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I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe j

I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in.

my_usernam3 3y ago
My father majored in Journalism, despite having a much more mathematical leaning mind, and small business career. He swears it was the best decision with similar arguments. I'm not 100% convinced it should be the one and only major as he did, but a dual major/minor does sound great.
beepbooptheory 3y ago
Don't we think this probably applies to any of the humanities though? What you described, at least, is the practice of careful, critical research followed by exegesis.
- abathur 3y ago
  I think there's still a difference here with respect to writing styles and audiences. In most humanities specialties you'll be writing for an academic audience (and depending on your focus, potentially one with a very narrow band of shared knowledge/terminology). A lot of what you learn there can get in the way when you need to reach a general/lay audience.
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    Journalism is the same way though. They write highly technical papers for academic audiences. Journalism is just distinct in that there are marginally more jobs you can get where you practice direct skills/techniques around the domains. In the rest you can still get this kind of with teaching!
    - abathur 3y ago
      Sure, but we aren't discussing how everyone should just go teach journalism or the humanities.
- tappederrting 3y ago
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- zogrodea 3y ago
  I think it applies most of the time, but some fields and academics (like Judith Butler to pick a famous example) seem to rejoice in the opposite, complicating your language to make your point more difficult to grasp. So I wouldn't be quick to generalise. Not trying to come across as partisan by bringing up Butler's name. Here is another academic, Talal Asad, making the same point in an entirely different context that the writing style of academia tends towards unnecessary complexity: "For some years I have been exercised by this puzzle. How is it that the approach exemplified by Gellner’s paper remains attractive to so many academics in spite of its being demonstrably faulty? Is it perhaps because they are intimidated by a style? We know, of course, that anthropologists, like other academics, learn not merely to use a scholarly language but to fear it, to admire it, to be captivated by it."
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    I am not sure I quite understand, is the implication here that some disciplines overtly try to stifle understanding by making things harder to grasp? Why would they do that? It's perfectly fine to read Butler and not understand it, in the same way as it would be for another to read a textbook on quantum mechanics. There seems to be a hidden assumption in what you say that holds that the domain/area-of-discourse Judith Butler is working in is one you should be able to understand without difficulty, but you really have no good reason to feel that. It's really not her job to ELI5 to everyone, or at least, its not something her peers or publishers care about. And why should they? Yes, like in STEM, there is false positives, paper's and researchers that rise to the top that maybe shouldn't, but that is different than saying entire disciplines are sustained by bad faith. I can't speak for the Gellner paper, but if you spend some time with it, understand a little about where she is working, Butler is a very rewarding writer that is incredibly influential to many many people. There isn't some conspiracy or shared delusion here. And the fact that she can say things that resonate with so many people in her domain, shows huge evidence of her general abilities around information comprehension, articulation, and communication.
    - zogrodea 3y ago
      I think in retrospect that I was too dismissive and hyperbolic about my comment that some fields seem to enjoy having an unnecessarily complicated style, but I think the characterisation of some academic writing in the humanities having an unnecessarily complex style is ultimately fair. I know from my own time with the humanities that some adopt that kind of style to make themselves seem more profound and out of a desire to impress others because I was one of them (although I'm happy to have comparatively flattened the ego since then). There's obviously a diversity of intentions behind why people would adopt a complex style (although I have no doubt the motivation I had is common) and some would be justified but I don't think it's wrong of me to point out that Butler's style is needlessly complicated as an example. When reading her words in particular, I sometimes find myself rephrasing in my head to make her point more digestible to myself (and I can't help feeling that random archaic English texts like Francis Bacon's Of Simulation and Dissimulation would be more readable to most, despite the outdated and unfamiliar language). That's a sign of needless complexity in my opinion.
cratermoon 3y ago
I majored in journalism. I learned how to write clearly and concisely, and do it on short notice, too. I learned a process for writing, which is something most people don't have. I also learned how to ask good questions, and be skeptical about what organizations and people say when their job or profits depend on it.
- FPGAhacker 3y ago
  Any videos or online courses that you would recommend?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    You learn by doing. Find some online pub (or open source community) that will give you decent editorial support and start writing for them.
  - cratermoon 3y ago
    Journalism is a very large field with a history going back to the 17th century. Your question is roughly analogous to asking to recommend something about computers.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Funny, I quit newspaper club because I couldn't tolerate writing articles in that useless newspaper style: irrelevant fact, lede, quote, counterquote, irrelevant speculation end.
  - abathur 3y ago
    It's just a tool in the toolkit. I dropped my entire comp-sci major when I realized I couldn't bear even the first of two required technical writing courses. It was wringing all of the joy out of something I loved. Later, newswriting was... maybe not quite "fun", but I did enjoy the challenge of remaining creative within the form while keeping a demanding instructor happy. Screenwriting was similar. It's not a form I really ~enjoy writing in, but I think learning to write from that perspective also leaves you with something good for the kit.
theK 3y ago
Not only the truth finding part but also the understanding nuance part. Great journalists excel at identifying important nuance to complex situations and bringing it to light. A very good skill to have as an engineer, especially when moving up the ranks.
elcritch 3y ago
> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". While that's certainly the ideal of journalism, the field routinely falls pretty short on this, IMHO. Sensationalism and clickbait isn't anything new. Just lookup Yellow journalism. Unfortunately nowadays it feels like the truthiness aspect is just conflated with corporate group think. But it's great to see instances like this where a journalist doggedly question those in power.
- callalex 3y ago
  The negative outcomes you describe are fairly independent from the training curriculum in school though. An equivalent would be saying that computer science degrees are worthless because sometimes people become parasites who work in adtech or fintech.
  - unsui 3y ago
    Agreed. Those are all straw men, rather than the the natural consequence of a journalism education.
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      I'd argue that the "evils" of modern journalism are more a consequence of economic failures in their employers than journalist themselves. As came out in the Dominion v Fox News discovery, even the most political journalists are still disgusted by the things they have financial and management pressure to peddle.
      - themitigating 3y ago
        Not disgusted enough to leave their job even though many are wealthy to extremely wealthy. Not disgusted enough to stop supporting Republicans. I can understand someone who works at a newspaper and makes 70k a year so they have to report on sensational stories but Tucker Carlons net worth is $380~ million. The key people at Foxnews were shocked and mad at the outrageous claims but for them the ends justify the means.
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
I wonder if it works in the opposite direction too. If you dual majored biotech and journalism maybe it'd give you a leg up on writing about biotech; you'd know what to look out for and what's BS.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  Yes, but you'd make 3x as much in biotech.
- ghaff 3y ago
  The problem is that you'd probably be a good journalist writing about biotech but journalism is a pretty awful way to pay the bills these days, not that it was ever all that great.
aldebran 3y ago
Interesting! I’ve always thought engineering and Philosophy were good for the same reason. Builds logical reasoning and ability to communicate.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  There's something about the liberal arts and sciences that gives a person skills for life. I wonder if anyone's studied that phenomenon.
samsolomon 3y ago
I'm a product designer and would never have fallen into this career if not for working for my college paper, The Auburn Plainsman. A story—My first semester working on the paper I was at the bottom of the food chain as an associate news editor. So it was my job to sit in Auburn City Council meetings and fill my page with a summary of those meetings. I don't know how many of you have sat in small town council meetings, but all that really happens is they announce what restaurants are granted a liquor licenses and table interesting topic indefinitely. It's boring. On occasion there would be a heated debate about installing a speed bump on some neighborhood street, but usually nothing. I would have an assigned amount of space to fill with city council notes and I never—never—was able to fill it. So I taught myself photoshop and started creating infographics to take up space. I started a weekly gas monitor price fluctuations and would add several other graphics to fill my section. That's how I got into design. EDIT: Also, breaking a story about a kid stealing a Tiger Transit (Drunk Bus) to get home from the bar was a crowning journalistic achievement of mine. https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-stolen-saturday https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-s...
- ru552 3y ago
  I put a lot of thought into how I would respond to your comment, and I'd just like to say Roll Tide.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  I'm a PM, and I spent time as a writer and editor of my high school newspaper that was probably more useful to my career than anything else I did in high school or college. Learning how to ask the right questions, understand people's perspectives and biases and to take a bunch of related information and turn it into a coherent narrative that keeps people engaged are useful skills just about everything and certainly in this job. Did they find out who stole the bus??
  - samsolomon 3y ago
    They never found out who stole it! The bus story became somewhat of an urban legend. And I'm with ya. I learned so much working for the paper. Perhaps one unexpected skill was cold calling. In sales getting over that fear is an enormously important barrier to cross. Once you do it though, it makes a lot of things in life easier. For stories I'd have to call people or go find them, frequently when they screwed up, frequently when they did not want to talk to me. Just like the story above—the transit manager did not want to talk to me, but I spent a day and a half hunting him down. He didn't answer my calls, so I went down to where the buses get dispatched from in the afternoon and asked a driver where to find him. That "Somebody just didn't want to wait" quote came from that interaction. About a year later I started a coupon website. I went door-to-door trying to get local business to buy in. That's probably not something I could have done, if I hadn't worked for the paper first.
roughly 3y ago
I had a colleague who’s degree was in comparative literature - we’d walk out of meetings and the rest of us would be talking about the engineering side of what we’d just heard while he’d go through and enumerate the different things each person had been talking about while using the same words as everyone else. The amount of latent conflicts that dude caught before the rest of us got torched made me really appreciate the value of an art degree.
- benterix 3y ago
  That's very interesting! Would you be able to give an example without being too specific?
  - detourdog 3y ago
    The former guy is pretty simple example. My partner refers to as being a squid, spraying ink and making a get away.
  - roughly 3y ago
    It's been a long time and I don't remember specifics, but - we'd regularly be meeting with people from multiple different departments, and it'd be things like two people talking about testing, where it turns out one is talking about unit tests & CI and the other is talking about user testing, and you can go very far into that conversation using all the same words and meaning very different things.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    A fairly simple one I've seen is "when will this be done?" - stakeholder means to ask when will it be in production; engineer hears "done" as in "my task is done" and answers about when the PR will land.
    - squirtlebonflow 3y ago
      Ideally, merging the PR and having it be in production is a 30-60 minute automated CI process.
robomartin 3y ago
> they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness" Agree with the rest of what you said, except for this. Unless you said "truthiness" in quotes instead of truth (without quotes) to indicate this is a failing. Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants. Their fitness function is guided by such things as their ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for (what do I have to say to keep my job?) or whatever it takes to get clicks. Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. In other words, if someone says "I am a journalist", I will assume they exist to sell lies and ideology, not to uncover the truth at all. This is the only profession that enjoys constitutional protection (in the US). What do they do with that protection? Elevate lies and misinformation to a virtue. Given that our system of education does not produce people who are able to think critically, what you have are masses who believe what is being repeated by these puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions, they are damaging society in ways we have yet to discover. I am certain this is not at all what the authors of the US constitution had in mind when they offered that protection. Perhaps that's along the lines of what you meant when you said "truthiness", which sounds like a way to have a chuckle at the idea of them actually seeking truth at all.
- test098 3y ago
  let's apply that extremely broad comment to another group: computer scientists! > Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants Today's so-called computer scientists are distraction merchants > Their fitness function is guided by such things as their ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for ... or whatever it takes to get clicks Their fitness function is guided by such things as their financial incentives (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for ... or whatever it takes to make money > Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. Computer science has not been equated with technological advancement in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. > In other words, if someone says "I am a journalist", I will assume they exist to sell lies and ideology, not to uncover the truth at all. In other words, if someone says "I am a developer", I will assume they exist to sell user data to the highest bidder, not to engage in any kind of technological pursuit. > Given that our system of education does not produce people who are able to think critically, what you have are masses who believe what is being repeated by these puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions, they are damaging society in ways we have yet to discover. no changes.
Terr_ 3y ago
One might say that debugging is a form of investigative journalism, and vice-versa. Particularly when the error cannot be reproduced/captured on-demand, and you need to develop--and test--a story for how the final state could have been reached.
abathur 3y ago
At a party, a coworker's partner (who is in law enforcement) asked what I thought about how to help people upskill to write better reports and such, and without hesitation I said they should try taking a newswriting class (ideally, IMO, on a condensed schedule as in a summer semester). I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of writing experience and it still had an impact on me. (I double-majored in English + public relations and went on to get an MFA in creative writing. I doubt any 8-week period since elementary school affected my writing as much. It was a great counterweight to the kinds of academic writing styles you tend to pick up in English and philosophy. Caveat: I went into newswriting with a full toolchest; I can't speak to how it would go as a ~beginner.)
- nobody9999 3y ago
  >I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of writing experience and it still had an impact on me. Definitey. And reading good writing is also an excellent way to improve one's communication skills. It doesn't even need to be related to subjects you might be writing about either. Good novels, well written essays/non-fiction books, etc. can provide examples of good writing and, if one continues to read well written stuff, it will likely rub off. That's not a substitute for your suggestion (which is a good one), but another way to improve how one communicates in writing.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    I have never been a reader. I've read maybe one book on purpose in life. Also, I almost never read the posted article. I think reading is bad.
Waterluvian 3y ago
100% agree. All the best engineers I've worked with are decent problem solvers, decent coders, but phenomenal communicators, both written and verbal. I think a correlation to this are people who are good teachers.
- ghaff 3y ago
  One of the most knowledgable security people I know is also consistently rated as one of the best presenters in the company.
ghaff 3y ago
>I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Just working for the college paper isn't a bad alternative. Honestly, at this point, having been involved with several college papers and having done a lot of writing is probably way more valuable than any individual engineering class I've ever taken. (Though I certainly wouldn't dismiss what I learned with my engineering degrees in their totality if not in the specifics.) ADDED: Didn't have a journalism minor per se but there was a lecturer (had been a senior editor at Newsweek, etc.) in undergrad who ran a Friday morning basically seminar where he brought in all sorts of interesting journo-related guests. It wasn't (for obvious reasons) literally limited to people on campus newspapers. But a 9am Friday slot kept most of the riff-raff out :-) (And every now and then someone else would wander in and wonder how everyone else in the room knew each other.)
coldtea 3y ago
>and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness" And yet most practice the exact opposite.
- themitigating 3y ago
  "And yet most practice the exact opposite" And yet you just made a sweeping generalization about journalists without any corroborating information.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    When did people lost the ability to experience empirical reality, and generalize and draw conclusions from it, as opposed to having everything force-fed in the form of some statistic? Finding "corroborating information" should be the province of journalists, scientists, the police, etc. Being able to draw first level conclusions from their empirical experience of reality (and, in this case, their years of exposure to watching media, reading media, reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and evaluated), is table stakes for being a citizen. Without that direct experience and the ability to distill it into a general understand, you're just someone reading statistics and reports, who they can't evaluate or corroborate with any of their experience, might as well be reading for some fictional land.
    - themitigating 3y ago
      You said 80% of blah blah then drcry the use of statistics. You just forced-fed that to everyone When did people lost the ability to experience empirical reality, and generalize and draw conclusions from it No one lost this ability it's just an objectively worse way to come to a conclusion. Making generalizations is bad, it's weird you would openly propose doing it. empirical experience of reality (and, in this case, their years of exposure to watching media, reading media, reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and evaluated) You're simply describing anecdotal evidence which has little value especially if there's alternatives and it's being used to make a conclusion. It's fine to offer up anecdotes but with supportering information. However what the media does and tells you isn't your own personal experiences. Also, watching and observing all media or just your own selected media where people tell you something is the way it is. The issue is a persons limited ability to observe as well as confirmation bias,and memory lead to faulty conclusions. as opposed to having everything force-fed in the form of some statistic? You're claiming statistics have less value than limited personal observations? You also used the phrase "forced-fed" as a manipulation tactic to make people think whatever you mentioned after it is bad. Like if I said "My mom force fed us hamburgers for dinner" instead of "My mom made hamburgers for dinner".
toomim 3y ago
Vitalik Buterin is another famous example. He was a journalist (writing for Bitcoin Magazine) before he started Ethereum. He (or his dad) said that they believed in writing as a way to clarify the mind. It seemed to work for Vitalik.
- btceth 3y ago
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- yunlong0928 3y ago
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- yunlong0928 3y ago
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- nortgatos 3y ago
  Writing is for constructing oneself
- nnoop 3y ago
  hi, great
- nnoop 3y ago
  hi great
jstarfish 3y ago
Journalism is an excellent minor. Criminal justice and psychology are excellent complements. - Journalism will teach you who to ask questions of [to achieve the goal of accountability]. - Criminal justice will teach you what questions to ask [to achieve the goal of conviction/correction]. - Psychology will teach you how to ask questions [to achieve the goal of interrogation]. All interrogation and sales techniques are rooted in exploitation of psychology, but some people just have a natural knack for this. In both, the goal is to groom/break you into giving [something] you are inclined to withhold. Philosophy likely factors in here too but I'm less familiar with that field. People appreciate Ethics about as much as they appreciate someone pulling the fire alarm and yelling racial slurs at evacuees in the parking lot. I've never found much use in naming logical fallacies (IME it's the domain of pseudointellectual internet bullies and pre-law students), but could see it being a way for oneself to reason why you're pursuing something. Self-righteousness substitutes well enough.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Ad-hominem fallacy comes up pretty frequently, as people buy into it a lot. Pointing it out doesn't make someone a bully, usually the other person saying those things in order to convince others is the one being a bully.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    Yes, I study logical fallacies and how to use them. Ad-hominem is a really powerful one.
jvanderbot 3y ago
My wife is a journalist by training and the skill of expression of information at an engaging level for a layman audience has made her a killer marketer, fundraiser, philanthropy officer, and now director of philanthropy. She works for a pretty major international aid org.
specialist 3y ago
> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas... Good to remember next time someone whinges about bad science journalism. Blame the editors, publishers, and owners. The constraints on journalists are ridiculous. While op-eds and columnists are granted soapboxes to blather on.
squirtlebonflow 3y ago
Also, a bio+journalism dual degree is going to be much better at biology journalism than a straight-up bio major.
AmericanChopper 3y ago
Those are important skills, but does a journalism major really teach you that? Nearly all of my daily interactions with journalism involves endless amounts of agenda-driven spin, and consistent use of intentionally divisive and provocative language. Journalists are responsible for some of the least effective communication I see on a daily basis. Perhaps it would be more useful for teaching you how lie all the time, whilst holding on to a few shreds of plausible deniability.
jahsome 3y ago
I think you're spot on. I have a journalism + mass communications bachelor's, but only because I dropped out of the CS program -- too much math. Once I had mouths to feed, I couldn't make it work financially as a journalist, so I started freelance in software and my career has grown from there. The communication skills, and more critically, the understanding of how information is gathered and disseminated in groups (i.e. mass comms) is by far my biggest strength. That foundational understanding has served my career far more than any of the programming classes I took before switching majors.
alistairSH 3y ago
Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in. Absolutely. In the last few years I’ve moved into a role with a lot more interaction with non-engineers. At minimum, being able to politely re-state somebody else’s point in a concise manner is massively useful. Particularly when two people are talking past each other and I’m pretty sure they actually agree.
htss2013 3y ago
>Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in. Yes, and you can probably learn 80% of those skills yourself without having to spend years and a small fortune on a formal degree in journalism.
xarope 3y ago
Yes. I also majored in economics and psychology whilst during my CS undergrad, and having to write a ton of essays and submitting for journals, taught me that communications is a key skill to have.
deafpolygon 3y ago
> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas I don't see how a freshman is 'trained' in this sense. Could it be that good communicators and people who can summarize ideas naturally gravitate towards journalism?
psunavy03 3y ago
I hope to God any decent journalist (if any are left) is looking for the actual truth and not just "truthiness." You do understand that Stephen Colbert coined that term, right? And that he coined it as a deliberate satire of politicians and journalists who had what we'll call an open relationship with the truth?
WalterBright 3y ago
> they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". If they are actually trained in that, there's no evidence of it. Journalists shape their articles to fit their narrative.

my_usernam3 3y ago

My father majored in Journalism, despite having a much more mathematical leaning mind, and small business career. He swears it was the best decision with similar arguments. I'm not 100% convinced it should be the one and only major as he did, but a dual major/minor does sound great.

beepbooptheory 3y ago

Don't we think this probably applies to any of the humanities though? What you described, at least, is the practice of careful, critical research followed by exegesis.

abathur 3y ago
I think there's still a difference here with respect to writing styles and audiences. In most humanities specialties you'll be writing for an academic audience (and depending on your focus, potentially one with a very narrow band of shared knowledge/terminology). A lot of what you learn there can get in the way when you need to reach a general/lay audience.
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  Journalism is the same way though. They write highly technical papers for academic audiences. Journalism is just distinct in that there are marginally more jobs you can get where you practice direct skills/techniques around the domains. In the rest you can still get this kind of with teaching!
  - abathur 3y ago
    Sure, but we aren't discussing how everyone should just go teach journalism or the humanities.
tappederrting 3y ago
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zogrodea 3y ago
I think it applies most of the time, but some fields and academics (like Judith Butler to pick a famous example) seem to rejoice in the opposite, complicating your language to make your point more difficult to grasp. So I wouldn't be quick to generalise. Not trying to come across as partisan by bringing up Butler's name. Here is another academic, Talal Asad, making the same point in an entirely different context that the writing style of academia tends towards unnecessary complexity: "For some years I have been exercised by this puzzle. How is it that the approach exemplified by Gellner’s paper remains attractive to so many academics in spite of its being demonstrably faulty? Is it perhaps because they are intimidated by a style? We know, of course, that anthropologists, like other academics, learn not merely to use a scholarly language but to fear it, to admire it, to be captivated by it."
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  I am not sure I quite understand, is the implication here that some disciplines overtly try to stifle understanding by making things harder to grasp? Why would they do that? It's perfectly fine to read Butler and not understand it, in the same way as it would be for another to read a textbook on quantum mechanics. There seems to be a hidden assumption in what you say that holds that the domain/area-of-discourse Judith Butler is working in is one you should be able to understand without difficulty, but you really have no good reason to feel that. It's really not her job to ELI5 to everyone, or at least, its not something her peers or publishers care about. And why should they? Yes, like in STEM, there is false positives, paper's and researchers that rise to the top that maybe shouldn't, but that is different than saying entire disciplines are sustained by bad faith. I can't speak for the Gellner paper, but if you spend some time with it, understand a little about where she is working, Butler is a very rewarding writer that is incredibly influential to many many people. There isn't some conspiracy or shared delusion here. And the fact that she can say things that resonate with so many people in her domain, shows huge evidence of her general abilities around information comprehension, articulation, and communication.
  - zogrodea 3y ago
    I think in retrospect that I was too dismissive and hyperbolic about my comment that some fields seem to enjoy having an unnecessarily complicated style, but I think the characterisation of some academic writing in the humanities having an unnecessarily complex style is ultimately fair. I know from my own time with the humanities that some adopt that kind of style to make themselves seem more profound and out of a desire to impress others because I was one of them (although I'm happy to have comparatively flattened the ego since then). There's obviously a diversity of intentions behind why people would adopt a complex style (although I have no doubt the motivation I had is common) and some would be justified but I don't think it's wrong of me to point out that Butler's style is needlessly complicated as an example. When reading her words in particular, I sometimes find myself rephrasing in my head to make her point more digestible to myself (and I can't help feeling that random archaic English texts like Francis Bacon's Of Simulation and Dissimulation would be more readable to most, despite the outdated and unfamiliar language). That's a sign of needless complexity in my opinion.

cratermoon 3y ago

I majored in journalism. I learned how to write clearly and concisely, and do it on short notice, too. I learned a process for writing, which is something most people don't have. I also learned how to ask good questions, and be skeptical about what organizations and people say when their job or profits depend on it.

FPGAhacker 3y ago
Any videos or online courses that you would recommend?
- ghaff 3y ago
  You learn by doing. Find some online pub (or open source community) that will give you decent editorial support and start writing for them.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  Journalism is a very large field with a history going back to the 17th century. Your question is roughly analogous to asking to recommend something about computers.
hgsgm 3y ago
Funny, I quit newspaper club because I couldn't tolerate writing articles in that useless newspaper style: irrelevant fact, lede, quote, counterquote, irrelevant speculation end.
- abathur 3y ago
  It's just a tool in the toolkit. I dropped my entire comp-sci major when I realized I couldn't bear even the first of two required technical writing courses. It was wringing all of the joy out of something I loved. Later, newswriting was... maybe not quite "fun", but I did enjoy the challenge of remaining creative within the form while keeping a demanding instructor happy. Screenwriting was similar. It's not a form I really ~enjoy writing in, but I think learning to write from that perspective also leaves you with something good for the kit.

theK 3y ago

Not only the truth finding part but also the understanding nuance part. Great journalists excel at identifying important nuance to complex situations and bringing it to light. A very good skill to have as an engineer, especially when moving up the ranks.

elcritch 3y ago

> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". While that's certainly the ideal of journalism, the field routinely falls pretty short on this, IMHO. Sensationalism and clickbait isn't anything new. Just lookup Yellow journalism. Unfortunately nowadays it feels like the truthiness aspect is just conflated with corporate group think. But it's great to see instances like this where a journalist doggedly question those in power.

callalex 3y ago
The negative outcomes you describe are fairly independent from the training curriculum in school though. An equivalent would be saying that computer science degrees are worthless because sometimes people become parasites who work in adtech or fintech.
- unsui 3y ago
  Agreed. Those are all straw men, rather than the the natural consequence of a journalism education.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    I'd argue that the "evils" of modern journalism are more a consequence of economic failures in their employers than journalist themselves. As came out in the Dominion v Fox News discovery, even the most political journalists are still disgusted by the things they have financial and management pressure to peddle.
    - themitigating 3y ago
      Not disgusted enough to leave their job even though many are wealthy to extremely wealthy. Not disgusted enough to stop supporting Republicans. I can understand someone who works at a newspaper and makes 70k a year so they have to report on sensational stories but Tucker Carlons net worth is $380~ million. The key people at Foxnews were shocked and mad at the outrageous claims but for them the ends justify the means.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago

I wonder if it works in the opposite direction too. If you dual majored biotech and journalism maybe it'd give you a leg up on writing about biotech; you'd know what to look out for and what's BS.

ProjectArcturis 3y ago
Yes, but you'd make 3x as much in biotech.
ghaff 3y ago
The problem is that you'd probably be a good journalist writing about biotech but journalism is a pretty awful way to pay the bills these days, not that it was ever all that great.

aldebran 3y ago

Interesting! I’ve always thought engineering and Philosophy were good for the same reason. Builds logical reasoning and ability to communicate.

hgsgm 3y ago
There's something about the liberal arts and sciences that gives a person skills for life. I wonder if anyone's studied that phenomenon.

samsolomon 3y ago

I'm a product designer and would never have fallen into this career if not for working for my college paper, The Auburn Plainsman. A story—My first semester working on the paper I was at the bottom of the food chain as an associate news editor. So it was my job to sit in Auburn City Council meetings and fill my page with a summary of those meetings. I don't know how many of you have sat in small town council meetings, but all that really happens is they announce what restaurants are granted a liquor licenses and table interesting topic indefinitely. It's boring. On occasion there would be a heated debate about installing a speed bump on some neighborhood street, but usually nothing. I would have an assigned amount of space to fill with city council notes and I never—never—was able to fill it. So I taught myself photoshop and started creating infographics to take up space. I started a weekly gas monitor price fluctuations and would add several other graphics to fill my section. That's how I got into design. EDIT: Also, breaking a story about a kid stealing a Tiger Transit (Drunk Bus) to get home from the bar was a crowning journalistic achievement of mine. https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-stolen-saturday https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-transit-s...

ru552 3y ago
I put a lot of thought into how I would respond to your comment, and I'd just like to say Roll Tide.
idopmstuff 3y ago
I'm a PM, and I spent time as a writer and editor of my high school newspaper that was probably more useful to my career than anything else I did in high school or college. Learning how to ask the right questions, understand people's perspectives and biases and to take a bunch of related information and turn it into a coherent narrative that keeps people engaged are useful skills just about everything and certainly in this job. Did they find out who stole the bus??
- samsolomon 3y ago
  They never found out who stole it! The bus story became somewhat of an urban legend. And I'm with ya. I learned so much working for the paper. Perhaps one unexpected skill was cold calling. In sales getting over that fear is an enormously important barrier to cross. Once you do it though, it makes a lot of things in life easier. For stories I'd have to call people or go find them, frequently when they screwed up, frequently when they did not want to talk to me. Just like the story above—the transit manager did not want to talk to me, but I spent a day and a half hunting him down. He didn't answer my calls, so I went down to where the buses get dispatched from in the afternoon and asked a driver where to find him. That "Somebody just didn't want to wait" quote came from that interaction. About a year later I started a coupon website. I went door-to-door trying to get local business to buy in. That's probably not something I could have done, if I hadn't worked for the paper first.

roughly 3y ago

I had a colleague who’s degree was in comparative literature - we’d walk out of meetings and the rest of us would be talking about the engineering side of what we’d just heard while he’d go through and enumerate the different things each person had been talking about while using the same words as everyone else. The amount of latent conflicts that dude caught before the rest of us got torched made me really appreciate the value of an art degree.

benterix 3y ago
That's very interesting! Would you be able to give an example without being too specific?
- detourdog 3y ago
  The former guy is pretty simple example. My partner refers to as being a squid, spraying ink and making a get away.
- roughly 3y ago
  It's been a long time and I don't remember specifics, but - we'd regularly be meeting with people from multiple different departments, and it'd be things like two people talking about testing, where it turns out one is talking about unit tests & CI and the other is talking about user testing, and you can go very far into that conversation using all the same words and meaning very different things.
- majormajor 3y ago
  A fairly simple one I've seen is "when will this be done?" - stakeholder means to ask when will it be in production; engineer hears "done" as in "my task is done" and answers about when the PR will land.
  - squirtlebonflow 3y ago
    Ideally, merging the PR and having it be in production is a 30-60 minute automated CI process.

robomartin 3y ago

> they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness" Agree with the rest of what you said, except for this. Unless you said "truthiness" in quotes instead of truth (without quotes) to indicate this is a failing. Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants. Their fitness function is guided by such things as their ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for (what do I have to say to keep my job?) or whatever it takes to get clicks. Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. In other words, if someone says "I am a journalist", I will assume they exist to sell lies and ideology, not to uncover the truth at all. This is the only profession that enjoys constitutional protection (in the US). What do they do with that protection? Elevate lies and misinformation to a virtue. Given that our system of education does not produce people who are able to think critically, what you have are masses who believe what is being repeated by these puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions, they are damaging society in ways we have yet to discover. I am certain this is not at all what the authors of the US constitution had in mind when they offered that protection. Perhaps that's along the lines of what you meant when you said "truthiness", which sounds like a way to have a chuckle at the idea of them actually seeking truth at all.

test098 3y ago
let's apply that extremely broad comment to another group: computer scientists! > Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants Today's so-called computer scientists are distraction merchants > Their fitness function is guided by such things as their ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for ... or whatever it takes to get clicks Their fitness function is guided by such things as their financial incentives (or indoctrination), that of the organization they work for ... or whatever it takes to make money > Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. Computer science has not been equated with technological advancement in a long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful profession. > In other words, if someone says "I am a journalist", I will assume they exist to sell lies and ideology, not to uncover the truth at all. In other words, if someone says "I am a developer", I will assume they exist to sell user data to the highest bidder, not to engage in any kind of technological pursuit. > Given that our system of education does not produce people who are able to think critically, what you have are masses who believe what is being repeated by these puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions, they are damaging society in ways we have yet to discover. no changes.

Terr_ 3y ago

One might say that debugging is a form of investigative journalism, and vice-versa. Particularly when the error cannot be reproduced/captured on-demand, and you need to develop--and test--a story for how the final state could have been reached.

abathur 3y ago

At a party, a coworker's partner (who is in law enforcement) asked what I thought about how to help people upskill to write better reports and such, and without hesitation I said they should try taking a newswriting class (ideally, IMO, on a condensed schedule as in a summer semester). I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of writing experience and it still had an impact on me. (I double-majored in English + public relations and went on to get an MFA in creative writing. I doubt any 8-week period since elementary school affected my writing as much. It was a great counterweight to the kinds of academic writing styles you tend to pick up in English and philosophy. Caveat: I went into newswriting with a full toolchest; I can't speak to how it would go as a ~beginner.)

nobody9999 3y ago
>I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of writing experience and it still had an impact on me. Definitey. And reading good writing is also an excellent way to improve one's communication skills. It doesn't even need to be related to subjects you might be writing about either. Good novels, well written essays/non-fiction books, etc. can provide examples of good writing and, if one continues to read well written stuff, it will likely rub off. That's not a substitute for your suggestion (which is a good one), but another way to improve how one communicates in writing.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  I have never been a reader. I've read maybe one book on purpose in life. Also, I almost never read the posted article. I think reading is bad.

Waterluvian 3y ago

100% agree. All the best engineers I've worked with are decent problem solvers, decent coders, but phenomenal communicators, both written and verbal. I think a correlation to this are people who are good teachers.

ghaff 3y ago
One of the most knowledgable security people I know is also consistently rated as one of the best presenters in the company.

ghaff 3y ago

>I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Just working for the college paper isn't a bad alternative. Honestly, at this point, having been involved with several college papers and having done a lot of writing is probably way more valuable than any individual engineering class I've ever taken. (Though I certainly wouldn't dismiss what I learned with my engineering degrees in their totality if not in the specifics.) ADDED: Didn't have a journalism minor per se but there was a lecturer (had been a senior editor at Newsweek, etc.) in undergrad who ran a Friday morning basically seminar where he brought in all sorts of interesting journo-related guests. It wasn't (for obvious reasons) literally limited to people on campus newspapers. But a 9am Friday slot kept most of the riff-raff out :-) (And every now and then someone else would wander in and wonder how everyone else in the room knew each other.)

coldtea 3y ago

>and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness" And yet most practice the exact opposite.

themitigating 3y ago
"And yet most practice the exact opposite" And yet you just made a sweeping generalization about journalists without any corroborating information.
- coldtea 3y ago
  When did people lost the ability to experience empirical reality, and generalize and draw conclusions from it, as opposed to having everything force-fed in the form of some statistic? Finding "corroborating information" should be the province of journalists, scientists, the police, etc. Being able to draw first level conclusions from their empirical experience of reality (and, in this case, their years of exposure to watching media, reading media, reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and evaluated), is table stakes for being a citizen. Without that direct experience and the ability to distill it into a general understand, you're just someone reading statistics and reports, who they can't evaluate or corroborate with any of their experience, might as well be reading for some fictional land.
  - themitigating 3y ago
    You said 80% of blah blah then drcry the use of statistics. You just forced-fed that to everyone When did people lost the ability to experience empirical reality, and generalize and draw conclusions from it No one lost this ability it's just an objectively worse way to come to a conclusion. Making generalizations is bad, it's weird you would openly propose doing it. empirical experience of reality (and, in this case, their years of exposure to watching media, reading media, reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and evaluated) You're simply describing anecdotal evidence which has little value especially if there's alternatives and it's being used to make a conclusion. It's fine to offer up anecdotes but with supportering information. However what the media does and tells you isn't your own personal experiences. Also, watching and observing all media or just your own selected media where people tell you something is the way it is. The issue is a persons limited ability to observe as well as confirmation bias,and memory lead to faulty conclusions. as opposed to having everything force-fed in the form of some statistic? You're claiming statistics have less value than limited personal observations? You also used the phrase "forced-fed" as a manipulation tactic to make people think whatever you mentioned after it is bad. Like if I said "My mom force fed us hamburgers for dinner" instead of "My mom made hamburgers for dinner".

toomim 3y ago

Vitalik Buterin is another famous example. He was a journalist (writing for Bitcoin Magazine) before he started Ethereum. He (or his dad) said that they believed in writing as a way to clarify the mind. It seemed to work for Vitalik.

btceth 3y ago
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yunlong0928 3y ago
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yunlong0928 3y ago
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nortgatos 3y ago
Writing is for constructing oneself
nnoop 3y ago
hi, great
nnoop 3y ago
hi great

jstarfish 3y ago

Journalism is an excellent minor. Criminal justice and psychology are excellent complements. - Journalism will teach you who to ask questions of [to achieve the goal of accountability]. - Criminal justice will teach you what questions to ask [to achieve the goal of conviction/correction]. - Psychology will teach you how to ask questions [to achieve the goal of interrogation]. All interrogation and sales techniques are rooted in exploitation of psychology, but some people just have a natural knack for this. In both, the goal is to groom/break you into giving [something] you are inclined to withhold. Philosophy likely factors in here too but I'm less familiar with that field. People appreciate Ethics about as much as they appreciate someone pulling the fire alarm and yelling racial slurs at evacuees in the parking lot. I've never found much use in naming logical fallacies (IME it's the domain of pseudointellectual internet bullies and pre-law students), but could see it being a way for oneself to reason why you're pursuing something. Self-righteousness substitutes well enough.

fragmede 3y ago
Ad-hominem fallacy comes up pretty frequently, as people buy into it a lot. Pointing it out doesn't make someone a bully, usually the other person saying those things in order to convince others is the one being a bully.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  Yes, I study logical fallacies and how to use them. Ad-hominem is a really powerful one.

jvanderbot 3y ago

My wife is a journalist by training and the skill of expression of information at an engaging level for a layman audience has made her a killer marketer, fundraiser, philanthropy officer, and now director of philanthropy. She works for a pretty major international aid org.

specialist 3y ago

> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas... Good to remember next time someone whinges about bad science journalism. Blame the editors, publishers, and owners. The constraints on journalists are ridiculous. While op-eds and columnists are granted soapboxes to blather on.

squirtlebonflow 3y ago

Also, a bio+journalism dual degree is going to be much better at biology journalism than a straight-up bio major.

AmericanChopper 3y ago

Those are important skills, but does a journalism major really teach you that? Nearly all of my daily interactions with journalism involves endless amounts of agenda-driven spin, and consistent use of intentionally divisive and provocative language. Journalists are responsible for some of the least effective communication I see on a daily basis. Perhaps it would be more useful for teaching you how lie all the time, whilst holding on to a few shreds of plausible deniability.

jahsome 3y ago

I think you're spot on. I have a journalism + mass communications bachelor's, but only because I dropped out of the CS program -- too much math. Once I had mouths to feed, I couldn't make it work financially as a journalist, so I started freelance in software and my career has grown from there. The communication skills, and more critically, the understanding of how information is gathered and disseminated in groups (i.e. mass comms) is by far my biggest strength. That foundational understanding has served my career far more than any of the programming classes I took before switching majors.

alistairSH 3y ago

Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in. Absolutely. In the last few years I’ve moved into a role with a lot more interaction with non-engineers. At minimum, being able to politely re-state somebody else’s point in a concise manner is massively useful. Particularly when two people are talking past each other and I’m pretty sure they actually agree.

htss2013 3y ago

>Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in. Yes, and you can probably learn 80% of those skills yourself without having to spend years and a small fortune on a formal degree in journalism.

xarope 3y ago

Yes. I also majored in economics and psychology whilst during my CS undergrad, and having to write a ton of essays and submitting for journals, taught me that communications is a key skill to have.

deafpolygon 3y ago

> Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas I don't see how a freshman is 'trained' in this sense. Could it be that good communicators and people who can summarize ideas naturally gravitate towards journalism?

psunavy03 3y ago

I hope to God any decent journalist (if any are left) is looking for the actual truth and not just "truthiness." You do understand that Stephen Colbert coined that term, right? And that he coined it as a deliberate satire of politicians and journalists who had what we'll call an open relationship with the truth?

WalterBright 3y ago

> they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". If they are actually trained in that, there's no evidence of it. Journalists shape their articles to fit their narrative.