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> "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson To be fair news papers are much differe

by leokun 13y ago

> "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson To be fair news papers are much different now than they were then. A history of newspapers in America will show you journalistic credibility was hard to come by early on.

hsitz 13y ago
I get that newspapers and the journalistic profession used to be different, and in many ways better, than they are now. Still, doesn't it strike you as interesting that brilliant, thoughtful people living at at the same time as those "better" newspapers made criticisms similar to those being made today? Thinking too poorly of the present and too well of the past is a common error. Or, on a related not, "There's nothing new under the sun."
- voxic11 13y ago
  He said they were pretty bad in the early days, not that they were better.
  - hsitz 13y ago
    Hmm, I certainly thought he was implying that things used to be better. The fact that "journalistic credibility was hard to come by" was surely a good thing, no? It means readers are applying more stringent standards to what they read. As opposed to now, when (supposed) journalistic credibility is easier to come by, but worth much less. . . .
    - kissickas 13y ago
      Quite the contrary, I believe, and I'm sure your original parent comment was making the opposite point of what you think. As far as I remember from grade school, newspapers in the US started doing legitimate work around the time of "muckrakers," early investigative journalists. It seems we've returned to the days of yellow journalism, when sensationalist articles were written just to push up circulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
      - hsitz 13y ago
        Interesting. Thanks. And I had always thought of 'muckraker' as a derogatory term, though it seems it must have started out, at least, as an approbatory term for the positive development of muckraking out of yellow journalism(?).

by leokun 13y ago

hsitz 13y ago

I get that newspapers and the journalistic profession used to be different, and in many ways better, than they are now. Still, doesn't it strike you as interesting that brilliant, thoughtful people living at at the same time as those "better" newspapers made criticisms similar to those being made today? Thinking too poorly of the present and too well of the past is a common error. Or, on a related not, "There's nothing new under the sun."

voxic11 13y ago
He said they were pretty bad in the early days, not that they were better.
- hsitz 13y ago
  Hmm, I certainly thought he was implying that things used to be better. The fact that "journalistic credibility was hard to come by" was surely a good thing, no? It means readers are applying more stringent standards to what they read. As opposed to now, when (supposed) journalistic credibility is easier to come by, but worth much less. . . .
  - kissickas 13y ago
    Quite the contrary, I believe, and I'm sure your original parent comment was making the opposite point of what you think. As far as I remember from grade school, newspapers in the US started doing legitimate work around the time of "muckrakers," early investigative journalists. It seems we've returned to the days of yellow journalism, when sensationalist articles were written just to push up circulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
    - hsitz 13y ago
      Interesting. Thanks. And I had always thought of 'muckraker' as a derogatory term, though it seems it must have started out, at least, as an approbatory term for the positive development of muckraking out of yellow journalism(?).