4 ms·

> It could end up akin to classical music, contemporary art, and literary fiction — important for a few in the upper crust, marginal to the lives of the majorit

> It could end up akin to classical music, contemporary art, and literary fiction — important for a few in the upper crust, marginal to the lives of the majority of the public. Most journalism nowadays is like pop music: it does not really provide anything new. You can take a newspaper or a radio show from any day, replay it any other day, and it will probably pass unnoticed. The main problem, as I see it, is that there's just too much of it. There's no need for daily news and journalists produce formulaic content because it's the only way to produce so much content.

Solvency 3y ago
We don't need "news". We need a basic event log. Hard cold events, timestamped. Every vote a politician makes on every issue. Every murder. Every time a mass shooting happens. Every time oil spills. Every time Boeing loses a chunk of its hull. Every time Boeing then lobbies for some self-serving favor. Every time a rocket is fired. Every time an incursion is detected. Make it filterable. Searchable. Etc.
- FrankyHollywood 3y ago
  That 'log' is generated by journalists, and the only reason why I have a paid subscription to a newspaper. Imagine living in a world without journalists and politicians and enterprises can do whatever they like without anyone ever writing about it...
  - ejb999 3y ago
    as opposed to politicians doing whatever they want, and journalists providing cover and/or distractions for them?
  - wharvle 3y ago
    You'd need journalism to dig out the parts & trends that matter given historical and current context anyway. "Murders up 10% in [city]"—is that statistical noise? Was there a policy change that may be connected? Does it follow historical trends for current economic conditions, so is perhaps a "natural" variation? Is below or above statewide trends? National? International? If it's below or above any of those, what might be the cause? Which sorts of policies have a history of being effective under these particular circumstances, to reduce a murder rate? Do any of the policies being proposed by various political figures have a history of being effective, or a history of being ineffective, or any history at all? Do any of the political figures stand to profit from their own proposals, or otherwise personally or professionally benefit in some maybe-questionable way? All of that's journalism work, which we could all do ourselves, of course, but that takes a hell of a lot of time and most people are pretty bad at that kind of thing (though, granted, so are plenty of journalists—regardless, the work is journalism).
- phantomathkg 3y ago
  This generation already see news boring, do you think an event log will appeal them even better? A raw event log is definitely useful tool in the toolbox, allow people who interested to perform deep level analysis. To engage with different generations, we need different tools that engage with them and yet provide verifiable information.
  - bdw5204 3y ago
    News that was less entertaining and did less to appeal to its audience would reduce the number of stupid people who vote in elections which would increase the quality of our elected politicians. Cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC as well as their online competitors serve as propaganda wings of the political parties in general and typically the most corrupt wing of that political party in particular. They misinform their audience on purpose to create hyper-partisan voters who hate the other party and reliably vote for the donkey or the elephant no matter how unqualified, corrupt or unhinged the candidate may be. We would likely be much better off if the people who base their identity on hating the other political party or who worship specific politicians would find a different hobby because the news was "boring" to them. If having tons of poorly informed or outright misinformed "vote {party} no matter who" voters participating in the political process wasn't to the benefit of large corporate interests, there wouldn't be an enormous corporate media industry intent on making sure they vote and telling them who to vote for.
- zilti 3y ago
  We already have all of these. Hardly anyone cares.
- awestroke 3y ago
  Who decides what passes as these cold hard events? How would anybody ever transmit unbiased truth?
- ethbr1 3y ago
  There's a two-pronged problem. 1. The event log -- in many places, this still doesn't exist in digital, structured, usable format. It's gotten better, but there's still a ways to go 2. Referencing the underlying event log -- there needs to be interpretation, summarization, and commentary, for the average viewer/reader. However, all of that should come with a reference to the underlying event log We've gotten to the place we've gotten because (1) is impenetrable to the average person (or non-existent) and (2) doesn't happen. Consequently, a bag of words has become more and more confused with facts. We've had hyperlink technology for a while, journalism needs to fucking use it. :/
- inductive_magic 3y ago
  Who gets write access?
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Insisting the world is this simple and black and white and algorithmic won't make it so.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TheRoque 3y ago
  And how are you supposed to digest it ? Journalists are here to provide the context of the event, the background. They also so the job of checking the sources. We are not machine, from the log "2 planes crashed on the 9/11 of 2001", we would have to search ourselves all the things surrounding it, probably missing a lot on the way because we all have our day job and have other things to do. Journalists are biased though, like any human, but I don't see how it can be fixed. Even an AI digesting the events will have some bias, though it might be aware of much more things than a simple humain brain.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  We need both. The deep analysis that news is supposed to provide is an important service. Some things are important for reasons the reader does not necessarily understand, and providing it only in bite-sized form is not good enough. Sometimes things need to be explained. Now, long-winded magazine articles that exist for the writer to show off the virtuosity of their prose? That's niche for people who enjoy those things. But otherwise raw brute-force data encourages raw brute-force policy. For example, data point of prevailing home prices indicates a problem - that housing has gotten very expensive. Dumb brute-force policy = price caps. Analysis explains that houses are expensive because of supply and demand and the supply has plummeted while demand is rising, and that price caps would make that worse. Where does that connection live in your event-log?
- solardev 3y ago
  Heck, just digest it into a shittiness score and tell me once a year. Hey Google, how much worse is everything this year? According to Eventscore.com, national despair increased by 34.2%, a slight uptick compared to last year. School shootings have proceeded as expected, political corruption is within norms, and economic marginalization has followed modeled trends. Climate change and wars continue, planes are falling apart again, the courts made bad decisions, protestors are angry. But a new VR headset is coming out soon and a sportsball team somewhere won a game. Happy new year! Your next update is in 2025.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Most journalism nowadays is like pop music TV and free news, yes. Paid journalism, per the article, no; it’s for elites. The Financial Times and Politico’s reporting tend to be concise, timely and actionable. It’s just that the whip for a Schumer-Sinema-Johnson-other guy grind around the finer points of a budget negotiation, or jobs numbers vis-à-vis rates forecasts, aren’t relevant for most people. (Or the, for that matter.)
ARandomerDude 3y ago
Zooming out a little, political news is repetitive, except for the names, and most of it is just mud throwing: - This is the most important election of our times. The other candidate wants to send you and your children to the gulag. - Person X had sex with person Y and laundered PAC money. - Government shutdown unless item X gets funded and item Y doesn’t. X supporters say Y supporters are holding the country hostage. Y supporters say they just want America to get back to work. - ...
- danans 3y ago
  The news organizations didn't make any of that stuff up though. Those are the actual rhetoric and the hypocritical or criminal acts of the politicians you are alluding to. You've just genericized it by replacing names with X and Y. However, it's anything but generic, and there are real patterns to it, so the names behind the X and Y matter. It would be journalistic malpractice not to report those things when there is evidence to support the allegations.
  - ARandomerDude 3y ago
    Nevertheless, it raises the question of “how often is this relevant to me?” If I already know a person needs to be replaced or reelected next time at the polls, reading all the details is a waste of time and personal happiness. What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions.
    - danans 3y ago
      > What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions. The OP was making a statement about what journalists should report on, not what people should choose to read. Of course anyone can individually choose to not read a repeated story, just like they can choose not to watch the same weather forecast repeatedly.
- galdosdi 3y ago
  You must be rather young or only started listening to the news recently after a lifetime of ignoring it. The news only started sounding like that very recently. You can check this for yourself, go look at some archived newspapers from the early 1990s.
weinzierl 3y ago
"You can take a newspaper or a radio show from any day, replay it any other day, and it will probably pass unnoticed." I haven't listened to 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night in years, but I always felt the news in it were timeless. Maybe I'll give it a try tonight to see if 1966 news still sound fresh in 2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_O%27Clock_News/Silent_Night https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_O%27Clock_News/Silent_Nigh...

Solvency 3y ago

We don't need "news". We need a basic event log. Hard cold events, timestamped. Every vote a politician makes on every issue. Every murder. Every time a mass shooting happens. Every time oil spills. Every time Boeing loses a chunk of its hull. Every time Boeing then lobbies for some self-serving favor. Every time a rocket is fired. Every time an incursion is detected. Make it filterable. Searchable. Etc.

FrankyHollywood 3y ago
That 'log' is generated by journalists, and the only reason why I have a paid subscription to a newspaper. Imagine living in a world without journalists and politicians and enterprises can do whatever they like without anyone ever writing about it...
- ejb999 3y ago
  as opposed to politicians doing whatever they want, and journalists providing cover and/or distractions for them?
- wharvle 3y ago
  You'd need journalism to dig out the parts & trends that matter given historical and current context anyway. "Murders up 10% in [city]"—is that statistical noise? Was there a policy change that may be connected? Does it follow historical trends for current economic conditions, so is perhaps a "natural" variation? Is below or above statewide trends? National? International? If it's below or above any of those, what might be the cause? Which sorts of policies have a history of being effective under these particular circumstances, to reduce a murder rate? Do any of the policies being proposed by various political figures have a history of being effective, or a history of being ineffective, or any history at all? Do any of the political figures stand to profit from their own proposals, or otherwise personally or professionally benefit in some maybe-questionable way? All of that's journalism work, which we could all do ourselves, of course, but that takes a hell of a lot of time and most people are pretty bad at that kind of thing (though, granted, so are plenty of journalists—regardless, the work is journalism).
phantomathkg 3y ago
This generation already see news boring, do you think an event log will appeal them even better? A raw event log is definitely useful tool in the toolbox, allow people who interested to perform deep level analysis. To engage with different generations, we need different tools that engage with them and yet provide verifiable information.
- bdw5204 3y ago
  News that was less entertaining and did less to appeal to its audience would reduce the number of stupid people who vote in elections which would increase the quality of our elected politicians. Cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC as well as their online competitors serve as propaganda wings of the political parties in general and typically the most corrupt wing of that political party in particular. They misinform their audience on purpose to create hyper-partisan voters who hate the other party and reliably vote for the donkey or the elephant no matter how unqualified, corrupt or unhinged the candidate may be. We would likely be much better off if the people who base their identity on hating the other political party or who worship specific politicians would find a different hobby because the news was "boring" to them. If having tons of poorly informed or outright misinformed "vote {party} no matter who" voters participating in the political process wasn't to the benefit of large corporate interests, there wouldn't be an enormous corporate media industry intent on making sure they vote and telling them who to vote for.
zilti 3y ago
We already have all of these. Hardly anyone cares.
awestroke 3y ago
Who decides what passes as these cold hard events? How would anybody ever transmit unbiased truth?
ethbr1 3y ago
There's a two-pronged problem. 1. The event log -- in many places, this still doesn't exist in digital, structured, usable format. It's gotten better, but there's still a ways to go 2. Referencing the underlying event log -- there needs to be interpretation, summarization, and commentary, for the average viewer/reader. However, all of that should come with a reference to the underlying event log We've gotten to the place we've gotten because (1) is impenetrable to the average person (or non-existent) and (2) doesn't happen. Consequently, a bag of words has become more and more confused with facts. We've had hyperlink technology for a while, journalism needs to fucking use it. :/
inductive_magic 3y ago
Who gets write access?
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Insisting the world is this simple and black and white and algorithmic won't make it so.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
TheRoque 3y ago
And how are you supposed to digest it ? Journalists are here to provide the context of the event, the background. They also so the job of checking the sources. We are not machine, from the log "2 planes crashed on the 9/11 of 2001", we would have to search ourselves all the things surrounding it, probably missing a lot on the way because we all have our day job and have other things to do. Journalists are biased though, like any human, but I don't see how it can be fixed. Even an AI digesting the events will have some bias, though it might be aware of much more things than a simple humain brain.
Pxtl 3y ago
We need both. The deep analysis that news is supposed to provide is an important service. Some things are important for reasons the reader does not necessarily understand, and providing it only in bite-sized form is not good enough. Sometimes things need to be explained. Now, long-winded magazine articles that exist for the writer to show off the virtuosity of their prose? That's niche for people who enjoy those things. But otherwise raw brute-force data encourages raw brute-force policy. For example, data point of prevailing home prices indicates a problem - that housing has gotten very expensive. Dumb brute-force policy = price caps. Analysis explains that houses are expensive because of supply and demand and the supply has plummeted while demand is rising, and that price caps would make that worse. Where does that connection live in your event-log?
solardev 3y ago
Heck, just digest it into a shittiness score and tell me once a year. Hey Google, how much worse is everything this year? According to Eventscore.com, national despair increased by 34.2%, a slight uptick compared to last year. School shootings have proceeded as expected, political corruption is within norms, and economic marginalization has followed modeled trends. Climate change and wars continue, planes are falling apart again, the courts made bad decisions, protestors are angry. But a new VR headset is coming out soon and a sportsball team somewhere won a game. Happy new year! Your next update is in 2025.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> Most journalism nowadays is like pop music TV and free news, yes. Paid journalism, per the article, no; it’s for elites. The Financial Times and Politico’s reporting tend to be concise, timely and actionable. It’s just that the whip for a Schumer-Sinema-Johnson-other guy grind around the finer points of a budget negotiation, or jobs numbers vis-à-vis rates forecasts, aren’t relevant for most people. (Or the, for that matter.)

ARandomerDude 3y ago

Zooming out a little, political news is repetitive, except for the names, and most of it is just mud throwing: - This is the most important election of our times. The other candidate wants to send you and your children to the gulag. - Person X had sex with person Y and laundered PAC money. - Government shutdown unless item X gets funded and item Y doesn’t. X supporters say Y supporters are holding the country hostage. Y supporters say they just want America to get back to work. - ...

danans 3y ago
The news organizations didn't make any of that stuff up though. Those are the actual rhetoric and the hypocritical or criminal acts of the politicians you are alluding to. You've just genericized it by replacing names with X and Y. However, it's anything but generic, and there are real patterns to it, so the names behind the X and Y matter. It would be journalistic malpractice not to report those things when there is evidence to support the allegations.
- ARandomerDude 3y ago
  Nevertheless, it raises the question of “how often is this relevant to me?” If I already know a person needs to be replaced or reelected next time at the polls, reading all the details is a waste of time and personal happiness. What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions.
  - danans 3y ago
    > What the journalists should report and what I should read are separate questions. The OP was making a statement about what journalists should report on, not what people should choose to read. Of course anyone can individually choose to not read a repeated story, just like they can choose not to watch the same weather forecast repeatedly.
galdosdi 3y ago
You must be rather young or only started listening to the news recently after a lifetime of ignoring it. The news only started sounding like that very recently. You can check this for yourself, go look at some archived newspapers from the early 1990s.

weinzierl 3y ago

"You can take a newspaper or a radio show from any day, replay it any other day, and it will probably pass unnoticed." I haven't listened to 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night in years, but I always felt the news in it were timeless. Maybe I'll give it a try tonight to see if 1966 news still sound fresh in 2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_O%27Clock_News/Silent_Night https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_O%27Clock_News/Silent_Nigh...