3 ms·

The WSJ is such a shallow shell of its former self that no, I don’t trust it as far as I can throw a paper airplane made out of it. Somewhere along the line (an

The WSJ is such a shallow shell of its former self that no, I don’t trust it as far as I can throw a paper airplane made out of it. Somewhere along the line (and I have my hypothesis as many do…) our news sources stopped being objective, stopped seeking truth, stopped being sourced for bringing real information to the consuming public, and instead became a kind of echo chamber for dogmatic ideology of one kind or another. I have no idea what to read any more, because it’s devolved into sick “entertainment” rather than insightful reporting. Even my beloved NPR seems on the brink of falling into this as they seek to kowtow, presumably to save their funding.

kurthr 2y ago
I'd have to agree. It doesn't matter WSJ, NYT, WaPo, LAT, Trib, all garbage. When I started to see grammar mistakes and typos in the NYT, I knew it was over. They were optimizing for clicks not correctness. The infotainment that started on TV and the destruction of revenue by aggregation has created an environment where largescale news as it was is not profitable (enough), but clickbait is. There may be individual journalists who care, but not a single senior editor that does. We have achieved post truth media. The news cycle is literally about UFOs. edit: I will say that's a profit opportunity both for those who can spread fake meme news and for those who can bother to see through it, but for the vast middle it is idocracy.
FredPret 2y ago
All you can do now is to go to the source data. If you want long term trend data, it’s easy to get good data for free. It’ll be boring and most trends will be positive (thank our lucky stars we live in the technological era). Unless you have a real passion, you’ll most likely not visit one of these sources twice (World Bank, IMF, FRED in the USA, tradingeconomics.com, the SEC) If you want short term, real-time data, you’ll likely have to pay for it. The downside is that there’s a deluge of data and almost all of it is useless (unless you care about up-to-the-minute prices for beans in China or whatever). The job of journalists is to mine all this info for something sensational or, failing that, spin some short term data bump into a big story. Way back in the 1940’s, there was so little data out there that the WSJ could simply print all the current market events and call it a newspaper. There was so little entertainment out there, that people bought and read that paper! Information dissemination remains an unsolved problem.
danenania 2y ago
Yep, in simple terms they all became tabloids. They do still hire a few real journalists to keep up appearances, but sensationalism is what sells so that’s what gets the most real estate.

kurthr 2y ago

I'd have to agree. It doesn't matter WSJ, NYT, WaPo, LAT, Trib, all garbage. When I started to see grammar mistakes and typos in the NYT, I knew it was over. They were optimizing for clicks not correctness. The infotainment that started on TV and the destruction of revenue by aggregation has created an environment where largescale news as it was is not profitable (enough), but clickbait is. There may be individual journalists who care, but not a single senior editor that does. We have achieved post truth media. The news cycle is literally about UFOs. edit: I will say that's a profit opportunity both for those who can spread fake meme news and for those who can bother to see through it, but for the vast middle it is idocracy.

FredPret 2y ago

All you can do now is to go to the source data. If you want long term trend data, it’s easy to get good data for free. It’ll be boring and most trends will be positive (thank our lucky stars we live in the technological era). Unless you have a real passion, you’ll most likely not visit one of these sources twice (World Bank, IMF, FRED in the USA, tradingeconomics.com, the SEC) If you want short term, real-time data, you’ll likely have to pay for it. The downside is that there’s a deluge of data and almost all of it is useless (unless you care about up-to-the-minute prices for beans in China or whatever). The job of journalists is to mine all this info for something sensational or, failing that, spin some short term data bump into a big story. Way back in the 1940’s, there was so little data out there that the WSJ could simply print all the current market events and call it a newspaper. There was so little entertainment out there, that people bought and read that paper! Information dissemination remains an unsolved problem.

danenania 2y ago

Yep, in simple terms they all became tabloids. They do still hire a few real journalists to keep up appearances, but sensationalism is what sells so that’s what gets the most real estate.