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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds. Even Matt Yglesias, who has spent most of his career to the left of Democrats as a whole, has been grumbling on his podcast about journalists these days failing to respect the difference between journalism and advocacy. Matt Taibbi (who I don’t like as a person but who is at least a real journalist) has written an entire book about it: https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/02/19/review-matt-taibbi-s-...

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The field being taken over by 20 year olds is a consequence of the field's revenue being eaten by tech. There's not enough money to make a decent living on now, so those filling the void will be more ideologically motivated.

Many journalists today come from wealthy families and have went to schools like Harvard and Princeton. They don’t need the shitty pay (although many are well paid) and are driven by the desire to be influential (i.e. power) more than any coherent ideology.

The change in journalism is one of the most important developments in recent decades. While always a business the economic incentives have completely changed and thus the product has been reshaped to best profit from the new environment. Things like accuracy and objectivity are now counterproductive both increasing costs and losing revenue.

Taibbi’s book does a good job of explaining these changes but the situation is still evolving and the definitive analysis has yet to be written. Much like the news today the story has to be pieced together from multiple sources with varying biases including outright misinformation.

I’m starting to think that this is the actual “normal” information situation. It’s everyone’s responsibility to determine the truth for themselves by comparing multiple sources, getting primary information and thinking hard about what’s going on.

It's about hiring people that will blindly follow orders, hence young and impressionable 20 year olds. Same thing that's been happening in Silicon Valley for years now.

You can quite easily judge the quality of a workplace by how young the workforce is.

> The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds.

Is ageism really a valid critique on professional journalism?

Works for me. Ill allow it.

Another part of the problem of journalism/advocacy is cancel culture. Some people want to deny that it exists, or that it's problem, even if it does. But it's precisely the reason that you felt the need to virtue-signal that you didn't like Taibbi (whoever he/she is; I don't know). Everyone feels the need to "take sides" in whatever is being discussed. All of this tribalism is part and parcel to the problem you're decrying. It's the thing that's blurring the line. The twenty-somethings have been raised in this culture, and it is a normal function of society to them. Only people in middle age or better can readily remember what the world looked like before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and opened the gates for pure advocacy. We're all living in Rush Limbaugh's media world now, and Twitter just gives everyone a platform, and takes it to the extreme.

No one's saying why I'm being downvoted, but Antonio Garcia-Martinez is making similar arguments about the media being fractured at the middle-age bracket in his latest piece: https://pullrequest.substack.com/p/twilight-of-the-media-eli...

It is super weird to read a comment about the difference between advocates and journalists holding Matt Taibbi out as a "real journalist". Taibbi is the apotheosis of the journaladvocate you're talking about. He's also a lot of other things that you don't like about journalism; for instance, see his coverage of financial engineering topics during the "sucking blood funnel days" of the 2008 crisis, for some Crichton Amnesia Effect fodder.

As always I'll point out that the real controlling law for all this stuff --- the quality of journalism, the quality of advocacy, the quality of software engineering, law, medicine, whatever --- is Sturgeon's.

Completely disagree. You just don’t like like Taibbi because you wear your politics on your sleeve and you just don’t like some of the things he’s uncovered in recent years. He’s just part of the prior generation of journalists with the old goals and a great writer with a great sense of humor. The “blood funnel” line about Goldman Sachs was both creative and hilarious.

Sturgeon’s law (most stuff is crap) does little to shed light on the massive CHANGES to journalism in recent years. Of course 90%+ don’t even realized it like you.

I couldn't have made my point better than you just did.

This response shows the quality of your discourse: quickly declare victory and walk away. Would have been great to know even a single specific issue you have with Taibbi.

I'll just add that Rayiner's politics are extremely similar to mine (we identify with different parties but have an almost identical set of positions), so your "politics" rebuttal is not the persuasive mic drop you're hoping for.

I'm not debating Taibbi with you because we don't share premises, so there's no point. You can feel free to declare victory to those who share your own premises!

My mistake. I forgot it is pointless to engage with you. Have a great day.

That’s fair. I was going to add in a comment about how Taibbi presaged the phenomenon that he’s now complaining about but that seemed like an unnecessary dig.

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