Ask HN: What do you want from the news? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you want from the news?

15 pointsjaredwiener45 comments

Some background: I'm a former journalist, and have been working for a while on trying to build a new news platform that makes sense for this day and age.

I don't mean another blog or newsletter, but something that gives you what you need to know in a way that isn't terrible.

That said, everyone seems to have a little bit of a different idea of what they would change, so I'm taking a step back and just asking some basic questions. If you have a few minutes, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I have a brief survey here -- https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScJRzenKFf5GyrEo2tVlAEibwNJGggHD0Z0iBahhzMgmy5vTw/viewform?usp=pp_url&entry.1573644412=Hacker+News -- but also would appreciate any comments below.

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Above all clarity. Facts and opinion clearly differentiated so that people can understand what the facts are, and then opinions can be formed compared and all of that.

I personally would really love to see the whole two sides to every story thing abolished. It's not productive, it's not even real.

Finally, and this will run against AD dollars of course, but I would love to see news focused right on the interests of everyday Americans, and presented from a labor, populist point of view. We basically don't do that in the US and there's a huge demand for it, and I would argue a need for it, given the outcome of media consolidation today.

I think doing those things will require a viewer supported and or subscription model such that it can be independent and actually present news in a way that serves the original purpose which is a check and balance against powerful interests.

What sort of things are you reading now? What kind of topics do you read or wish you could read if it were available?

Labor news, presented from the labor point of view. (Not getting much of this, more please)

Science and tech.

Class and race.

International. Think how others see us, policy, economics. (This is hard too)

Medicine.

International, conflict, war, and the like.

I did not answer completely.

See edit to other comment.

In The Tin Men by Michael Frayn (1965) their attempts to computerise the news include ranking disasters by number killed divided by distance away. This is pretty much how the news works (though you might include colour of skin).

There seems to be still an idea that news should be presented in newspaper form. That is, there are "important" stories which warrant pushing to the top. If you want to know what stories are important, I think the trick will be to allow each subscriber to feed that back. Not by algorithms ( please!) but in some way which no other organisation has managed to get right. Over to you.

I think something like Wikipedia's current events portal [0] is a great way to take in news. I think it tries to give a sort of impartial global overview rather than focusing on a subset of stories, ideologies etc., with a minimal amount of sensationalism. Everyone comes with their own bias so I'm sure this could always be improved upon, but I think the approach is great.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Remove the money completely.

I don't care how - my parents were both journalists but it's a dead industry.

Australia's ABC News 24 is the closest I've found to what I want. No ads, no advertorials, ever.

What do you propose? It's hard to ask a team of professional writers, editors, illustrators, graphic designers, and web developers to work for free. Payroll costs money, as well as web hosting.

This is something I’m fascinated by, but know I’m not going to win by argument: actual, good reporting is very expensive. People spend money on so many things, but for some reason there’s resistance to paying for news. Why??

For me it's less an issue of paying for news, than that the presence of money in news gathering and news publishing creates a conflict of interest about what is shown to readers. The news organization and its reporting will be controlled by whoever controls its finances, which for mainstream news is usually some oligarch (I guess we can use that word here now). So the org publishes the oligarch point of view, as noted in the soubriquet "Bezos Post". In the case of ad-supported online news, it's the clickbait point of view, and so on. It is hard to stop any organization from morphing into this over time as it gains resources and recognition and sees those as a goal to pursue. The Wikimedia Foundation is another example that gets discussed here now and then.

The other thing is that news stops being news almost immediately. "Madeleine Albright passed away earlier today" was news this morning but now it is olds. I might be willing to pay for news but it's harder to tell myself I should pay for olds. Then I ask what value I gained in finding out about Madeleine Albright earlier instead of later, and the answer is: not much, so there is more payment resistance.

There's a strong resistance to paywalls on Hacker News and many subreddits (due to many newspapers historically having no paywalls in the earlier days of the internet), but in other communities, there is actually a broad acceptance for paying for news.

For example, the Financial Times, despite being comparatively pricey (I think about $400 USD per year), is doing well and has over 1 million subscribers despite its paywall since 2002 [0]. In 2021, The New York Times reached over 7.5 million subscribers, and is doing quite well financially (in contrast to most other news outlets in the US) [1]. Financial outlets (like the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal) do well because their readership tends to have more money, or work for companies willing to pay for subscriptions (as avoiding the news could put their businesses, especially if in the financial sector, at a competitive disadvantage).

The New York Times is an exception rather than the rule, because it offers readers the idea that they can become more well-informed and smarter by reading the newspaper (one can argue whether this is warranted, though it's an effective marketing argument). However, a lot of their revenue also comes from their Games section (crosswords and now Wordle, though Wordle doesn't have a paywall in its current form) and their recipes section.

In short, I think people are willing to pay for the news when it can perform a function that can't be accessed elsewhere. Free social media can't give the in-depth coverage that quality newspapers provide, especially when it comes to analysis from a business perspective. Separately, The New York Times has an unparalleled crosswords section and a very strong recipe collection.

[0] https://www.axios.com/financial-times-million-digital-only-s...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/business/media/new-york-t...

They will pay when they believe in and can identify with the source.

Taxes. IMHO journalism is a kind of infrastructure of the soul of a nation.

Gov't funding, a strong and corruption free journalism union, and a unicorn fart in every mug, easy peasy.

I think you have benefitted from living in an extremely secure place and time to not be worried about giving the media’s purse to the government and a union for journalists (like Realtors, maybe?).

Not saying it’s unreasonable, but that’s my knee jerk reaction.

> ... a unicorn fart in every mug, easy peasy

I thought that was pretty clear sarcasm

Nothing about "celebrities" please. I really don't care what one of the Kardashians is doing, or what Ben Affleck thinks of XYZ current event.

But what would you want to read?

For years I completely cut out news because it was too noisy.

Nowadays I catch up once or twice a week by reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events to get world current events.

And http://68k.news/ to get more domestic news without all the click bait and news page clutter (this still has junk celebrity news though)

I am missing more local and cultural things. I tend to get it from Reddit/r/NYC which is actually a decent subreddit. I still wish I knew more about what's happening in my neighborhood.

> How much do you value editorial curation? (from 1 to 5)

Can you translate that into concrete language I (not a journalist) understand? Is it selecting or rearranging or both or..?

> When reading/watching/listening to news, how much do you want a reporter to provide their own opinion or analysis?

I think inevitably reporters do this. "How much do I want them to" makes no sense to me.

> What topics do you follow daily? / Do you follow the news?

I did every day until one day ~15 years ago I didn't, at all.

I didn't bother finishing the survey, it didn't seem like any of the questions + my answers had value.

Ddingus wrote on this page "Above all clarity. Facts and opinion clearly differentiated so that people can understand what the facts are, and then opinions can be formed compared and all of that." I think in reality, there is a spectrum, with facts on one end, opinion on the other, and most of reality somewhere in between. It's impossible to separate the fact-part from the opinion-part for most things, nor does that makes much sense even talking as if there are two different parts. Good luck!

For topics france24.com seem reasonable for me. I’m interested mostly international topics.

Clear title and short description no bias listed vertical I prefer.

Wish there is (like reader view) a browser built-in for view facts, opinions, what others are saying —- as researched expressed by the author of each article.

I love France 24 for international news, especially to gauge if something ridiculous in America is making international headlines. You’d think the Brits are good for this but it seems they like to sandbag America at the cost of attention to their domestic problems. Thus continental news.

Also, France24’s B-roll is always sidedly endearing to me. Maybe it’s because Europe is a much older, more lived-in place than America. I recommend.

I want positive, individual focused, human interest stories that avoid: ideology, politics, and hot button topics. I want eye-bleach for my soul.

Groups of x identity stand up for themselves against cops in city Y, several are injured. Or individual of group x is discriminated against? Country Z is murdering people. No thank you.

This company in rural Idaho matches stray dogs with ex convicts, here's one of their stories from ten years ago and a check-in now. This library in upstate New York saved its micro-film from a flooded basement and is now putting it online. Hell yes.

Drop the "If it bleeds it leads." If it bleeds that makes me sad, stop focusing on bleeding things.

The news is mostly pointless non-actionable articles that essentially boil down to entertainment. That needs to change, journalists need to think about their audience and what they need and what actions they could take etc.

Take for example a human interest story about some guy converting his car to electric. Minimal mention of how he did it and no further resources for people who want to do the same. The article could have been reduced to just the headline and it would have been equally useful for its intended audience.

Nothing.

There is Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli [1]

[1] https://www.dobelli.com/en/books/

The pros of reading the news can outweigh the cons if you choose good sources. For example, a friend who is Chinese has become a lot more alert when going outdoors and taking public transit due to spikes in anti-Asian racism in many cities, which could help her avoid physical assault.

Quality newspapers have also been a relatively better source for information than social media (e.g. when newspapers identified a viral Tweet about supposed combat footage in Ukraine as a clip from a video game flight simulator).

I suppose one could completely cut out both social media and news entirely, but then it's hard to receive useful information (e.g. that gas prices and wheat prices are expected to go up, and so many people should plan accordingly).

I don’t want to take a survey, but I’d say this.

The biggest problem with the media is probably that technology has changed the business model of the news into a fear/outrage-porn machine. Once the algorithms find an angle that’s catchy and gets clicks and shares and views, there’s no stopping many normal folks from adopting that as their new sole reality without much critical pushback or questioning.

We went from Omicron panic to Putin outrage basically overnight because a new scary story gets more attention. Many people went from masks and vaccines as the central part of their identity to Zalensky and Ukraine without even blinking.

If anything causes WWIII, it’s going to be the media’s business model making people crazy with endless outrage clickbait and spurring politicians to do something stupid.

I get what you’re saying, but let me turn the question around a little bit. What are you as an individual looking for when it comes to news? Not what you want others to read/consume, but you personally?

I’m definitely not a representative human, but here’s a quick set of opinions.

One thing that I think Fox News does very well compared to other media outlets is that it’s very clear who their straight news people are and who their opinion people are.

You can’t eliminate human bias, but I think if you can make the biases that exist clear and make a crystal clear distinction between news and opinion that would be a good thing.

Also I’d like to see the news spread a healthy bit of skepticism on their own reporting. Occasionally repeat phrases like “this is pretty important, so don’t take our total word for it, verify this fact with multiple sources.” Healthy skepticism in news accuracy is a good thing.

And point out that ideologically different news stations say different things. It’s sort of informative to know that MSNBC says one thing about an event and Fox says something else. Knowing the bias and “talking points” that surround both sides is important to figuring out the truth.

And call yourself out when you get something wrong.

As far as commentating on the news goes (opinion) I’d like to see media focus a bit more on human motivation. When there’s politicians begging for X new powers because of some new media cycle about some scary new things, I’d like the media to be the watchdog that points out that politicians stand to get more influence and that lots of corporations stand to make piles of cash. I don’t think the obvious motivations get pointed out enough sometimes.

At the same time though, ensure that you’re not mind-reading and making clear when you’re guessing on motivations. If you went on CNN during the Trump era, there were times when literally half the headlines on their site were mind-reading what Trump was thinking about some scandal and portraying that as news. Mind-reading is not a thing, yet the media does it routinely and portrays it as news.

I’d also appreciate more out of the box thinking and contrarian opinion. If mainstream media panics about event X, it’s not informative when all of their “experts” have about the same narrow worldview about that topic. I don’t care if they’re commies or libertarians or whatever, but I’d like to see more points of view that don’t get brought up as often in a mainstream setting.

Fix the information asymmetry in politics. It is significantly harder to find media coverage that contradicts the dominant narrative. Note that this does not mean considering conspiracy or obviously nonsense content - it means covering alternative PLAUSIBLE explanations of events. That distinction seems to be lost.

Also, cite your sources for everything. EVERYTHING.

Information that is mathematically complete. I do not like when they choose to present numbers with the intent of convincing you of their point of view. E.g. the number of oil wells in city xyzzy has gone up 100%. (it went from one to two, but that is because the first is being replaced by the second one).

I think I want a list of all humans on earth and a history of their opinions on everything, stack ranked per subject by a democratic/PageRank rating of their expertise in that subject. Then I want an interface for filtering subjects as well as seeing rankings after filtering voters.

Something like Teletext news on Europe:

- Short description on the body of the article/new

- Almost no bias

What sort of topics?

I do not trust journalism nowadays nor do I think its current form achieves its goals which is fundamentally to inform and educate people. But I can't really fully blame you. Big Tech has grabbed all the eye balls and left you to fend for left overs. I believe that journalism really needs to reform itself. It needs to be more data-based and (much, much) less opinion-based. I don't know, maybe journalism needs to hybridize itself in a sort of wikipedia style medium with data, graphs, etc to enrich it.

Here are some suggestions (in no particular order):

1. Stop clickbaiting.

2. Avoid using ambiguous expressions such as sources say or sources familiar with the matter say or some other variant; I fully understand when the subject matter requires you to protect them - and I'm not fundamentally opposed to it - I am, however, opposed to the use of such expressions to distort facts and help build and maintain a certain narrative;

3. I want statistics. I want data. From different study groups with clear methodologies and origin(s) of funding. Most people will get this wrong because this is yet another area where people can distort facts as well;

(Maybe every N years publish something about statistics and how to interpret such studies to help new generations understand data. I don't know.)

4. I cannot stress this enough: take your time to investigate. If you can't back up your claims: do NOT publish. I mean it. You are only going to hurt your credibility and journalism in general;

5. If you are interviewing someone in loco, please, PLEASE, let. them. speak. stop cutting them off mid sentence;

6. Everyone makes mistakes but every time I see retractions it means the journalist in question didn't do their job properly. Or when a considerable amount of people/whatever deny a journalist's claims that can make me not trust their work either;

7. I want to learn technical details about what you're talking about too. Backlink to an older article about some sort of comprehensive explanation about that subject. Do not repeat yourself in newer articles;

For example, sometimes I read about quantum mechanics and every single time the journalist thinks it's a good idea to rehash the same old classical bits can only be 1 or 0, while quantum bits can be 1 and 0 at the same time phrase.

8. Stop publishing opinions, unless it is data-based. I want facts and data. Opinions are like assholes everyone has one.

9. Find a balance between negative and positive news. Being flooded with bad news all the time is not healthy for anyone's mental health, including journalists'.

10. And again, really, stop clickbaiting. Personally, I'm sick and tired of clickbait. This is probably one of the things that most contributes to my distrust of journalism.

Thanks for reading and good luck in your endeavour.

I want the ability to filter aggregated news. News.google aggregates highly biased and paywalled news in my region, I haven’t yet figured out how to filter irrelevant news like recaps on popular reality tv shows.

I also hate whatever that tech is that wraps the real page in their bloatware.

But most of all, I want to disable auto play videos.

What sort of topics are you looking for in all the noise?

Unless I’m your target audience specifically then that’s not a relevant question. I imagine the popular topics published by major news providers would be a pretty good indication generically.

But maybe that’s what I’m getting at. Something resonates with people when asked this question—that’s why we’re here. I’m curious what you are looking for — and especially what you might not be finding.

It does!

Not what you are asking directly, but I happen to have had many conversations about this.

Trust is low.

People feel spoken at, not talked about (in ways they identify with, not judged) or with, like we do not put average people's takes out there.

The big players get things wrong a lot. People know and they hate it. They hate not seeing corrections, anything to close the loop and show the wrong is recognized. Something.

Access journalism. Nuff said.

Point of view. That spoken at bit above. A majority of the people do not identify with that. They would love to get news for people who shower after work, if that helps.

That helps tremendously, actually.

Curious who you trust, and why?

First, I don't trust much.

I want to. It is hard to get informed in this mess.

Bias is OK. Frankly, as long as a source is honest about their bias, I trust them more!

Making objective material on a cable news cycle can't happen. It takes a lot of us, time, real effort to do that. Clarity matters because the facts can be had apart from a sources take. And I want that, a few actually, then weigh it all when I can. I can't always.

Clarity helps me trust more.

Right now, I have little trust with the big players. Indies are good, but spotty.

Here is an interesting dynamic:

Foreign media can do things domestic can't. Different advertising, or is State funded, or BBC style, CBC. And they don't worry about access so much. I trust that as a check and balance against what I see as a media monoculture here domestically.

Disclosure! If people do that? I want to trust. Will try. Because that matters, and speaks to their conflicts of interest. That is a big help with trust, when to trust, on what.

I live in Australia. State run media (abc and sbs) have a left-leaning (as in, more aligned with Obama than trump) bias. I’m certainly left leaning but Open to reasonable conservative/right wing perspectives.

The problem is that I perceive all right wing media to have a huge bias and don’t believe my view is unreasonable. there was a call for a royal commission into Murdoch and other media superpowers which reached 500k signatures on change.org, but barely mentioned in mainstream media. in contrast, a homo/transphobic conservative school ‘contract’ hit barely 20k signatures before being blown up by virtually all media for days (I’m not saying the topic/issue was unimportant, fwiw).

Think about that on a broader scale, locally there have been a fair few pushes into privacy / freedom erosion over the past decade. I’m not trying to sway people into my way of thinking, but I don’t think currently the media really gives people a reasonable discussion of real issues.

Not really, I’m too young. It’s probably hard to gauge based on the explosion of the internet, it wasn’t too long ago that we all believed in heresay

>I don’t think currently the media really gives people a reasonable

Agreed. Are you able to speak to pre Murdoch media there?

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