4 ms·

What is the "londondaily" website? Never heard of them.

samizdis 5y ago
Good question - and one to which I tried to find answers, having posted the link to the CNN article. To explain my "journey" earlier today, I followed a link from an article [1] in The Atlantic (which I read almost daily and which I rate highly) to a piece [2] in this "London Daily" site. It was irreverent commentary in a largely humorous vein. I decided to poke around the LD site, which has, apparently, been around since 1999 - although I had never come across it, and I read a lot. I saw the CNN viewing figures article and was surprised not to have seen it anywhere else. It surprised me to find what should be a news article carrying an intro that read like commentary/opinion. I posted the link to HN and then returned to LD to try to figure out what it was. It claims to be: a non-profit, private and self-funded, commonly-created News and info-sharing platform that enables everybody to share valuable content such as local and global news updates. The news is written by different contributors, all of them volunteers. I then went to its full "about" section [3], which includes these statements: > London Daily is not supported by anybody, and it is not supporting any specific agenda. The mission is simply to share with all readers the big picture about every topic with as much balance as possible, without any vested political or commercial interest, for the common benefit of all, regardless of their economic status, political points of view, beliefs, and personal preferences. > Users who wants to share their own content on London Daily are welcome to include with it advertising for their own benefit – for free and without any profit sharing with London Daily . > ... we are also not Wikileaks, The Intercept, Telegram, etc... This platform and infrastructure is not designed to deal with super-sensitive or unlawful classified information nor to protect the privacy of the users that submit content. I've worked in news media for many years and had never come across anything like this "about" section before. I noticed that no items published have a proper dateline - so nothing in the archive (which seems to be reachable only via hash-style text links) carries a publication date, only the current date. This more than anything raised huge red flags, so I then picked a dozen or so articles at random to get a feel for the style/tone and political leanings of LD. It seems to be all over the place in all respects. Some nicely written work, some articles seemingly rewritten from news outlets such as Reuters, AP and other agencies etc. I moved from a stridently pro-vaccination article to another that seemingly took a polar opposite view (this second one was specifically dealing with COVID vaccination, not vaccines in general, which the first one had been). I pondered posting an "Ask HN" query to solicit HN views/opinions about this London Daily site, which has me baffled. (Again, I'd posted the CNN article mainly on the strength of having found London Daily via a direct link from The Atlantic - which, to me, lends credibility.) However, I had to go out for a few hours and didn't get around to an "Ask HN" post. Hindsight tells me that I should probably have deleted the original post to the CNN article. All that being said, I really would love to find out what this London Daily News thing is all about. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-read-trump-book/620452/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-read-t... [2] https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-descrip... [3] https://londondaily.com/ouwczz-about https://londondaily.com/ouwczz-about

Good question - and one to which I tried to find answers, having posted the link to the CNN article. To explain my "journey" earlier today, I followed a link from an article [1] in The Atlantic (which I read almost daily and which I rate highly) to a piece [2] in this "London Daily" site. It was irreverent commentary in a largely humorous vein. I decided to poke around the LD site, which has, apparently, been around since 1999 - although I had never come across it, and I read a lot. I saw the CNN viewing figures article and was surprised not to have seen it anywhere else. It surprised me to find what should be a news article carrying an intro that read like commentary/opinion. I posted the link to HN and then returned to LD to try to figure out what it was. It claims to be: a non-profit, private and self-funded, commonly-created News and info-sharing platform that enables everybody to share valuable content such as local and global news updates. The news is written by different contributors, all of them volunteers. I then went to its full "about" section [3], which includes these statements: > London Daily is not supported by anybody, and it is not supporting any specific agenda. The mission is simply to share with all readers the big picture about every topic with as much balance as possible, without any vested political or commercial interest, for the common benefit of all, regardless of their economic status, political points of view, beliefs, and personal preferences. > Users who wants to share their own content on London Daily are welcome to include with it advertising for their own benefit – for free and without any profit sharing with London Daily . > ... we are also not Wikileaks, The Intercept, Telegram, etc... This platform and infrastructure is not designed to deal with super-sensitive or unlawful classified information nor to protect the privacy of the users that submit content. I've worked in news media for many years and had never come across anything like this "about" section before. I noticed that no items published have a proper dateline - so nothing in the archive (which seems to be reachable only via hash-style text links) carries a publication date, only the current date. This more than anything raised huge red flags, so I then picked a dozen or so articles at random to get a feel for the style/tone and political leanings of LD. It seems to be all over the place in all respects. Some nicely written work, some articles seemingly rewritten from news outlets such as Reuters, AP and other agencies etc. I moved from a stridently pro-vaccination article to another that seemingly took a polar opposite view (this second one was specifically dealing with COVID vaccination, not vaccines in general, which the first one had been). I pondered posting an "Ask HN" query to solicit HN views/opinions about this London Daily site, which has me baffled. (Again, I'd posted the CNN article mainly on the strength of having found London Daily via a direct link from The Atlantic - which, to me, lends credibility.) However, I had to go out for a few hours and didn't get around to an "Ask HN" post. Hindsight tells me that I should probably have deleted the original post to the CNN article. All that being said, I really would love to find out what this London Daily News thing is all about. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-read-trump-book/620452/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/how-read-t... [2] https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-description-of-trump-i-ve-read https://londondaily.com/british-writer-pens-the-best-descrip... [3] https://londondaily.com/ouwczz-about https://londondaily.com/ouwczz-about