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If journalists littered their work with citations, they argue, it would disrupt the narrative and alienate the audience. That's a very 20th-century take. There
by causi 4y ago
If journalists littered their work with citations, they argue, it would disrupt the narrative and alienate the audience.
That's a very 20th-century take. There's no reason why any article couldn't have a little "show version with citations" button tucked away somewhere.
- vehemenz 4y agoHonestly, you don't even need that much. There are plenty of other citing styles that are non-obtrusive, including those that use footnotes and/or hyperlinks.
- causi 4y agoSure, which is the version I'd probably read all the time. I'm just saying you can worship at the altar of the pageview and offer citations at the same time with no downside, aside from less ability to bullshit the reader.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoYep the human brain is amazing at ignoring these, I never had a problem with it reading anything that I've read in the past and it helps if you wanna go into further depth later when you want more info/context.
- leononame 4y agoIt's a lot of work. That alone is reason enough for a lot of newspapers. But I also kind of agree. While truth and sources are important and I would like newspapers to list sources and citations more often, the narrative is an important element. The author of the original article mentions that a publication they read would not be intelligible without citation because you lose the context. I don't think just switching citations on and off is a viable form of marrying good narrative and academic standards.
- causi 4y agoIt's a lot of work. How so? When I was writing papers in college I'd read my sources, bang out the text, then for every citable claim I'd ctrl+F my sources and cite them. For a journalist who's presumably taking notes while writing an article it should be even faster. This only seems hard if you're writing articles based purely on vibes and not information.
- corrral 4y agoCitation always felt like the most onerous part of writing papers in high school. I hated it. It seemed to take forever. Even with auto-formatters. The culprit was MLA. Chicago-style (which I was allowed to use in most college classes) or just a very-casual "here's the link" are easy. Fucking MLA. No idea why it's what they teach in secondary school. It blows, well-developed alternatives exist, and it's not even anywhere near being some kind of universal, preferred citation style in all of academia.
- causi 4y agoI couldn't agree more. I'm sure kids today have browser extensions that can streamline the process.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThey have full time fact checkers on staff. The work is already being done.
- SllX 4y agoThe narrative is the thing most in need of scrutiny no matter what news you’re reading, if you are reading for the supposed informational value. Paper and ink are not the constraints they once were and news sites clearly have bandwidth to spare given all the crap they try to force the majority of their readers to download to read one article. Hyperlinks are a core function of the web and for the New York Times, the web is their primary medium now.
- uncomputation 4y agoWhy not just links? I feel like the full potential of hyperlinking is still not realized. To be able to integrate the source/referent of a statement in the same usage of that statement without any additional words is truly new in written history and still we write like “you can find the source here: big_link”. Someday I wanna write up a manual for writing with hyperlinks in mind.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoI think classical numbering is fine, no need to inject author's name or the article anywhere else. A link to the bottom of the article to approximately the location of the source is plenty sufficient.
- bragr 4y agoNews sites are reluctant to add outlinks because it drives pageviews and engagement away from their site. They'd much rather you click on a link to another one of their pages.
- gaws 4y ago> There's no reason why any article couldn't have a little "show version with citations" button tucked away somewhere. The Times' piece was a magazine-style narrative, not a historical white paper. A mile-long bibliography at the end of the story is unnecessary for a package made for a normal audience.