As much as journalists like to point to their high standards for fact checking, journalistic integrity, and off-the-record handling, I’m always surprised that t

As much as journalists like to point to their high standards for fact checking, journalistic integrity, and off-the-record handling, I’m always surprised that the practices in this article remain so mainstream. Even basic links to original studies or reporting sources would make a world of difference. I’ve noticed that a lot of Substack authors have embraced these same practices but to a less subtle extreme. In fact, a lot of the Substacks I’ve tried to get into read like they’re just reporting on what actual journalists are reporting on. One particularly popular Substack among engineers frequently just parrots good reporting from The Information (a paywalled source), even including large excerpts from The Information in between summaries of the rest of the article. It feels like I’m just reading The Information but through someone else’s eyes, as shared on their Substack in pursuit of more subscribers. Generally speaking, I find that I get the best information when I stop reading summary articles and move up a step to the information source. When I read an article summarizing a scientific paper and then read the actual paper, there is almost always some major discrepancy between what the paper authors claim and what the journalist claims.