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Comment by two2two | Hacker News Reader

As someone who is educating oneself in journalism in hopes to ride the "pendulum" toward "quality content" of the likes you speak of, what do you imagine are the next steps? How can one contribute right now for a better journalistic future?

Is this the stage where all of the "shallow" players fall while "quality" players begin to rise? If so, using what model, as advertising, in its current form, is an insidious factor? Will advertising need to change first? How will quality content creators reach people and make a living once the pendulum swings full?

I find it hard to see. During my recent experience at Thanksgiving dinner, memes seem to have reduced some people's thoughts to a base level. I do hold hope as I believe, as you do, this is cyclical, but the stage is vastly different than it was in the past.

edit: themselves/oneself

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> what do you imagine are the next steps?

At the moment, its very difficult for people to disassociate "brands" of the parent company with the writers.

For example, I've seen John Kasich write for the Washington Post Opinion pages. But most people expect Washington Post to be a liberal outlet.

Moving forward, a journalism outpost needs to recognize what their power is:

1. The ability to collect opinions from people that matter. Celebrities are a safer testbed: she said / he said gossip columns are necessary to develop the techniques and hierarchy of the brand... but such drivel is often times seen as "non-intelligent". The brand needs to disassociate itself from "drivel" yet still allow it.

"Twitter", for all its faults, manages to do this perfectly. No one blames Twitter for specific viewpoints. Other networks (such as Reddit, 4chan, or Facebook even) have accusations of bias levied regularly against them.

2. People attach themselves to Journalists and Editors these days. Not to papers or organizations. People don't respect "The Washington Post" so much as they respect "Robert Costa". Similarly, no one says they trust "Fox News", but a lot of people trust "Chris Wallace". See the difference?

3. This suggests that a Patreon model which champions specific journalists would work out better in this day and age. The journalists need to create personalities so that the readers can feel like they're connected with them more.

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It means that moving forward: "Journalists" become personalities who deliver the news. These personalities are collected by a neutral-feeling entity and people are willing to funnel money directly to the personality (see Patreon).

> 2. People attach themselves to Journalists and Editors these days. Not to papers or organizations. People don't respect "The Washington Post" so much as they respect "Robert Costa". Similarly, no one says they trust "Fox News", but a lot of people trust "Chris Wallace". See the difference?

This simply doesn't ring true. What about when David Pogue and Katie Couric went to Yahoo News? Or when Nate Silver left the NYT? Or when Mossberg/Swisher set up Recode? The audience largely didn't follow. People trust brands and institutions, even when they say they don't.

> For example, I've seen John Kasich write for the Washington Post Opinion pages. But most people expect Washington Post to be a liberal outlet.

LOL...most conservatives I know consider Kasich to be a liberal ;)

As the saying goes, history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes.

Which means this won't be exactly the same of course, but something will change.

People liking trash content is nothing new. It used to be TV in the old days, but now replaced with the Internet. If you compare the two, the stupid internet memes may actually be "better" than the passive consumption of TV content, since nowadays you're consuming AND creating content, so it's not 100% passive anymore.

That said, human nature won't change, so we will keep consuming shit content no matter what happens. And this is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about organizations that capitalize on this will die off.

Lastly, if you look around it's not so difficult to find "quality" content nowadays. Just go to Youtube and search for whatever niche topic you're interested in learning more about and you'll find at least a few good quality video.

Risking an opinion here, since I am in no way expert on that area, I'd say you have to change advertising first.

Maybe pay walls work long term, but it is certainly hard to get out of the ground with one. There is no way to become known without publishing on the open. There is a Linux development bulletin that has a mixed model of a pay wall, but anybody with a direct link gets to see the article. I don't think it's viable to start with such model anymore either.

Intuitively, it feels like there is some advertising value that can only be delivered by quality oriented journalists. If that is the case, you will have to detect that niche and run after the advertisers one by one. Since there is practically no quality-oriented journalism out there (and there haven't been for a long time) it is hard to point at any model, or even to discover if that niche in fact exists.

> Is this the stage where all of the "shallow" players fall while "quality" players begin to rise?

I think this is super-optimistic. I think the result of this stage will be further consolidation, demands for even higher margins due to a lack of competition, and even lower quality content.

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