On the angst of American journalists (2019) | Hacker News Reader

On the angst of American journalists (2019)

scholars-stage.org

52 pointsreally_relay58 comments

> Spend a few hours on twitter and you will think America is a 21st century Weimar Republic. But spend time talking with neighbors and friends in the flesh and you find that this feeling ebbs away. The economy is doing well. People are getting paid bounding sums. Nothing seems so fraught as the online hordes would have you fear.

I don't really recognize either side of this dichotomy?

Twitter is full of people being funny, kind, weird, fascinating as well as angry trolls, of the profesionall and amatuer kind.

Real life has illness, death, war, pollution and assholes as well as art, music, love, weddings, births, friendships etc.

I'm generally optimistic that things are getting better, on average, for the human race but don't see how pretending horrors as well as small unnecessary hardships aren't happening every day helps that progress.

Does this seem suspect to anyone else? It's hard to believe an author trying to instill in you the idea that everything is fine, actually, when stuff is pretty obviously not actually fine.

My neighbors are not well off. I am not well off. The people I know are mostly below or hovering around the federal poverty guideline. Far from making great sums, and it's been this way for a long time.

Are we sure the author isn't just rich, and coming largely from rich parts of society?

> My neighbors are not well off. I am not well off. The people I know are mostly below or hovering around the federal poverty guideline. Far from making great sums, and it's been this way for a long time.

Perhaps that is true of you and your neighbors but US unemployment is at a low not seen in over a decade. That’s what the Great Resignation is about. The problem that is likely to wallop the Democrats is inflation, not unemployment. Things are going at least ok for a lot of people. They’re going well for quite a few.

Perhaps that is true of you and your neighbors but US unemployment is at a low not seen in over a decade

Employment doesn't give you a snapshot of how well things are doing, though. If you can't get a job that pays your rent, things aren't doing well even if you have low unemployment. I'll also mention that part of the low unemployment isn't because things are doing well, but because folks have died, we've had a pandemic, and a number of folks have dropped out of the workforce because of things like child care, remote schooling, and retirement (pushed forward by the pandemic).

Employment doesn't mean things are going at least OK.

The article is from 2019 and things were in pretty good shape then, though I do think the author's broader point about the concerns of journalists not really aligning with the concerns of everyone else does still hold true.

The article is from 2019 and things were in pretty good shape then...

Were they, though? I mean, things have gotten worse since then - but that doesn't mean we were doing well then. Simply that things got worse.

They were. It would be trivial to point to a time in the past when things were better than 2019, naturally, but the economy was growing, unemployment was shrinking, labor force participation was increasing, inflation was low. Some portions of the economy were in better shape than others, as the article points out, but the overall picture was good and improving.

How would you know. did you ring the doorbell and as "hey, are you guys well off?" What does it mean to be well off anyway? Sometimes people who save a lot of money appear poorer than they are.

Do you not... talk, to your neighbors?

Do most people these days? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen my neighbors.

This reads as so outlandish it's close to satire. How can you not see your neighbours? Do you live in the middle of a huge field with nothing in it?

I know my neighbors exist -- I share a wall with them. There's thirty families on my block and I don't know the names of a single one. I think I've said "hi" to one once, when we happened to be on our balconies at the same time. But what ocassion would I have to talk to them?

> Does this seem suspect to anyone else?

Yes. Things are not fine.

The trouble with journalism is that there's too much punditry and too little reporting. Newspapers used to have large staffs of "beat reporters", who went out, gathered news, and sent it in. Today, most "news" begins as a press release. Check cnn.com. Everything above the fold today started as a press release or statement from someone, or is an opinion piece. Fox News is worse.

Collecting local news is now more the job of local TV stations, because they need video.

>The trouble with journalism is that there's too much punditry and too little reporting.

That seems more like a symptom than a disease. Punditry is cheap, good journalism is very expensive.

When the symptoms are focused around cost, maybe the disease is money and profit?

Back in 2019 when this was written, the US was economically doing well. Unemployment was at a 15-year minimum (1), net compensation was increasing for the middle/lower classes at the fastest rate in 20 years (2), and productivity was up. The economic crash started in Jan/Feb 2020 upon Covid worries, and then just kept on going with supply and demand shocks.

(1) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

(2) https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html

None of what you're saying implies things were good in 2019, though. It just implies things were getting better compared to the last two crashes we'd had, in theory, for some people.

I think people have a right to feel angry, and I don't think the pandemic is the thing that caused it.

If things weren't good in 2019, then they've never been good.

Seriously. In 20 years people will look back on the post-2008 economic frenzy like they look back on the Clinton years.

Have they ever been good? I come from a long lineage of people who had a parent die while they were still children. Sure doesn't seem like the good's been equitable or balanced.

The US Gini coefficient has been rising for 70 years, but life expectancies are high. So yes, better than ever for the median person, but also less equitable than ever.

The main idea of the article is tone of the national conversation is biased by people who are frustrated:

> These are also the people who drive the national conversation on twitter. Academics, journalists, policy hands, and lawyers.[2] The people who form the narratives that we understand our country have been frustrated by fate. They live uncertain, precarious lives; even the most successful and secure are surrounded by defeated legions. Each old college friend is a reminder of what they could have been or might soon be. They are more likely to be stressed by circumstance. Do you think that stress does not carry over into their perceptions of the country writ large?

At least for me my social media activity ramps up a bit when not so happy.

Outrage sells. The National Enquirer's entire business model has used this for the past 50+ years. The big difference is that the major news centers have copied that model and the author's thesis that it's a response to the move online makes sense.

But there is something about online discourse that attracts extreme opinions like mice to cheese. This really dawned on me when I checked out the subreddit r/decaf for people quitting coffee.

I mean, how extreme could a subreddit like that be?

Well, it turns out, incredible extreme. It's nothing but posts about "caffeine is just heroin" and "we need to ban this dangerous drug" and "I'm pretty sure caffeine caused my skull fracture".

It's this bizarre mix of every extreme view you could imagine, obsessive thoughts, anxiety and hypochondria. And posters just feed off of each other.

And I was just curious to read some dull opinion about "my sleep is better when cut down to 1 cup of coffee a day".

That's the kind of opinion you get in a break room at work when someone asks why you're not chugging your usual fifth cup by noon. For people to look up an online community specifically about something, they'd have to be a bit more interested in it than the average person.

That's something I miss about the forums of old: the off topic sections were generally just regular users commenting on whatever thread was at the top. It was a bit like a break room and could even form into communities.

Not really - in the break room there will also be 5 other people saying 'Don't be daft - cafeine doesn't cause skull fractures - talk to a doctor'.

>The National Enquirer's entire business model has used this for the past 50+ years.

Highly relevant: TIL that the National Enquirer was the most reliable news source during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. According to a Harvard law professor who gave the media an overall failing grade, the Enquirer was the only publication that thoroughly followed every rumor and talked to every witness. (<https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6n1kz5/til_th...>)

For a brief period, journalism was a respected professional-class career. Social media and streaming video killed that, so it's back to muckraking. I have confidence that eventually new economic models will emerge that allow writers to better meet the demand for "real" journalism, but figuring that out will take time and more societal adjustment to technology.

There is still a path to professionalism and respect in journalism. It’s the same tough one that’s always been there. War correspondents, investigative journalists, foreign correspondents in general.

There are still lots of journalists around who are devoting large amounts of their time and often taking substantial or even grave personal risks to their livelihood, their freedom, or even their lives. They’re doing all of this out of a deep conviction and sense of responsibility to uncover the truth about corruption, pollution, war, bribery, murder, and off-shore tax evasion and money laundering by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.

The problem is you won’t find their writing while scrolling through Facebook or YouTube or Twitter. You might find it sometimes here on HN. But otherwise you have to seek it out. It’s a shame so many people can’t be bothered to do so.

See: ProPublica as a great example (source: https://www.propublica.org), along with the ICIJ (behind the Pandora Papers, source: https://www.icij.org/category/investigations/) and other investigative reporting outlets.

The Investigations sections of The Washington Post (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigations/), The New York Times, and investigations by local newspapers are often very good, though occasionally they can be of lower quality.

I agree with vast majority of your comment, though to nitpick a bit, a curated social media feed can show this content (e.g. ProPublica's Facebook/YouTube/Twitter, and through using carefully curated Twitter lists). Also, from a cynical perspective, I know of some people doing it for the thrill, the fame, and the power to hold otherwise-powerful people accountable instead of for higher ideals, though I don't mind so long as the results are still ethically produced and rightfully empowering to the disadvantaged.

I think most people aren't actively seeking out knowledge about the most terrible parts of our modern society. That's why we don't take the time to look these things up, I get enough negativity from the news.

journalists killed journalism

There's already a model for this. Crowd-sourced journalists via Patreon etc.

Even in my small country (~3mio pop), people manage to make a cushy living on this. E.g. covering iffy cases of corruption and neglect that ain't reported much (if at all) on mainstream media. In many cases because media if afraid to loose advertisement money from related business structures.

Hah! No way would that work in any industry-changing way. Maybe some journalists here and there make that work, but it's not a model that scales to many, and it would be unbalanced in a way that promotes the already promoted while leaving those just starting out to traditional freelancing of 200 (maybe) per-piece until they build enough reputation to get patreon followers. In other words -- the same system we have now.

Yes and no. It certainly won't employ the army of want-to-be-a-journalist. But is that a problem if too many people want to work a fancy job and community cannot employ as many? Many people want to be cosmonauts, but we have few seats. Is that an industry problem? Probably not...

However, it can fix the trust issue in journalism industry. Once community is paying journalist wages rather than advertisers, quality should go up.

> For a brief period, journalism was a respected professional-class career.

That must have been an extremely brief period significantly before I was alive, because I have never heard a single human being imply this.

Journalism schools exist. The supply of people stupid enough to get a graduate degree that costs tens of thousands of dollars that takes two years of your life who don’t expect to make a good salary is quite limited. Unless the graduates of J schools always expected to rely on the family money or their supportive spouse.

There's a lot of examples of dumb schooling choices that continue to exist, regardless of prestige. I don't believe I share your outlook on this, especially given that I've seen it first hand.

> It is a common observation that internet life and real life don’t really match. Spend a few hours on twitter and you will think America is a 21st century Weimar Republic. But spend time talking with neighbors and friends in the flesh and you find that this feeling ebbs away.

Oh that’s fantastic for your neighbors.

Even the well off folks I know want to get out of dodge at this point. Everyone else I know is just trapped.

The economy is doing well.

It was..until around 4 months ago

Here is the lifehack to making a living at writing: be famous, well-known at something else and then pivot to writing. that usually does the trick.

Also be good at writing.

Journalism is this weird profession where its individual members have very little personal power and clout, because doing good research and writing is not a huge barrier to entry. Most are just freelance cogs in a big capitalistic machine that isn't doing very well by capitalist standards. But collectively they wield immense power to set the narrative that essentially drives democracy. I suspect this encourages pack behaviors.

> they wield immense power to set the narrative that essentially drives democracy

What you're describing has a name and it isn't democracy: it's oligarchy.

As evidenced in the 2016 US elections, their collective power is limited. It is not directly the power to control the military and police forces.

because doing good research and writing is not a huge barrier to entry.

it's a big barrier when one considers the vast majority of Americans, even those with degrees, cannot do either well.

If only 1 in 100 can do either well (enough) but with digital media reach you only need 1 in 10000 to fill such spots, that's still an oversupply of journalism job seekers who need some other way to differentiate themselves.

Separate rant, but journalistic writing feels so paint-by-numbers now and I think that reduces the barrier as far as writing talent required. I know journalists have always been taught to write articles with a certain shape, but it feels like we've moved beyond "inverted pyramid" to something more constrained. Every article must mention the effect of whatever is being reported upon the downtrodden, every article must end with a quote from an individual affected by the subject of the article that is twinged with irony or somehow fraught with meaning to make it personal.

It's as if all HN posts had to end with a coda that captured the essence of what the poster wanted to express in a dramatic way.

Pausing, chucksmash seemed reflective. "There's a dreary, pervasive sameness to the way we express ourselves now, and I suspect it's driven by engagement metrics" he said, slowly sipping his coffee before looking back to his phone with a sigh.

> Every article must mention the effect of whatever is being reported upon the downtrodden

Not if you read foxnews.com or worse... There's still a format there, the themes are different. It's about celebrating good guys with guns, eyerolling at progressive people ("snowflakes") or policies, whining about what straight white folks have to deal with these days, etc.

I don't know if it's any worse now than it's been historically TBH.

Academia produces thousands and thousands of adjuncts working far below the average American wage. To get to that stage you must spend five to eight years laboring as a graduate student, again working under the average wage. Only a fraction of those who go through this experience end up securing a stable university job because of it.

Maybe 10+ years ago the situation was so bleak, not nowadays you see tons of otherwise no-name academics, of all areas whether it's science , math, sociology, political science, or economics, carving out niches online, such as substacks, twitter, podcasts, YouTube lectures (like 3blue 1 brown), selling books on Amazon, fundraising, etc. It's not like your options are only limited to teaching at a university. One of the hidden benefits of academia , even if the pay sucks, is you get branding power, which you typically do not see with other professions. Noah Smith, for example, was something of a failed academic but now runs a hugely popular econ Substack blog.

(2019)

Learn to code :)

Seriously though, traditional intellectual pursuits are too crowded? Find new ones, it seems obvious.

That's all right for the people who are trying to make money but what about us the public who is suffering from a lack of journalism?

Is this public ready to pay for the privilege?

Some of it, of course, is.

Let them eat GPT-3!

Is the public suffering from a lack of journalism? I'm not sure I can identify any kind of journalistic output that's harder for the average person to find in 2019 (or 2022) than it was in 1980. I wouldn't deny that there are real problems in the new model of journalism, in particular the substantially increased incentives for bias, but I don't think a lack of journalism to read is one of them.

What? This is a stupendously bleak vision of journalism. Are you saying that there should be no new journalism because there's no benefit? If you're sourcing your news from national news, try looking for investigative journalism at the local level.

Either it's impacting your social web and you already know about it or it fundamentally doesn't matter. "News" being necessary is something people that benefit from it being necessary like to tell you, but it doesn't actually improve anything in anyone's life.

Heh, nah. I'm a journalist and I've seen its effects directly on local government. For example, there was a police accountability committee that needed the local city hall to create a process for allowing people to apply. They completely forgot about it, though. The act of me researching and calling political offices put a real fire under their assess to get the process moving again. Accountability works.

That has nothing to do with "social webs".

I'm saying that there's lots of new journalism. I would concede that the specific format of nonpartisan local newspapers is less popular than it used to be, but this has not in my experience made it any harder to determine what's going on in my local area, and I don't know of any evidence that others are finding it harder either.

Ah sorry, I think I misread what you meant in your original post. Yeah, I have the same problem. A lot of these issues would go away if journalist orgs worked together to a larger degree (sharing FOIA docs, etc), but the competition and risk of sharing info leads to naturally strange ethics systems.

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