Is it time to give up on old news?

I've certainly given up on many of the newspapers 'of repute'. I consider many of those today as 'newspapers of poor repute'. I'm looking at you, New York Times and Washington Post.

Reuters was a newsagency that I trusted for decades. No more.

For those three I have named, I feel that there is more likely to be truth when you reverse the news that they give you today.

"The old news industry has failed at adapting to the internet and every one of their would-be saviors — from tablets to paywalls to programmatic ads to consolidation to billionnaires — has failed them."

"And now here comes artificial intelligence to manufacture and devalue that thing we call content, robbing the old news industry of its sense of value and purpose in making the commodity. I’ve been trying to convince news organizations that they are not, or should not be, in content business, but that journalism is instead a service built on conversation, community, and collaboration. I have failed."

Even though the situation is not (yet) as dire in some parts of Europe, these quotes capture my sentiment as well.

"I say we must fundamentally reimagine journalism and its role in a society under threat of authoritarian, anti-Enlightenment, fascist takeover. I recently wrote about a journalism of belonging. With my colleague Carrie Brown, I helped start a degree program — a movement carried on by our alums — in Engagement Journalism. There are other movements seeking to remake journalism: Solutions Journalism, Collaborative Journalism, Constructive Journalism, Reparative Journalism, Dialog Journalism, Deliberative Journalism, Solidarity Journalism, Entrepreneurial Journalism, and more."

Sounds promising!

Old media want it both ways: They want to get clicks by opening their sites up to search engines, and then they whack users up the head with paywalls, nagwalls, softwalls and other forms of vexation. If you want to click-tease, GET OFF MY INTERNET. (I don’t have a lawn.)

News is almost a commodity. Someone will report it. And in a post-truth era, with so-called objective reporters and analysis playing “both-siderism” when there is a reoccurrence of fascism (by their own admission) and how did that work out 1939 or so?

On “social media” and billionaire-owned outlets, many people see outright lies and conspiracy theories, fed by AI and Russian bots, and the reader is asked to judge the credibility of writers. AI-written articles are not labeled as such, degrading everyone’s credibility.

I was hoping that some kind of WikiNews would gain some ground, and one might yet do so. But AFAICT, the best sources of news are email among friends and family, HN and a relatively small, heavily moderated and bot-proofed social site of one’s choice, reflecting one’s preferences, not fishing them out of your content, so as to present targeted ads.

I can’t address the serious need that some find for getting out news of special interests such as astronomy, and various arts and cultures. I personally would not put my photography, or even open-source advocacy out there on a site with conspiracy theorists, domestic terrorists and threats.

Maybe a site like the old dmoz (dmoz.org returns a 400) or odp.org, which works, might help point people to sites of interest.

All those brains, and what do they do? In old media, they try to sprinkle ancient business models with electronic fairy dust. Others move fast and break things, with no intention of repairing the permanent damage they did.

The thing that’s missing is caring for the customer. I’m so old I remember hearing “Delight the customers and our employees” even if it was a lie.

Now, it’s just “Let’s use technology to extract the most money we can as fast as we can, damn the customers and employees”. That goes a damn long way towards explaining the kakotopia the internet has become.

All elements of mission statements other than “More profits” are bullshit with very few exceptions.