Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Maybe journalists should go out on their own via Patreon etc.?

There are journalists that do that, e.g. Tim Pool. I watched a series he did on the so-call "no go zones" in Sweden which is worth watching. You can see he tries hard to push through the competing narratives and get to just the facts.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxQaod7tWvYK_Naia54Gc...

That was a great series for something lots of people say doesn’t exist in the slightest.

Reporting on this reporting: https://www.indy100.com/article/sweden-trip-crowdfunded-righ...

The question is, has he remained independent from his decidedly partial funder?

Do you have any proof that he didn't remain independent, or you just want to stir the pot? All I can see in that link is a newspaper saying "this guy got donations by someone we don't like, so he must be lying".

I see it's all video in that investigation, do the videos look like they've been manipulated?

I've found that for issues that are this extremely politically polarized and where there is this much misinformation floating around, the only way to really know would be to buy a plane ticket and go there. You can't trust any source.

A bit of a tangent but: this is how you keep secrets in the Information Age. You can't actually keep a secret, but you can fog up the air with so much competing nonsense that nobody knows what to believe and the secret is indistinguishable from noise.

Well, he did say, "Chicago has about 750 murders each year." This seems off to me based on the facts.

Murders in Chicago the last 10 years:

2009 - 463

2010 - 456

2011 - 449

2012 - 514

2013 - 455

2014 - 464

2015 - 512

2016 - 808

2017 - 683

2018 - 588

> Maybe journalists should go out on their own via Patreon etc.?

The problem with that is that the person with the byline isn't the only one that matters. Editorial oversight is equally important. You need the guy who's enthusiastically digging into a story and the guy who keeps his enthusiasm in check. I don't think those can be the same person.

We had quite a scandal with something like this over here in Germany some weeks ago.

A young journalist named Relotius who worked for "Der Spiegel" was found to have his stories a little bit too perfect. He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.

So, while the core of a story might still be true, nobody really knows what happened and what was added by him. Nobody believes anything of these stories anymore after all.

It totally blew his career up (he was formerly found to be one of the "rising stars" of German journalism and had already got some awards for his work) and the Spiegel also found himself under heavy criticism, although they already have a concept in place, where another editor always fact-checks the other editors work.

So: Enthusiasm in journalists can go really wrong.

> He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.

I think you are underselling it. Quoting from Der Spiegel[1], "he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. (...) He also made up dialogue and quotes."

[1] http://m.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-answers-...

Oh, I'm sorry. I read into the story when it was more about things like "there was no music playing, although I wrote there was music and I didn't meet XY at that exact day". Didn't deeply look into it afterwards anymore. Thanks for pointing me to this, will read into it again.

IMHO what made it worse for "Der Spiegel", is that they have a huge fact checking department [1], but still failed miserably.

[1] https://digiday.com/media/inside-spiegels-70-person-fact-che...

I'm a fan of this idea. I've seen many a brand diluted after key journos leave and are replaced essentially by clickbait artists. The problem then is that it's tacit admission that the idea of branding in journalism is prima facie useless, but that feels somewhat natural. A large corporate publication is a large corporation first and foremost -- if it can't effectively create a product, then maybe I don't want that product from that large corporation.

But, where I get worried is what happens to the public commons when the labor of large scale journalism which is out of the reach of a single journalist (or even a small confederation) resources wise gets lost. Would it be replaced by individuals or small federations that are as effective? I mean, I don't think effective journalism will die anytime soon on the whole. But, I wonder if pockets will go extinct, and I'm nervous about what that means. I still don't think I've really seen it all that much yet.

There has also been at least one attempt at a site that facilitated this: pay the journalist you want to follow. It didn't take.

I'd love to find out which startups attempted this. I guess the network effects of YouTube/Patreon were simply too big for them to overcome.

The website I'm aware of is ne.ws (I knew the guy- a seasoned entrepreneur). I don't know what that website is now- same thing but Asian? Anyway I don't think he's doing it any more.

This is an interesting idea. I'd like to see more of this in the future. Large news orgs only existed before because of the necessity of combining resources. These days I bet you can do the same thing with only a couple of people or even solo given the advent of high technology.

But not Patreon. Patreon probably will shut them down after the first controversial article. If you want journalistic freedom and independence, relying on Patreon is like investing with Bernie Madoff.

I think that would lead to an echo-chambered niche on its own from incentives. Granted larger groups certainly can go astray as well. Greenpeace went essentially batshit a long time ago and the founders said screw it and left after falling to get through that banning Chlorine is an impossible and stupid idea given its role in health.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com