Buzzfeed News was amazing real journalism at its finest.
It’s demise goes to show that humans do not want fact-finding journalism.
Even highly paid humans like HN developers refuse to pay for journalism so…
…what we’re left with is entertainment such as Fox News and the others.
Isn't it a more accurate description to say that this goes to show that if you dilute your fact-finding journalism brand with clickbait nonsense, then people will ignore all of it?
What I'm saying is there is already plenty of better (or just-as-good, or near-good) sources of journalism. I did not even know BuzzFeed News was separate from BuzzFeed, so why would I waste my time even looking into them when:
* There are already decent news outlets
* My only perception of BuzzFeed is that their quality is extremely sub-par, which is by their own doing.
In the competition for my attention, I'd rather lose out on a possible diamond in the rough that is BuzzFeed News, then subject myself to the far likelier possibility that BuzzFeed News was really just more "BuzzFeed".
In this edge case, that filter is wrong, but ask yourself - if Fox News came out with a new source that was of Pulitzer-worthy quality and was honestly unbiased, would you still give it the time of day? I still wouldn't, because the chances it adds something of value higher than my current level of journalism consumption is much lower then the chances that this magical "Fox News" offshoot is actually something decent.
Maybe just maybe Buzzfeed did both because in the end it’s the only way that journalism has been able to survive.
In the end you entertain and inform because to inform only means to go out of business.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pulitzer
“In the 1890s the fierce competition between his World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal caused both to develop the techniques of yellow journalism, which won over readers with sensationalism, sex, crime and graphic horrors. The wide appeal reached a million copies a day and opened the way to mass-circulation newspapers that depended on advertising revenue (rather than cover price or political party subsidies) and appealed to readers with multiple forms of news, gossip, entertainment and advertising.
Pulitzer's name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes established in 1917 as a result of his endowment to Columbia University. The prizes are given annually to recognize and reward excellence in American journalism, photography, literature, history, poetry, music, and drama. Pulitzer founded the Columbia School of Journalism by his philanthropic bequest; it opened in 1912.”
Good stories take months (sometimes years), so you need hundreds of good journalists to make good stories in a high enough frequency that people would even consider paying for a subscription.
You're either chasing public grants (and people always question your impartiality), or you die. You can count on one hand the ones that have been in this game for longer than a decade and even then you'll have fingers to spare.
Today we lost a great one.
Disclaimer: I work for OCCRP.org which I would (subjectively) put in the same basket. No Pulitzer yet, but we got a Nobel Peace Prize nomination this year!
Maybe not everything in life ought to be ruled by The Market.
I don't think it shows that at all. What it shows is that if you take something good and slap a brand on it that people associate with crap, people will think your good thing is crap and avoid it, too.
It doesn’t really indicate that we don’t want serious journalism, just that we’re not really willing to give every service the benefit of the doubt.
I certainly never did.
Non sequitur. People didn’t realise Buzzfeed News was fact-finding journalism because Buzzfeed proper was everything but. Plenty of people on HN pay for news, as evidenced by the constant complaining about paywalls.
Not wanting "BuzzFeed" to be someone's source of journalism is not the same thing as that person not wanting to consume high-quality journalism/news.
That said, I could understand the argument that if someone is generally well-read in this world, they would definitely know BuzzFeed News was, for the most part, a separate entity. I can only speak for myself - I'm fairly happy with my mix of Propublica, The Economist, USA Today, and NYT, but I've also not really analyzed that mix much since 2019, and I definitely don't read everything all the time (it's too much to consume).
The Steele Dossier was “good” journalism?
It was partisan hackery.
https://www.thewrap.com/buzzfeed-finally-updates-story-that-...