Posted by benwerd 1 day ago
But with the internet everything got hyper specialized.
Want the entertainment & tabloid-esque factor? Well social media, certain subreddits are going to serve you better, for free.
Want the in-depth analysis. Well youtube, if you know how to be media critical, serves you better (yes YT is full of bullshit but if you truly want in depth analysis coverage, you probably know how to filter out the bad channels and find high quality). Not to mention specialist sites. Like compare the in depthness of isw (https://understandingwar.org) vs your average news broadcast when it comes to what is happening in current wars.
Heck even wikipedia tends to be more in depth and provide better context than most news reports.
Where does that leave us? Traditional news becomes an expensive product that has subpar quality. Then it becomes a vicious circle where either they go full clickbait to feed ads where quality goes in the dirt, or they go paywall which keeps them out of the digital conversation and errodes their publicitly which ultimately prevents them from acquiring new users.
The most egregious offenders never allow reader comments or discussion underneath the story.
This would do a lot to restore trust.
The problem is, they want to restore trust and keep acting deceptively too!
I agree with the idea, but there is a lot of subtlety. Journalism is a profession. Journalists must understand context and research while also finding ways to convey often complex concepts in an unbiased and comprehensible way. The average internet voice trying to fill this role is just spouting opinion and often with undisclosed motive.
If we do not solve the credibility gap that currently exists and let professionals be adequately compensated for doing good work in a difficult profession most of the suggestions here are just bandaids on a mortal wound.
The world's become a gambling addict; chasing players in a huge virtual casino of clicks. It's sad.
A bunch of investors went on a buying spree of traditional news outlets about 25-30 years ago, hoping to make good money off of them. They also offered free access to the news online at the time.
Well, people stopped buying newspapers and fewer and fewer people watch the local news, so there was no money making happening.
They're still expecting to make the cash off the original investment. There will be no reinventing, civic consequences be damned.
I don't trust the current political establishment in the US to not turn newsrooms into pure propaganda machines if public funding is requested.
Besides, I don't know if there is much of a point. The current President, at the very least, bungled the release of millions of documents related to his former personal friend who was under investigation/indictment for sex trafficking.
The public, for better or worse, just doesn't seem to want to make that a sticking point. If that's not a sticking point, what the hell is? What could a newsroom possibly dig up that could motivate people?
And yes, I realize I am being very, very charitable to reducing Trump's possible exposure on Epstein to "bungled the document release", but I think you could at the very least get everyone to agree on that. There was a law passed by Congress, his administration didn't follow it as it had to. Cut and dry.
In my anecdotal experience, journalism goes along with the detractors and naysayers: It's an archaic industry from a past era, they're mostly ineffective, social media makes it mostly irrelevant, journalistic principles aren't really valued, hard news isn't valued, not many will ever read it and the audience won't come back, it's more for comfort and entertainment, don't challenge people too much, etc.
Imagine a blogger who, for their post, flew to the location of whatever they were talking about and saw it for themself. Interviewed dozens of people with direct experience, including the people directly affected, the people who did whatever happened, the local leaders, people on all sides. Found and read actual documentary evidence. Combined that all in a blog post and then ran it by several other people for editing, verification, ensuring nothing exceeded the evidence, etc. That would be an amazing - an almost unheard of - blogger and blog post.
That's everyday professional journalism. You can get it pretty cheaply.
They just don't market themselves. They don't believe in themselves. Someone told them that they are outdated and they believe it: Look at the NY Times front page, still trying to look like an actual old newspaper. Still with a banner at the top like the newspaper, with a typeface that was impressive in the era of metal type (what do younger who never saw the metal type output think? My guess: 'that's something old, for old people, before my time.'). Still mostly black-and-white and text (print!), with multimedia a very secondary extra rather than a normal, first-class part of the reports - articles with significant multimedia are special events done (afaik) by a special staff! Even lone bloggers can do better, and the NY Times has far more resources.
When is the last time you saw someone passionate about what is a truly noble, sometimes heroic profession? When was the last time someone was talking about how they were going to make it better than ever? How they were going to change the world? By being swept along by the zeitgeist rather than standing up and defining it and themselves, they are killing another essential institution (what institution has risen to this moment?).