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Comment by dgregd | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we should redefine what newspapers and journalists should do in Internet era.

Reporters from traditional magazines talk to interesting people, write articles and newspapers print them (of course I simplified things a bit).

But today I can directly connect to Elon Musk and Bill Gates twitter feed. I don't need any middleman to read blogs written by experts. How reporters can add value, do we really need them?

Yesterday I've got email from Vint Cerf about free and open web. The question is why this action isn't initiated by journalists?

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You only talk about positive celebrity news. In contrast, I think the most interesting newspaper stories are the ones that influential people do not want you to know about. I can follow my government's twitter account, but will they talk about how they are tweaking statistics to their advantage etc.?

Properly not, but then so wouldn't most newspapers, most of the time.

That kind of reporting is expensive, both directly and indirectly (in terms of goodwill and access to politicians). Newspapers are burning too much money now that they no longer have a monopoly on news (and, more importantly, ads) so they have to cut costs -- and the easiest thing to cut is the kind of expensive reporting that we really need them for.

I am almost always downvoted when I say so, but the NYT is not a good paper anymore, it has become a rag -- it may still only print what is fit to print, but it has long ago stopped printing exactly the kind of news they should be printing -- and which I would have been willing to pay for.

Sure you can connect directly to Elon Musk and Bill Gates, but is what you're getting from them fact? Are there any opposing views? Do you have all the context around what they may be saying? Getting your information from the horse's mouth is most valuable when you are getting all the information, ideally coalesced into a single place.

Augmenting a story with accountability and completeness is arguably the primarily responsibility of newspapers and journalists, especially in the Internet era.

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