Hacker News Reader

Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

In the past, wasn't it normal for journalists to have a particular specialization (even if that's not the _only_ thing they did), like "science reporter" or something? It is obviously impossible for every reporter to become an expert on every single topic that they might ever cover, but it is not unreasonable at all to get enough of a background on a topic that you cover regularly to be able to ask intelligent questions.

If news organizations were serious about this, they might actively look for people who _do_ have greater amounts of training/experience in a given field.

It may be true that in the current journalism paradigm the kind of skepticism called for is impossible, but it is absolutely not true that this is a fundamental state of journalism and that reporters could never become capable of doing it.

View on HN

One of the problems is that journalism just doesn't pay very well in general.

So news organizations may look for people with more experience in specific tech/science but I expect most people here would laugh at the comp and most aren't interested in paying for that news/writing themselves.

I do know tech journalists who are really good, but most of the people who write on deep technical topics either don't need the money or are doing it as a sideshow of their day jobs.

(Which, if they write for independent news organizations can be an issue. The WSJ reporter who basically uncovered the Theranos scandal quit because he couldn't give public speaking engagements.)

It doesn't pay well enough now.

30 years ago a BSc could accept a slightly lesser salary for more wide social-cache and more excitement working on magazine features and still afford a nice home in a nice neighborhood. It was dollar-a-word work at the time. Expenses too if you were good.

Pick any magazine-story-becomes-romance from the 80s, 90s, 00s (e.g. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) to relive the glory days.

Now, no science grad could make that choice.

Yeah. I do occasional contract work these days and $1 to $1.50 a word for stuff I'm not being paid for anyway by my day job is OK--and pretty much my floor. Ends up being a couple hundred dollars per hour.

But that's really not a random online pub rate.

Journalism was pretty much never a super high-paying profession for most but, as you say, it could be a solid middle-class job which it mostly isn't today absent other or related income sources (which tend to be difficult given ethics rules). And working for the NYT, WSJ, Time, or Newsweek certainly had a cachet as an often Ivy League grad.

Ideally, but AFAICT that's not how it works.

I have given a number of interviews to "Science" journalists, in two occasions even for science-focused publications. In each case I began the interview by asking the journalist to tell me about their coursework and self-study background so I can be sure to meet them where they are. In only one case have I met a science reporter who I'd consider minimally competent to report on science -- rather than eg write puff pieces -- and that reporter was educated in Europe.

Yea that’s my main frustration with overall journalism. The one subject where I’d consider myself in the 99th percentile of knowledge (more of a reflection of the sample) is basketball and it drives me up a wall the number of Medill type, classically trained journalists who write about a thing they barely understand. It’s such a disservice to the audience and borderline blatant misinformation

Yes, and Ashley Rindsberg covers the science-writer / sci-journo divide well, a divide which I was not hip to prior:

"The deeper phenomenon at work, however, is that in the U.S. a large number of professionals who cover science for general readers and for news publications like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal are not—and do not pretend to be—journalists per se. They are science writers whose field is science communications—a distinction with a huge difference. They see their role as translating the lofty work of pure science for a general audience, rather than as professional skeptics whose job is to investigate the competing interests, claims, and billion-dollar funding streams in the messy world of all-too-human scientists."

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/treason-sci...

There are still specialists but probably not as many as newsrooms have been cash strapped.

NPR had a bunch of economic reporters and they’re mostly ok but they still get a ton of stuff wrong, so it’s not a great solution either.

There isn't enough money in journalism anymore to sustain this.

Colleges really need to upgrade STEM requirements for liberal arts.

At my alma, science/engineering required 18 arts credits while arts required only 6 science/math credits.

They can't. Liberal arts classes are taught at such a massively lower level that this requirement would mean STEM courses would have to be dumbed down or liberal arts majors couldn't pass. Lots of failed STEM majors in history class, but did you ever run into a failed liberal arts major in diff eq?

I went to a UK uni but my observation was that the curve was much narrower and forgiving for humanities and then much broader for STEM. So this meant it was much more straightforward to get a top grade in STEM but on the flipside it was easy to objectively fail.

Whereas for humanities it was extremely opaque what it took to get a top mark but most people would get a decent mark. And almost no one fails.

In the US it's just A's all the way. If you want to see where the problem comes from, just look at the average GPA in a teaching degree program! Standards are in the past here. They are even dumbing down math class now in the name of "equality."

For some. My mother had a pretty solid biology and medical background before covering medical news.

> and that reporters could never become capable of doing it

I disagree for any current reporters who were selected by going to journalism school rather than by gaining expertise and then turning to journalism.

J-school in general is probably a poor criterion. Someone who has just done a bunch of reporting (and other things) isn't really less qualified to do journalism that someone with a J-school degree.

I'm not saying they are; if anything I'm saying the exact opposite.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com