestige nonprofit PR departments, and consulting firms, then to national outlets at very high salaries. Their coworkers are ex-politicians and campaign flacks, and people who worked at massive hedge funds and investment banks, who decided that they preferred punditry and socializing to their jobs. The people you're talking about are bloggers/substack people now, and are generally denigrated by mainstream outlets.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Oh, you mean other than about 90% of journalists in America. I worked around multiple newsrooms. It's clear that you have not. There is a very big world outside of the corner of the internet that you live in. And it still exists despite the internet trying to kill it off. Most "hometown" papers still exist. Go find some of them. Read them. What you'll see is that most of them are staffed by about 5-6 people, a few freelancers, and then a bunch of bylines that are simply the name of the paper, because they don't want you to realize how short-staffed they are (these are also written by those same journalists and editors). That's the reality of the modern newsroom for the VAST majority of news outlets in the US.
tomnipotent 5y ago
> but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other profession. There's nothing special about clergy or journalists or doctors because they chose the career they did. > and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the distribution of hours of journalists looks very similar to most professionals.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like any day.
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    I've done startups for 25 years which has included publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law firm.
    - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
      Oh, "startups" you say? So no actual newsroom experience. Well, when I want to know what it's like to fuck around with Wordpress, I'll ask for your input. Bullshit indeed.
      - tomnipotent 5y ago
        Only a Top 100 internet property with billions of monthly impressions and hundreds of writers, but yeah sure no experience.
        MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        That's both adorable and utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand. I've worked in a newsroom. You've heard of one. It's like you're intellectually flagellating yourself with your own brand of self-importance at this point.
        tomnipotent 5y ago
        > you're intellectually flagellating yourself There's nothing special about newsroom journalists. Like somehow they're the only people on the planet with deadlines, or that everyone is waking their editor up at 3am with that important story that just needs to make morning print.
inreverse 5y ago
Do you have any (including speculative) ideas that could explain why our news is so bad, given that most journalists are passionate about their work?
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  I don't think that our news is "so bad." I think it's written by human beings who have a limited subset of knowledge, many times because sources aren't forthcoming or verified, and that if we ever held developers to the same standard that we held journalists, that it'd be nigh-impossible to hire any of them.
- jollybean 5y ago
  Because digging up facts is very expensive, and not necessarily engaging to the public. Ontario Public Broadcasting has this show 'The Agenda' with 'Steve Paikin' where he brings in mid-level and behind-the-scenes people from the bureaucracy people and they talk about granular issues of civic reform in great detail. If you want to inform yourself on the nitty-gritty details of the new 'Subway Expansion' and why it's over budget, it's all right there. But it's incredibly boring , and there's very little viewership. Donald Trump put it really well when he said he would be 'great for news ratings'. It was rubbish, and a lot of people tuned in, it brought in a lot of money. Add in the economics brought on by the Internet and we have a real problem.

pessimizer 5y ago

Yes, but there are barely any of this type of journalist anymore, and barely any outlets for them to be published in. What there are are a lot of connected people who went from elite schools to exclusive unpaid internships, jobs in prestige nonprofit PR departments, and consulting firms, then to national outlets at very high salaries. Their coworkers are ex-politicians and campaign flacks, and people who worked at massive hedge funds and investment banks, who decided that they preferred punditry and socializing to their jobs. The people you're talking about are bloggers/substack people now, and are generally denigrated by mainstream outlets.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Oh, you mean other than about 90% of journalists in America. I worked around multiple newsrooms. It's clear that you have not. There is a very big world outside of the corner of the internet that you live in. And it still exists despite the internet trying to kill it off. Most "hometown" papers still exist. Go find some of them. Read them. What you'll see is that most of them are staffed by about 5-6 people, a few freelancers, and then a bunch of bylines that are simply the name of the paper, because they don't want you to realize how short-staffed they are (these are also written by those same journalists and editors). That's the reality of the modern newsroom for the VAST majority of news outlets in the US.

tomnipotent 5y ago

> but journalists are usually journalist because they WANT to be journalists So do accountants. And actuaries. And doctors. And programmers. And artists. And pretty much most every other profession. There's nothing special about clergy or journalists or doctors because they chose the career they did. > and local journalists routinely put in 60-80 hours of work This is just more romanticism. I'd wager that the distribution of hours of journalists looks very similar to most professionals.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
Yeah, I'll put my 13 years of working around newsrooms and with journalists against your fantasy of what they're like any day.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  I've done startups for 25 years which has included publishing, there's nothing special about the hours of journalists. Every profession thinks that they put in more work and hours than others. Ask anyone at a law firm.
  - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
    Oh, "startups" you say? So no actual newsroom experience. Well, when I want to know what it's like to fuck around with Wordpress, I'll ask for your input. Bullshit indeed.
    - tomnipotent 5y ago
      Only a Top 100 internet property with billions of monthly impressions and hundreds of writers, but yeah sure no experience.
      - MisterBastahrd 5y ago
        That's both adorable and utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand. I've worked in a newsroom. You've heard of one. It's like you're intellectually flagellating yourself with your own brand of self-importance at this point.
        tomnipotent 5y ago
        > you're intellectually flagellating yourself There's nothing special about newsroom journalists. Like somehow they're the only people on the planet with deadlines, or that everyone is waking their editor up at 3am with that important story that just needs to make morning print.

inreverse 5y ago

Do you have any (including speculative) ideas that could explain why our news is so bad, given that most journalists are passionate about their work?

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I don't think that our news is "so bad." I think it's written by human beings who have a limited subset of knowledge, many times because sources aren't forthcoming or verified, and that if we ever held developers to the same standard that we held journalists, that it'd be nigh-impossible to hire any of them.
jollybean 5y ago
Because digging up facts is very expensive, and not necessarily engaging to the public. Ontario Public Broadcasting has this show 'The Agenda' with 'Steve Paikin' where he brings in mid-level and behind-the-scenes people from the bureaucracy people and they talk about granular issues of civic reform in great detail. If you want to inform yourself on the nitty-gritty details of the new 'Subway Expansion' and why it's over budget, it's all right there. But it's incredibly boring , and there's very little viewership. Donald Trump put it really well when he said he would be 'great for news ratings'. It was rubbish, and a lot of people tuned in, it brought in a lot of money. Add in the economics brought on by the Internet and we have a real problem.