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I wonder if there's a viable market for a news outlet which has as its distinguishing core principle the guarantee that it will never use any material from pres
by ChainOfFools 4y ago
I wonder if there's a viable market for a news outlet which has as its distinguishing core principle the guarantee that it will never use any material from press releases (or equivalently unsolicited, self-interested messaging) as unqualified sources, except for narrow cases when no other source was available. And in such cases it is accompanied by an unambiguous indication (really unambiguous, like a different color font for any portions of the article text directly and solely derived from such sources) that the information presented therein should be trusted on the same level as motivated hearsay from a single source, because that's what it is.
But of course this would be expensive to operate, difficult to insulate from corruption and compromise, and unlikely to be popular with advertisers, whose objectives constitute the epitome of conflicted interest with such an outlet's stated core principle.
- brookst 4y agoI don't think that model is compatible with news, where one of the value props is being fast. As you shade over from news to analysis, there are outlets like that. The Economist comes to mind; I don't think I've ever felt that their content was written from press releases. But it's also at least a day, usually a week, later than the actual news. There's probably a project management style triangle here: fast, accurate, and, um. Some third thing. Pick two.