Hacker News Reader

Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

I think this makes a common mistake that this has anything to do with "journalists these days" or editorial slants or anything else.

I mean, go back and read some random New York Times issues from the 1950s and you'll see the same thing.

The simple reality is that there is not enough happening every day that is relevant to our lives that people actually need to pay attention to.

If you're not actually making some change your life, your diet, your finances... SOMETHING...then the news is just entertainment same as watching a Sunday morning cartoon.

View on HN

>I mean, go back and read some random New York Times issues from the 1950s and you'll see the same thing.

I've got to really disagree and I can provide proof.

This is The New York Times, today: https://www.nytimes.com/

This is The New York Times, May 3rd, 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20010503145505/https://www.nytime...

This is The Washington Post, today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/

This is The Washington Post, October 3rd, 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20011003085017/http://www.washing...

The difference in style of writing, specifically headlines, is more than noticeable.

I feel like you and I focusing on different things. I don't care what the headline says. I'm saying the entire content of the article is pointless.

Who cares that Snyder backs his coach? What are you going to do with that information? Who cares that Hollywood holds in breath? How do you change your life based on that?

(From your Oct 3 2001 link.)

No amount of "less clickbait headline" will fix the fundamental pointlessness of those articles to anyone's family, career, or daily life.

You're right, "these days" isn't correct, it's something I added without really thinking about it.

After all, the earliest sources of "Journalism" were not much more than PR rags for the local lord. "Yellow Journalism", is over a century old. There is an amount of romanticism for the era around Watergate, and the Fairness Doctrine though which a lot of people harken to for "the good old days"

However I think the situation has gotten incredibly worse for journalism in general because of there simply not being the money in it any more. Journalists are must produce more for less, quality slips even further, the attention economy becomes even more acute (although that aspect was always there to a degree in the tabloid news)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com