Comment by muse900 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by muse900 | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like this was a thing back then, not only because the "strong and powerful" men of that ERA where in and out of a hotel lobby but also cause journalism was based on going out to get/make a story.

Nowadays I feel like real journalism is a very small fraction of the journalism field in general and I feel like most news/media outlets (paper, tv, blogs) are just copy pasting stories from others in a bad manner as well, changing them up to feel a bit more "wow this thing happened", and you end up with a story that has nothing to do with the original.

We do live in the ERA of over-information and lazy journalism. A news outlet in most cases doesn't need to go out of their way to find the story and the cases that happens is very limited nowadays. The media will just display anything that comes their way on steroids to make it interesting... and thats why I don't watch the news :)

On the other hand I am pretty certain there are still Hotels in Europe where the strong and powerful pass through on a daily basis, and there are up and coming smart hotels which have a lobby that I've personally seen the next tech idea being discussed from its ground.

Sad to read you have such a narrow view of the news media. Maybe it’s that way in your home country. Or maybe some specific outlets have spoiled it for the others.

If you’re ever in Germany or the Netherlands I’d be happy to show you how my partner (a journalist for a national broadcaster) and her coworkers go about it.

It’s the opposite of lazy, copy & paste. It’s hard working, diligent, critical etc.

I think the problem is that even though maybe a 100 different unique stories are crafted by dilligent, hard-working people, there are a 100,000 others that are just copied from those originals.

If you just take a casual glance through a few tens of articles, everything will look like a carbon copy.

And no small number of them are largely cut-and-pasted or computer-written from a press release. (Including at the few outlets which also craft a few unique stories to keep up their brand.)

> narrow view

I'm not sure a personal attack like this is appropriate. Your anecdote is no more valuable a data point than parents. My own (anecdote) mirrors OP - front page stories from major American publications like the WaPo and NYT often show downright shoddy research techniques - a lack of corroboration, a failure to consider all the relevant data, and a generally obsession with narrative writing rather than covering all the relevant facts. If you want to argue that journalism is strong in your country, you might start by giving an example of a typical publication from your country.

NYT, WaPo, and the rest are just aliases for particular groups of people. It all starts with those people, at an individual level. What sort of person is going into “journalism” these days, and why? Would you? Do you know anyone who would? Why or why not? Would you turn down a job at Google to become a “journalist”, any “journalist”? Would you recommend that course of action to a bright teen?

You criticize OP for having a narrow view and then support your claim with anecdotal evidence... I'm happy that your partner and her coworkers have some integrity, but that doesn't have much bearing on the overall industry.

The problem with “real” journalism is finding a business model. I’d love my local paper to do more of it, but the Internet has absolutely killed the model that used to make it viable.

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