5 ms·

Thanks for this. Buzzfeed News was amazing real journalism at its finest. It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Even high

Thanks for this. Buzzfeed News was amazing real journalism at its finest. It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Even highly paid humans like HN developers refuse to pay for journalism so… …what we’re left with is entertainment such as Fox News and the others.

misnome 4y ago
> It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Isn't it a more accurate description to say that this goes to show that if you dilute your fact-finding journalism brand with clickbait nonsense, then people will ignore all of it?
briandear 4y ago
“At its finest?” The Steele Dossier was “good” journalism? It was partisan hackery. https://www.thewrap.com/buzzfeed-finally-updates-story-that-claimed-trump-directed-michael-cohen-to-lie-to-congress/amp/ https://www.thewrap.com/buzzfeed-finally-updates-story-that-...
- throwaway202303 4y ago
  They mean main stream media voice of the elite reporting at its finest
  - JakeAl 4y ago
    I think you mean Elitists, not Elite.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Curious what news organization you can think of that doesn't have a single miss. Bloomberg had "The Big Hack", the New York Post had the Hunter Biden emails, the New York Times basically invented a crime wave, etc.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- philippejara 4y ago
  at its finest being very good doesn't mean that at it's worse shit didn't come out of it.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Even highly paid humans like HN developers refuse to pay for journalism Non sequitur. People didn’t realise Buzzfeed News was fact-finding journalism because Buzzfeed proper was everything but. Plenty of people on HN pay for news, as evidenced by the constant complaining about paywalls.
- rc_mob 4y ago
  Propublica is doing such good work, I'm glad to send them a monthly donation
  - astrange 4y ago
    ProPublica reporting is economically illiterate and has convinced everyone in NYC that landlords are somehow making money by buying apartments and not renting them out.
  - deckard1 4y ago
    People that don't know what BuzzFeed News is definitely do not know what ProPublica is. This thread is rather shocking to me.
    - ar_lan 4y ago
      I'd be curious on data for this - if that's actually true, or just your perception. Not wanting "BuzzFeed" to be someone's source of journalism is not the same thing as that person not wanting to consume high-quality journalism/news. That said, I could understand the argument that if someone is generally well-read in this world, they would definitely know BuzzFeed News was, for the most part, a separate entity. I can only speak for myself - I'm fairly happy with my mix of Propublica, The Economist, USA Today, and NYT, but I've also not really analyzed that mix much since 2019, and I definitely don't read everything all the time (it's too much to consume).
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Huh? I'm very familiar with ProPublica, but didn't know that Buzzfeed News was a legit journalistic organization. I just thought it was, you know, Buzzfeed's take on news.
bee_rider 4y ago
I think the most “negative toward the general populace” take I can get behind here is that our heuristic for “respectable journalistic institutions” is based too much on name-brands. I mean people could have skimmed BuzzFeed News and realized they were not BuzzFeed lists or whatever, and that’s a point against us all, but it isn’t that surprising. It doesn’t really indicate that we don’t want serious journalism, just that we’re not really willing to give every service the benefit of the doubt.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  From the general public's point of view, the entire point of a brand is that it can be used to quickly understand the quality of the product.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    True, but Buzfeed News was at least trying to do journalism for a couple years. At some point I’d expect a really engaged public to update their expectations.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      But "Buzzfeed" as a brand has always meant schlock, and their main effort never changed from that. Applying the "Buzzfeed" brand to the news signals that the news is also schlock. If you didn't like Buzzfeed's primary work, why would you even look once at Buzzfeed News? I certainly never did.
ar_lan 4y ago
I don't know how you came out of my comment with this response. What I'm saying is there is already plenty of better (or just-as-good, or near-good) sources of journalism. I did not even know BuzzFeed News was separate from BuzzFeed, so why would I waste my time even looking into them when: * There are already decent news outlets * My only perception of BuzzFeed is that their quality is extremely sub-par, which is by their own doing. In the competition for my attention, I'd rather lose out on a possible diamond in the rough that is BuzzFeed News, then subject myself to the far likelier possibility that BuzzFeed News was really just more "BuzzFeed". In this edge case, that filter is wrong, but ask yourself - if Fox News came out with a new source that was of Pulitzer-worthy quality and was honestly unbiased, would you still give it the time of day? I still wouldn't, because the chances it adds something of value higher than my current level of journalism consumption is much lower then the chances that this magical "Fox News" offshoot is actually something decent.
- jollofricepeas 4y ago
  You may be hoping for something that does not exist. Maybe just maybe Buzzfeed did both because in the end it’s the only way that journalism has been able to survive. In the end you entertain and inform because to inform only means to go out of business. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer “In the 1890s the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime and graphic horrors. The wide appeal reached a million copies a day and opened the way to mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue (rather than cover price or political party subsidies) and appealed to readers with multiple forms of news, gossip, entertainment and advertising. Pulitzer's name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes established in 1917 as a result of his endowment to Columbia University. The prizes are given annually to recognize and reward excellence in American journalism, photography, literature, history, poetry, music, and drama. Pulitzer founded the Columbia School of Journalism by his philanthropic bequest; it opened in 1912.”
input_sh 4y ago
There's no money in investigative journalism. Good stories take months (sometimes years), so you need hundreds of good journalists to make good stories in a high enough frequency that people would even consider paying for a subscription. You're either chasing public grants (and people always question your impartiality), or you die. You can count on one hand the ones that have been in this game for longer than a decade and even then you'll have fingers to spare. Today we lost a great one. Disclaimer: I work for OCCRP.org which I would (subjectively) put in the same basket. No Pulitzer yet, but we got a Nobel Peace Prize nomination this year!
- p3rls 4y ago
  Let's not kid ourselves, for every decent journalist in these organizations there's five useless ones who are primarily employed to remind us non-physicists of Murray Gell-Man
  - kritiko 4y ago
    To the extent that publications like The Atlantic have declined, I think it's because clickbait works, or at least it seems to if you're dependent on the online ads business model, so legacy publications have chosen to become more like Buzzfeed.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Anyone can nominate anyone for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- andrepd 4y ago
  >There's no money in investigative journalism. Maybe not everything in life ought to be ruled by The Market.
  - CutieConstable 4y ago
    [dead]
runnerup 4y ago
ProPublica
kyleblarson 4y ago
I would venture to guess that a lot of HN readers pay for news from the various journalists on platforms like Substack.
JohnFen 4y ago
> It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. I don't think it shows that at all. What it shows is that if you take something good and slap a brand on it that people associate with crap, people will think your good thing is crap and avoid it, too.

misnome 4y ago

> It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Isn't it a more accurate description to say that this goes to show that if you dilute your fact-finding journalism brand with clickbait nonsense, then people will ignore all of it?

briandear 4y ago

“At its finest?” The Steele Dossier was “good” journalism? It was partisan hackery. https://www.thewrap.com/buzzfeed-finally-updates-story-that-claimed-trump-directed-michael-cohen-to-lie-to-congress/amp/ https://www.thewrap.com/buzzfeed-finally-updates-story-that-...

throwaway202303 4y ago
They mean main stream media voice of the elite reporting at its finest
- JakeAl 4y ago
  I think you mean Elitists, not Elite.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
Curious what news organization you can think of that doesn't have a single miss. Bloomberg had "The Big Hack", the New York Post had the Hunter Biden emails, the New York Times basically invented a crime wave, etc.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
philippejara 4y ago
at its finest being very good doesn't mean that at it's worse shit didn't come out of it.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. Even highly paid humans like HN developers refuse to pay for journalism Non sequitur. People didn’t realise Buzzfeed News was fact-finding journalism because Buzzfeed proper was everything but. Plenty of people on HN pay for news, as evidenced by the constant complaining about paywalls.

rc_mob 4y ago
Propublica is doing such good work, I'm glad to send them a monthly donation
- astrange 4y ago
  ProPublica reporting is economically illiterate and has convinced everyone in NYC that landlords are somehow making money by buying apartments and not renting them out.
- deckard1 4y ago
  People that don't know what BuzzFeed News is definitely do not know what ProPublica is. This thread is rather shocking to me.
  - ar_lan 4y ago
    I'd be curious on data for this - if that's actually true, or just your perception. Not wanting "BuzzFeed" to be someone's source of journalism is not the same thing as that person not wanting to consume high-quality journalism/news. That said, I could understand the argument that if someone is generally well-read in this world, they would definitely know BuzzFeed News was, for the most part, a separate entity. I can only speak for myself - I'm fairly happy with my mix of Propublica, The Economist, USA Today, and NYT, but I've also not really analyzed that mix much since 2019, and I definitely don't read everything all the time (it's too much to consume).
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Huh? I'm very familiar with ProPublica, but didn't know that Buzzfeed News was a legit journalistic organization. I just thought it was, you know, Buzzfeed's take on news.

bee_rider 4y ago

I think the most “negative toward the general populace” take I can get behind here is that our heuristic for “respectable journalistic institutions” is based too much on name-brands. I mean people could have skimmed BuzzFeed News and realized they were not BuzzFeed lists or whatever, and that’s a point against us all, but it isn’t that surprising. It doesn’t really indicate that we don’t want serious journalism, just that we’re not really willing to give every service the benefit of the doubt.

JohnFen 4y ago
From the general public's point of view, the entire point of a brand is that it can be used to quickly understand the quality of the product.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  True, but Buzfeed News was at least trying to do journalism for a couple years. At some point I’d expect a really engaged public to update their expectations.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    But "Buzzfeed" as a brand has always meant schlock, and their main effort never changed from that. Applying the "Buzzfeed" brand to the news signals that the news is also schlock. If you didn't like Buzzfeed's primary work, why would you even look once at Buzzfeed News? I certainly never did.

ar_lan 4y ago

I don't know how you came out of my comment with this response. What I'm saying is there is already plenty of better (or just-as-good, or near-good) sources of journalism. I did not even know BuzzFeed News was separate from BuzzFeed, so why would I waste my time even looking into them when: * There are already decent news outlets * My only perception of BuzzFeed is that their quality is extremely sub-par, which is by their own doing. In the competition for my attention, I'd rather lose out on a possible diamond in the rough that is BuzzFeed News, then subject myself to the far likelier possibility that BuzzFeed News was really just more "BuzzFeed". In this edge case, that filter is wrong, but ask yourself - if Fox News came out with a new source that was of Pulitzer-worthy quality and was honestly unbiased, would you still give it the time of day? I still wouldn't, because the chances it adds something of value higher than my current level of journalism consumption is much lower then the chances that this magical "Fox News" offshoot is actually something decent.

jollofricepeas 4y ago
You may be hoping for something that does not exist. Maybe just maybe Buzzfeed did both because in the end it’s the only way that journalism has been able to survive. In the end you entertain and inform because to inform only means to go out of business. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer “In the 1890s the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime and graphic horrors. The wide appeal reached a million copies a day and opened the way to mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue (rather than cover price or political party subsidies) and appealed to readers with multiple forms of news, gossip, entertainment and advertising. Pulitzer's name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes established in 1917 as a result of his endowment to Columbia University. The prizes are given annually to recognize and reward excellence in American journalism, photography, literature, history, poetry, music, and drama. Pulitzer founded the Columbia School of Journalism by his philanthropic bequest; it opened in 1912.”

input_sh 4y ago

There's no money in investigative journalism. Good stories take months (sometimes years), so you need hundreds of good journalists to make good stories in a high enough frequency that people would even consider paying for a subscription. You're either chasing public grants (and people always question your impartiality), or you die. You can count on one hand the ones that have been in this game for longer than a decade and even then you'll have fingers to spare. Today we lost a great one. Disclaimer: I work for OCCRP.org which I would (subjectively) put in the same basket. No Pulitzer yet, but we got a Nobel Peace Prize nomination this year!

p3rls 4y ago
Let's not kid ourselves, for every decent journalist in these organizations there's five useless ones who are primarily employed to remind us non-physicists of Murray Gell-Man
- kritiko 4y ago
  To the extent that publications like The Atlantic have declined, I think it's because clickbait works, or at least it seems to if you're dependent on the online ads business model, so legacy publications have chosen to become more like Buzzfeed.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Anyone can nominate anyone for a Nobel Peace Prize.
andrepd 4y ago
>There's no money in investigative journalism. Maybe not everything in life ought to be ruled by The Market.
- CutieConstable 4y ago
  [dead]

runnerup 4y ago

ProPublica

kyleblarson 4y ago

I would venture to guess that a lot of HN readers pay for news from the various journalists on platforms like Substack.

JohnFen 4y ago

> It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism. I don't think it shows that at all. What it shows is that if you take something good and slap a brand on it that people associate with crap, people will think your good thing is crap and avoid it, too.