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There are still counterexamples: https://www.propublica.org/ https://www.propublica.org/ Traditional newspapers would get stories from things like AP, and the
by hedora 2y ago
There are still counterexamples:
https://www.propublica.org/ https://www.propublica.org/
Traditional newspapers would get stories from things like AP, and then the editors would decide what to run. They’d also have reporters that wrote local stories, etc.
I’d argue that any news site that has eliminated all those roles is already out of business and is simply burning down their brand at this point.
- ArnoVW 2y agoAs Obama famously quipped during his last Whitehouse Correspondent dinner: Even reporters have left me. Savannah Guthrie, she has left the White House press corps to host the Today show. Norah O’Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN.
- ghaff 2y agoMany publications have long relied on outside contributors with various degrees of transparency and conflicts of interest. When blogging was the hotness, as an analyst, I contributed to CNET (unpaid; they paid some bloggers but I didn't want that conflict of interest). After CBS bought them and the whole blog climate changed (and I moved to a vendor), I stopped doing that. But a ton of that sort of thing went on in the tech trade press--some good and some almost certainly not so good.
- input_sh 2y agoThe key difference is that ProPublica is a non-profit. There are very few non-profit investigative journalism orgs in the world, but their funding is fundamentally different than for-profit news orgs. They rely on public grants to keep things running, so therefore, they don't have to abuse their brand in similar ways. That's also why they publish only a couple of stories per day instead of hundreds, why they never cover breaking news, why there's a donate button (as opposed to now-standard paywalls), why there's no ads, why the interface appears cleaner etc. If we were talking about tech companies, it'd be like comparing Wikimedia/Mozilla/Internet Archive to traditional for-profit tech companies. To an untrained eye there is no difference, but a somewhat trained eye quickly realises that their incentives are completely different. (Disclaimer: I work for a different non-profit investigative journalism organization.)
- coliveira 2y agoThey are funded by NGOs controlled by billionaires, so in the end there is a number of things they cannot investigate if they want to maintain the NGO money.
- input_sh 2y agoThat's not how grants work, they don't come with a "you can't report on us specifically" clause.
- chihuahua 2y agoBut it could be that if you don't follow the unwritten rules, you don't get another grant next year.
- coliveira 2y agoThere is no such clause because that would be unlawful, but there is certainly the "unwritten clause" of whether the NGO likes your work or not.
- TheCoelacanth 2y agoIt's common wisdom that you "don't bite the hand that feeds you".
- klyrs 2y agoWhile this is technically correct, it is the wrong response to GP. Yes. ProPublica is biased to look in certain directions. Every single reporter, editor, publisher, is biased in this way. The answer to this is more, not less. FIRE rose from decisions the ACLU took about representing cases. This is a fundamentally good thing, speaking as a diehard ACLU supporter. Speaking as a huge fan of ProPublica, I'm hoping that they're investigating all of the supreme court justices (for example), because we won't pass laws to reign in judicial corruption without bipartisan action. But if they aren't, I desperately hope that there's a market for a conservative-focus investigative outfit that can stick to the facts like ProPublica.
- 2y ago
- dialup_sounds 2y agoThese aren't news sections that are being outsourced, they're things like "The 9 best leggings on Amazon, according to fitness experts¹" and "Best pet insurance companies of September 2024²". ¹ https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/fashion/best-leggings-on-amazon https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/fashion/best-leggings-on... ² https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/pet-insurance/best-pet-insurance/ https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/pet-insurance/best-..., https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/money/best-pet-insurance https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/money/best-pet-insurance
- pishpash 2y agoNews sections are outsourced to AP's essaybots.
- kube-system 2y agoThese sort of pay-to-play review marketing didn't originate on the internet. These are copies of arrangements that print media invented. My hometown newspaper had this kind of stuff too.
- smolder 2y agoI'm pretty sure I saw a "Forbes" guide on how to beat some video game quest at some point, or some other video game thing people would have been searching for at the time. I understood it to be SEO spam but this whole comment section puts it into better context.
- hedora 2y agoClick forbes.com, then hamburger icon, then scroll the list to the “advisor” or “health” news sections. Sample sections from advisor: - Cheap Car Insurance - Pet Insurance - How Much Is Pet Insurance? - Cheap Pet Insurance Under health, they have a sub-section “best cbd gummies”. I clicked on a few articles and they’re outsourced(?) amazon affiliate spam that claims Forbes actually tested the products. The health section is served from forbes.com, but the navigation is different and includes a “back to forbes.com” button. In some other parts of forbes.com they have clear disclaimers, like: Innovation -> SAP Brand Voice | Paid program So, they’re definitely trying to pass off the marketplace content as legitimate news sections.