Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

What I see in journalism today is a classic shift from leadership to management. From substance to imitation. There are a lot of things that were meaningful once upon a time that now are mostly ridiculous imitations. For example, wearing an expensive suit, or a fancy watch, or having a big desk. Those used to be symbols of strength and power - now most people my age see that as nothing but douchebage-ness. The same goes for a lot of what's happening in news. All the holograms and "exclusive" and that other nonsense that is so terribly fake you can't help but cringe when watching cable news.

There was a time when flashing "BREAKING" in big bold letters and exclusive interviews indicated the most important things happening in the news. Now it means nothing. CNN was flashing "BREAKING" on the screens two weeks after the Malaysian airliner went down, preceding a discussion about whether or not it could have been a black hole that consumed it (that literally happened). Conversations between two parties are so canned that correspondents are even using the exact same wording as passed down by the party lines. Cable news is nothing but theater now, and to people who haven't grown up watching the news it seems very weird an disengenuous.

Focusing on externalities such as why someone became famous (a bathtub full of cereal?) lets the old guard not care about up-and-coming forms of journalism, dismissing its legitimacy. The legitimacy doesn't come from the content, but in how serious and domineering one can look when delivering the news. It's BS professionalism.

It is interesting to see the "established news media" try to tear down the youtube media by using their stupid stunts against them. The Daily Show has been doing that same thing against the news media for years, and like Hank Green said they've lost all legitimacy to anyone under 40.

It's pretty obvious to me that most of the people in the news business will say whatever their paid to say, or in some cases what they think will sell more books.

> whether or not it could have been a black hole that consumed it (that literally happened)

Lolwut?! They seriously discussed the possibility of a black hole opening up and swallowing the plane?

AFAIK CNN International did not have any such discussion though they did keep going on and on about the plane.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVd7k1Uw6A

"Even a small black hole would suck in our entire universe".

Jesus fucking christ.

Do you remember the effort put into explaining to people that when the Large Hadron Collider was turned on, it wasn't going create a black hole that would swallow the entire planet?

This is the audience CNN has to entertain. You know... morons.

I'm hoping that always on video news falls apart with the cable bundles. CBS is hoping it won't (they've launched a 24 hour internet news channel), but I wonder if that is a good sign.

Computing parallel: 24-hour news is like busy-waiting, but what people really want is a signal when something actually happens. The biggest reason the news has lost its legitimacy is that 24-hour news means that a lot of news must be invented, overemphasized, or endlessly re-hashed in order to fill time. This makes it harder to convince people that what you're talking about really is news.

I've ended up getting most of my political news from the Charlie Rose show on public television. The vast majority of episodes are about non-newsy things, like culture, business, and philanthropy. Every once in awhile, something important is actually happening, and there are a couple episodes about it before moving on. It has only made the whole idea of always-on news seem even more ludicrous to me.

I agree with you about the news, but disagree about the suits.

Most people still think a nice suit looks nice, and are automatically think the guy who looks like he cares about how he looks is more capable or responsible than the hippy in a hoodie.

Where this may be an exception is in tech but even then it's hardly universal. Edgar the Line Programmer and his buddies might dress like slobs because it signals they are not constrained by fuddy duddy old school managers like Mr. Rheinhard in the Matrix who was born before asynchronous IO was invented, but if you look at the people who really hold the power and money in tech, they are all wearing suits or at least looking very sharp if not actually donning a full three piece suit. There are reasons for this.

Mark Zuckerberg holds a lot of power. Sergey Brin holds a lot of power. How often do you see them in suits? This way of thinking is outdated.

It depends on the person. I am still in college and if you go to the business school, the students in there will say that a suit represents power. If you go to the CIS building it is the opposite. I have seen it, even though I do not think that a suit represents power, a lot of people still do.

Those two don't go to meetings where they need to leave an impression on someone.

When the CEO of my company (who wears jeans day to day) goes to a meeting with a new client, we wears a suit and tie so that the first five second impression the client gets is 'he isn't taking this seriously'.

That's why this way of thinking is very much not outdated - its a quick and effective way to show commitment to something, even if in meetings going forward people are much more casual..

So when you see Zuck speaking to an audience, is your thought more likely to be "Wow, this man is powerful, we need to take him seriously!" or is it, "Aw shucks there's Zuck, I can't believe he made a billion dollars"?

Think of it in light of yesterday's HN discussion of minimalism in possessions. If you were only going to leave yourself with a few feet of closet space, what would you keep. The suit and your dress shirts, of course, and then maybe a sports coat and your sport shirts and then maybe a khaki. Now you can go anywhere. You can't say the same thing about a wardrobe consisting of t-shirts and shorts.

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