Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I would consider being a journalist a high status job anymore. Trust in the press, and the prestige that goes along with it, has been in a nose dive for years. It may just be my own bubble, but even the old guard publications are seen as having barely more integrity than the tabloids these days, and that goes for both sides of the political spectrum.

I suppose journalists may still believe that have high status, and that is the mechanism that really matters.

View on HN

It has been in a nose dive for "everyday" people. But there is a whole section of society where they are treated as minor celebrities. The number of those people are shrinking (thankfully) but they are sizable enough for some journalists to break out and make bank through their substacks e.g. Bari Weiss is bringing in 800,000K a year via substack.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-much-times-walkout-wei...

I don't think she is particularly interesting but a lot of people do.

Bari Weiss falls into the category "homogeneity creates rewards to heresy" in the article.

Bari Weiss is heretical to mainstream journalism because she has pushed back against CRT, mask mandates, etc.

Because she's a sane-sounding lefty that is voicing some concerns that the left-wing media is afraid to touch, she has found a great market for her content, just as the article says.

Maybe. I get your point. I saw the clip of her on Bill Marr's show that has been floating around. She has pushed back when it was safe to do so. The tide was already turning on that.

> I suppose journalists may still believe that have high status

It's how that "high status" is quantified. A journalist might look at their twitter profile, see the blue checkmark, see their 50k followers, and see their inbox filled with the ire of those on the other side, and conclude they are "high status".

Problem becomes, what is "high status" for one person is just "wasting time on twitter" to another person.

50k followers is elite tier, I can show you NYT journo bluechecks in the low four figures, who regularly get dragged by anonymous accounts with robot avatars.

The difference between being high status and wasting time on twitter gets, extraordinarily, blurry.

I think that's a large part of the point though. The author is claiming that journalists take the job because they believe it is high status. When others disagree the journalists move near each other so that they can circle jerk over their status without the pesky normal people who disregard them.

I think the article's points about 'status' apply more to 'status among your peers', yes.

Well it's no different now than it ever was. If you want free news, you could get that back in the day, there were these terrible free newspapers. If you wanted a real newspaper you had to pay. So can still get somewhat better news on the Wall Street Journal, but for a price.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com