Compared to researching fully before reporting, The Atlantic is going to get way more than twice as much traffic for what they actually did. The shoot-from-the

Compared to researching fully before reporting, The Atlantic is going to get way more than twice as much traffic for what they actually did. The shoot-from-the-hip original story ensures far-and-wide forwarding – outrage brings da hits. Then, the separate followup/correction brings nearly as many hits again. If there are incentives to do something, it'll be done... we just have to factor this in when interpreting forwarded-stories that tickle the sense of righteous indignation. Other than wasting people's time and energy while they're in the middle, inaccurately-wound-up belief state, many people will only get the 1st story: outrage accelerates a story into more forums faster than calm correction. Also, not having seen both together makes it easier for prior biases to survive. ("Oh, the correction is just later coverup/spin, I still prefer the original moralizing narrative.") So there's several big negative externalities, on the public's time and knowledge, arising from the way the current online news model works. HN is, unfortunately, part of the problem.