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Comment by factorialboy | Hacker News Reader

> We've witnessed a halving of journalists since 2008, while the number of corporate communications execs has tripled. In sum, the ratio of bullshit/spin to watchdogs has increased sixfold.

This assumes that journalists are capable of spotting (and willing to) spin / bullshit in the first place.

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A lot of the stories coming out about the malfeasance at We are coming from good old-fashioned investigative reporting: tracking down former and current employees and interviewing them (on and off the record) about what's going on. This is the bread and butter of journalism.

What's so unique about a tech company that it would be immune to standard journalistic practices? And is We even truly a tech company anyway?

> And is We even truly a tech company anyway?

Nope. Just a real estate play trying to be valued at tech level multiples. That's part of reason We's in trouble.

Not sure whether trolling.

There has been some very good investigative journalism done in the tech sector. Theranos/Uber/Tumblr comes to mind. Specially from media outlets outside of the SV echo chamber.

Journalism is a big field. Just because journalists did a good job in three situations you know of, doesn't mean the average quality is plummetting. As counterexamples, they've done a terrible job investigating anything related to Trump, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

News outlets are too dependent on advertising, ratings, and public opinion now.

It's probably not sixfold since journalism includes a mix of the intrepid and the opportunist. But it's likely on the order of at least twofold increase as the opportunists are the most likely to have moved from journalism to PR.

But the idea that there isn't an increase in the ratio at all is laughable. You'd have to be some type of fascinating conspiracy theorist to believe that none of the Pulitzer-winning stories of the past decade uncovered any type of corruption or wrongdoing.

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