Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did | Hacker News Reader

Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did

salon.com

59 pointsams118 comments

Journalists still pursue stories aggressively. The difference is that in the 1960s and 1970s, the stories they pursued in politics surrounded things that mattered like wars and Watergate. Today, the only stories that journalists will pursue aggressively are rumours that Obama is going shirtless on a beach. Having spoken to editors of journalism sites before, I'd have to only partially blame that profession for the change. Readership numbers validate and promote this behaviour.

If you want to fix what's wrong with journalism, perhaps we need to start in the classroom by encouraging a culture that values literacy. Yes, science and math are also important, and they've been getting attention. But being able to read and write lengthy essays then debate them is also important. IMHO people flock to the stupid journalism stories because they don't have the comprehension skills to understand what the meaningful stories' implications for them are.

You can assign as many essays as you want. Most people will never write a decent one.

Watergate saw the FBI take down Nixon through leaks to the press., not independent journalism. Without Felt the story would have been buried:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/washington/19felt.html?_r=...

This suggests a more practical remedy to political abuses - more checks and balances and a weaker multiparty system (avoid centralization of power). The Bush years stand in contrast as to the difficulty of effectively holding abuses of power in check when a single party dominates almost all branches of government.

And right now you have Democrats almost anywhere.

How about introducing a proportional system? Or approval voting?

On the contrary, I think both Cronkite and Russert did exactly what they were meant to do: increase ratings and make themselves famous. It's just that Cronkite was of an era when the networks had not yet realized that faux journalism got higher ratings than the real thing.

Maybe not Hacker News per se, but a very good analysis.

I suppose the Hacker News angle is looking at the poor journalism (or lack thereof) being done by the large media corporations, and consider hacks that can be used to beat them. What are some ways that a news startup could tell the truth and get attention, with a sustainable business plan?

We don't need to stretch the definition of hacking to be interested in something.

while true, we also have had interesting (in my opinion, at least) things flagged and deleted in the past because they weren't topical to the community.

I suppose the irony is I was trying to head off those OTHER people who might claim this is not Hacker News. :)

You didn't get to the point about how if you died anything but alone and penniless, you hadn't done your job. To me, that doesn't sound like a business plan for anyone on HN.

You committed the same sin the article was talking about: you celebrated it while ignoring its major point. ;-)

> if you died anything but alone and penniless, you hadn't done your job. To me, that doesn't sound like a business plan for anyone on HN.

I think following the moral behind that quip makes it unlikely you end up alone and penniless :)

Some cursory googling did not reveal Walter Cronkite's net worth, but I did find an article suggesting that his kids were concerned about how much he was going to leave to his girl friend compared to them. So alone and penniless does not seem to apply to Walter, either.

The Hacker News guidelines are a bit broader than what some participants here remember (or have ever looked up):

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Glad you linked to that, I was also bringing it up a while ago. People need to read the whole thing.

Personally, what attracts me to hacker news is not the actual hacker news. I can find that anywhere I want. It's that the type of person who would participate in a site called Hacker News is likely smart and holds interesting, well-reasoned positions on a whole lot of things that are actually not Hacker News.

I know all the actual "Hacker News". Like any serious person I am on the damn mailing list. But ... I like the people who'd be attracted to such a place. I read a lot of the comments. It's worthwhile.

We could build some kind of a computer network that allows people to send their classified ads to each other directly for tiny fractions of a penny, sucking away the reveneues of the newspapers. Then people could trade videos directly over the network, so they don't watch TV. When there's a natural disaster or terrorist attack, people can use this network to publish their photos and firsthand reports in minutes, and then other people using the network will pick which photos and reports are worth forwarding on. Then people won't pay any attention to TV news. Then we just need to figure out how to make it possible to publish things like the Pentagon Papers right away, before the government has the chance to suppress them. Also, we need people to use the network to spread celebrity gossip. Then the big TV news corporations will lose their air supply.

Do you think that might work?

I've really grown to dislike the American media. And no, not in the "the media is so left/right wing" way. It's just that they sensationalize the stupidest of topics while ignoring the real issues.

I don't think there's anything uniquely American about it. It's the same - usually worse - pretty much everywhere. The sad part is that it seems that the Web, once seen as hope for improvement, is actually making it worse.

Argh! This article reminds me of my love-hate relationship with America.

  95%: I hate you and everything you stand for
  5%: You are the most intelligent and likeable people I have ever met

I never know what to say.

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