Hacker News Reader

Comment by generic_user | Hacker News Reader

I think online journalism as a whole has turned into a form of trolling.

Or maybe we are in a post Journalist world now.

The value of a story is based on how many clicks it gets. Thats what makes these sites money. It does not matter if you click because the story makes you angry or you think its insulting just so long as you click and you get the advertising. And as far as standards go there are none. Just make up some stuff that riles people and come up with a click bait headline and on to the next story.

View on HN

I think that depends on your sources. TheIntercept doesn't fit into that bracket to me. Bias? Maybe, but bias isn't a problem if you read a diverse set of sources. Bias isn't a problem, opinion isn't a problem; reading one source and complaining its 'fake news' because it's bias isn't the same as yours is.

I agree that there is still a spectrum of quality. And certain Journalists and publications can still establish a reputation for reliability and quality.

But the problem is the business model. No one has been able to come up with a solution to make money on quality. Its all volume advertising. NYT is competing with BuzzFeed for eyeballs. Its a competition to come up with the most clever hook and target peoples emotions to drive traffic.

In the print days there was a small number of publications and it was very expensive to start one. The more serious publications published monthly. Its totally different now.

Think about that up until just a few years ago serious Journalists had to produce about one piece a month and they had supporting staff and a budget.

There is very little now that comes close to the quality and analysis that there use to be.

I'm not so sure print is dead yet :)

I read the FT weekend, private eye, and sometimes monocle as my fill of physical periodicals but I think throwing all journalism into the same box as your avg daily mail/buzz feed AP copy/paster isn't really accurate. These aren't journalists they are 'content curators' or whatever the term is these days.

I'll use some of those sites to see what's happening quickly -- the bullshit around a story isn't too important when I'm just looking for headlines. things like 'terrorist attack in paris' are statements everywhere which is about all can expect from such places; more in depth stuff I go longform and sometime even podcasts or books written later.

Instead of raging war on stuff that's been going on for years in the press why don't we just balance out input ourselves instead of playing into this drive to delegitimise the press, which only seems to benefit the government. We need a press to hold things accountable since the judiciary and senate have already been steamrolled.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com