Brontoforumus Archive
Discussion Boards => Thaddeus Boyd's Panel of Death => Topic started by: Mongrel on March 14, 2009, 06:35:33 AM
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I've been halfheartedly following this story for a few years now, though there hasn't been much in the way of significant developments. In fact, the most noticeable difference in the last couple of years has been the proliferation of in-print 'free' papers, of mediocre or awful quantity (most of their news content being recycled reprints with little to no staff-initiated investigations).
Anyway, I saw this article (http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090313.wfcover14/BNStory/Business/home), and it's a decent summary for anyone who hasn't been paying all that much attention.
I think that a nostalgic few aside, by and large most actual journalists don't have an issue with going over to online-only distribution models. The problem is that there's still a large gap between the fiscal capabilities and penetration of an online paper vs the existing traditional ones. For the most part, all the most respectable, useful, and comprehensive news websites are all outgrowths of strong print players (WaPo, NYT, etc.). We have yet to see a newspaper that has only ever existed on the web but is providing content with a depth and quality of the larger print operations.
The real fear here is that with each major paper that folds without an online counterpart to take up the slack, a culture of strong journalism is lost, one that in some cases has been carefully built for over a century. The issue is not the technological shift, but the economic one.
I find it an extremely relevant point that most of the content found on the sites of strongest of the new players (i.e. Drudge, HuffPo, Digg and their ilk... skewed views or not) consists of links or linked material that ultimately originates from conventional players. Debateably, the issue of opinion slant is also worth a look. Conventional media have never been completely impartial, but their income was ultimately derived from general circulation numbers. This formed something of a rough check on extremity of views. It didn't always work, but there was something at least. New media have been born in the age of personalized everything: their whole business model is founded on niche-building and target audiences. The practical upshot of this still isn't clear, I think, but I will freely admit to being uncomfortable with the idea of a paper that tells me only what I want to hear. Not so much in the sense that anyone is being deliberately misled, but more the worrying image of someone reading a copy of Computing World and telling themself that they're reading the news.
So I dunno, discuss?
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Aside from the odd independent journalist (http://michaeltotten.com/) (link goes to one I read regularly), it seems only traditional media have the resources to engage in actual reporting of world events. It's very expensive to send people to places in order to write about things that happen there, so the information that is the essential ingredient of journalism possibly can't be sustained by conventional Internet business models.
On the other hand, there is enthusiast journalism, which is sustainable entirely through the Internet since its expenses are lower. There's editorializing, which in many cases people will do for free, and can be built off the backs of journalism that has already been done. Local journalism can probably be done on the cheap as well, though the Internet might not be an appropriate place to distribute local news.
One hopes that the primary value of online journalism as it has developed is as a check against journalistic monoculture. Since the Internet as it is today can provide coverage of events in specialist fields, then being a sort of ad-hoc watchdog group with every possible agenda would probably be the best thing online media can do for traditional media. Keep the competition honest by punishing them for any attempt to abuse their position, and we get better journalists and better journalism.
There's nothing that can be done about people who will choose to get their news from a source whose slant matches their own. Even in the age when punditry was confined to the opinion pages and one's own circle of friends, news articles would be interpreted according to the reader's position, and two kinds of people existed: those who responded by muttering "What an idiot!" to editorials they disagreed with all of the time, or only most of the time. For the former, opinion sites still love to present the opposition's arguments even if only to attempt to refute them, so there's no danger that they won't still be exposed to differing viewpoints; the latter are the sort who'd seek out other positions than their own at least occasionally.
It might be that the traditional model of the acquisition and distribution of news has been doomed by the Internet. If this is the case, I'd say it's far too early to tell the full extent of the new advantages and disadvantages of the system that will emerge to replace it. But it's clear that all the journalistic talent that exists today won't just vanish. As long as there are good reporters, there will be good reporting; and as long as it's on the Internet, there will be a way to find it, consume it, and expand upon it.
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Newspapers cost a quarter unless you buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. Online newspapers cost nothing unless you have to buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. The difference is you can't pick one up to read if you're stuck at a gas station or something, unless of course you've got a notebook or something.
The problem hasn't a god damned thing to do with technology, that's just a convenient thing to blame (see also: music.) The problem is that the mainstream is succumbing to entropy while remaining so consolidated that it's rare for anything to be able to replace its falling-off pieces.
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Aside from the odd independent journalist (http://michaeltotten.com/) (link goes to one I read regularly), it seems only traditional media have the resources to engage in actual reporting of world events. It's very expensive to send people to places in order to write about things that happen there, so the information that is the essential ingredient of journalism possibly can't be sustained by conventional Internet business models.
On the other hand, there is enthusiast journalism, which is sustainable entirely through the Internet since its expenses are lower. There's editorializing, which in many cases people will do for free, and can be built off the backs of journalism that has already been done. Local journalism can probably be done on the cheap as well, though the Internet might not be an appropriate place to distribute local news.
One hopes that the primary value of online journalism as it has developed is as a check against journalistic monoculture. Since the Internet as it is today can provide coverage of events in specialist fields, then being a sort of ad-hoc watchdog group with every possible agenda would probably be the best thing online media can do for traditional media. Keep the competition honest by punishing them for any attempt to abuse their position, and we get better journalists and better journalism.
There's nothing that can be done about people who will choose to get their news from a source whose slant matches their own. Even in the age when punditry was confined to the opinion pages and one's own circle of friends, news articles would be interpreted according to the reader's position, and two kinds of people existed: those who responded by muttering "What an idiot!" to editorials they disagreed with all of the time, or only most of the time. For the former, opinion sites still love to present the opposition's arguments even if only to attempt to refute them, so there's no danger that they won't still be exposed to differing viewpoints; the latter are the sort who'd seek out other positions than their own at least occasionally.
It might be that the traditional model of the acquisition and distribution of news has been doomed by the Internet. If this is the case, I'd say it's far too early to tell the full extent of the new advantages and disadvantages of the system that will emerge to replace it. But it's clear that all the journalistic talent that exists today won't just vanish. As long as there are good reporters, there will be good reporting; and as long as it's on the Internet, there will be a way to find it, consume it, and expand upon it.
I think the thing is that good reporters require resources and support. It's far easier for a government, large business, or wealthy citizen to bully a small independent reporter with no resources to pay for lawyers (or in extreme cases, security). It's harder for small independants to gain access to protected or privileged information due to legal, time, and financial costs, and it's harder for a small-timer to put a lot of time and energy into a single story, since he'll need to keep up the day-to-day stuff to earn a living.
Newspapers cost a quarter unless you buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. Online newspapers cost nothing unless you have to buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. The difference is you can't pick one up to read if you're stuck at a gas station or something, unless of course you've got a notebook or something.
The problem hasn't a god damned thing to do with technology, that's just a convenient thing to blame (see also: music.) The problem is that the mainstream is succumbing to entropy while remaining so consolidated that it's rare for anything to be able to replace its falling-off pieces.
I'd agree that entropy and complacency are big issues here that extend well beyond the sad state of one our most longstanding cultural checks on government.
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Aside from the odd independent journalist (http://michaeltotten.com/) (link goes to one I read regularly), it seems only traditional media have the resources to profit from actual reporting of world events.
I mean, web or not, it's these people that have the Method to find news and report them down pat - at least news as they're commonly understood. Remember all the complaints that newspapers don't cover science and whatnot? Now web-based publications can fill those holes (see just how popular Slashdot is)
Frankly, what I would like, and could never get from newspapers, is a way to get all pertinent information to a subject when I'm making a decision on it, whether it's choosing a new cellphone or electing a politician. Even newspaper websites are still reluctant to index their information in this way, and Google can only do so much.
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Newspapers cost a quarter unless you buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. Online newspapers cost nothing unless you have to buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. The difference is you can't pick one up to read if you're stuck at a gas station or something, unless of course you've got a notebook or something.
The problem hasn't a god damned thing to do with technology, that's just a convenient thing to blame (see also: music.)...
Yes, but the amount they're able to charge for advertisements and personals is directly linked to the number of impressions they're likely to get. Here the newspapers take a double blow, as people who get their news online aren't only not buying subscriptions or singles, they're probably getting them from a news aggregating "blog" and not from the paper's own website.
It is going to be tough to find a way for quality reporting to continue to happen in any mainstream fashion, as one hyper-specialized report from each side doesn't come close to approaching what even today's weakened news reporting did for public awareness.
I don't know, maybe Jon Stewart will kick CNN square in the man-parts often enough that they maybe think about starting to try to maybe be what they pretend they are?
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Well, he spent the entire last week bitching out CNBC for not reporting the right stuff, so maybe.
The aggregate-and-link model simply suggests that, in order to earn a profit, a news site must actually report on articles that are worth reading. Tying profit to actual quality isn't a terrible thing for most of us, just those who have coasted too long on being able to turn in crud and making a buck anyway for being the only game in town.
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I need to point out that I still believe strongly in organizations such as the BBC, and the case for public-funded, independent news casts whenever possible. Ditto for the CBC, although I really couldn't care about the fiction they produce short of the tradition sketch comedies. These outlets report where traditional private-owned media falls short. However, their newscasts spend less time on opinion than the trads.
While these organizations must adapt to the aggreate-and-link model for cost-recovery purposes, they should not become profit-based organizations and should maintain a strong place in society.
I also have a strong belief that in a couple years, Amazon might just breathe another strong breath to rekindle the ember of the waning tradition press in terms of subscriptions, especially in the competent newspapers which aim for the upper middle class, who find themselves spending transit time pawing through their blackberries. Kindle-based subscriptions would save a lot of overhead for the newsprint if it catches on.
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Wait just a moment, what kind of mustard was the President putting on that burger?
OMG DIJONGATE (http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2009/05/msnbc-hides-obamas-dijon-mustard.html)! :ohshi~:
::(: :facepalm:
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If this is the worst you have to worry about, consider yourselves damned lucky.
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Is dijon mustard made from babies or something?
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Yes.
French babies. :vampire:
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Bon appétit, Vendredi.
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Bon appétit, Docteur Vendredi.
:suave:
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If this is the worst you have to worry about, consider yourselves damned lucky.
That the american news media is the enemy of the people and we have no legal means remaining to us to force them to do their critical duties? That actually seems pretty serious to me!
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Point.
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We could develop new technologies which render them completely irrelevant.
Oh hey look at this internet thing I found.
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You can get back to me when Salon.com is relevant.
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Or most of the internet for that matter.
EDIT: In fairness to Noro, the most popular internet news sites are aggregators that piggyback off of the online versions of conventional news sites, taking valuable ad revenue away from those doing the actual work.
I don't mean to be as harsh as that sounds (I'm not crying THEIF THEIF!), but aggregators are in danger of killing their golden geese and if they do so we will all be much poorer for that.
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So if we take away the valuable corporate money backing of news sites, we will somehow be worse off for losing the news we got from those corporate money backed news groups.
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Well, seeing as how for-pay online news sites have died the hard death and the genie of the free news site is now out of the bottle, what magical money tree would you suggest be tapped to pay reporters salaries?
Newspapers have been taking ads for well over a century, from both individuals and businesses. It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that this is some new form of horrible corruption.
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but aggregators are in danger of killing their golden geese and if they do so we will all be much poorer for that.
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend anything of value would be lost either.
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I'm not following this argument at all. Question: are you under the impression that aggregators are directing traffic away from the sites that they are feeding from?
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but aggregators are in danger of killing their golden geese and if they do so we will all be much poorer for that.
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend anything of value would be lost either.
Snide comments about the current dismal state of journalism aside, I don't think we can really pretend that the public would be served by a grand collapse of the conventional news media.
Say there was a grand scandal where a substantial number of recent engineering graduates were cutting corners on building design, making shoddy buildings that killed people. Somehow I don't think the appropriate response is either 'abolish engineering school' or 'all buildings will now be designed by online volunteer comittees'.
I'm not saying that won't be possible in the future. But it's certainly not going to happen RIGHT NOW.
I'm not following this argument at all. Question: are you under the impression that aggregators are directing traffic away from the sites that they are feeding from?
In the case of aggregators that reprint all or most of the text from the orginal articles, yes. I agree that a fair-handed aggregator will simply provide links.
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Say there was a grand scandal where a substantial number of recent engineering graduates were cutting corners on building design, making shoddy buildings that killed people. Somehow I don't think the appropriate response is either 'abolish engineering school' or 'all buildings will now be designed by online volunteer comittees'.
::(: This comparison is so terrible I don't even I just I I I rrrrrrr rrrrrrr rrrrrrr
(http://doom.pyoko.org/ThatMakesMeAngry.jpg)
"Can't do it immediately" isn't much of an argument against abolishing and reforming journalism, honestly. Maybe a fear that it'd just be restructured into an even worse beast by the corporate masters, sure, that is a valid jibe. But "deal with it, how dishonest is the American media really" was getting old from your side of the fence the last ten times you said it, you old kill joy.
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To challenge your metaphor, "close every single engineering school ever" is clearly not a proper response. "Close every single engineering school that is not performing satisfactorily, even if that means all of them, and replace them with better-regulated institutions" certainly is, even if in real world terms the transition may be somewhat painful and expensive.
s/engineering school/journalistic institution/g as necessary.
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Say there was a grand scandal where a substantial number of recent engineering graduates were cutting corners on building design, making shoddy buildings that killed people. Somehow I don't think the appropriate response is either 'abolish engineering school' or 'all buildings will now be designed by online volunteer committees'.
::(: This comparison is so terrible I don't even I just I I I rrrrrrr rrrrrrr rrrrrrr
(http://doom.pyoko.org/ThatMakesMeAngry.jpg)
"Can't do it immediately" isn't much of an argument against abolishing and reforming journalism, honestly. Maybe a fear that it'd just be restructured into an even worse beast by the corporate masters, sure, that is a valid jibe. But "deal with it, how dishonest is the American media really" was getting old from your side of the fence the last ten times you said it, you old kill joy.
I'm not saying to "deal with it". I have never said that.
I am only saying that blowing it all up is stupid.
Forget the parable. We have an institution, it is - let's face it - a Business. A business that is nominally intended to serve the public good. It is not doing that very well right now. It just strikes me as extraordinary stupid to say we should be abolishing the profession as a result. If our professionals are not serving us well right now, there are things we should be doing but 'replace all the professionals with amateurs and dilettantes' is not a workable solution.
If you think I am being flippant with that last line, please direct me to an online-only newspaper with the resources comparable to a conventional print publication (old print publications that have packed up and moved entirely over to the Internet notwithstanding - actually this may be the way things go in a lot of places).
Reporting the news well takes resources and, as with any profession, a degree of professionalism. Both of which are in short supply to online-only news outlets. Given time, this may change, in fact, it probably WILL change. But as of right now, all the most respected online news sites are mere extensions of well-respected print publications. And I do not want to think about what a government could do in even a five-year stretch where no serious news investigations take place. Please don't say something excruciating like "that's what we already have". Even in the darkest days of the Bush Empire, there were more than a few papers doing good work and publishing stories. If the news media were truly as monolithically slavish as it is being painted here, it would be all MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners 24/7.
Finally, I'm not saying it's intentional on your part but you guys are seriously ignoring the elephant in the room that is the consumer. If people want to read drivel and pap, if they flock to trash that tells them only what they want to hear, then they must share the blame for not demanding better.
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To challenge your metaphor, "close every single engineering school ever" is clearly not a proper response. "Close every single engineering school that is not performing satisfactorily, even if that means all of them, and replace them with better-regulated institutions" certainly is, even if in real world terms the transition may be somewhat painful and expensive.
s/engineering school/journalistic institution/g as necessary.
That's fine I'm totally down with that, but that's a nuanced view that isn't really represented by blanket stements of "Kill em all! Rawr!". that's not really what you guys were saying. "nothing of value would be lost" is pretty blunt.
I would ask one question though: Who decided what gets shut down? How?
The government? The public that's lapping up the tripe being peddled?
I'm happy to agree that the traditional media have in many (if not most) cases become terribly lazy, slipshod, or outright corrupt. But for now at least our new internet sources are playing angry college pamphleteer to our slovenly corporate behemoths. Neither is really even close to ideal.
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THREADSPLITTYMERGETHINGUMBOB.
There you go Thad, now you can post in this topic after all.
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I am touched that you would quote my post for no reason other than to let everyone read it twice. It was a pretty good post I think but I try to be humble.
I'm not saying to "deal with it". I have never said that.
I am sure avid readers can find your charming Canadianisms themselves. (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?board=4.0)
I am only saying that blowing it all up is stupid.
Good thing I am arguing for reform and oversight, then!
Forget the parable. We have an institution, it is - let's face it - a Business. A business that is nominally intended to serve the public good. It is not doing that very well right now. It just strikes me as extraordinay stupidy to say we should be abolishing the profession as a result.
See above. I guess I am a naive fool with high-minded ideals but there should be a strict definition and separation of news as a business and news that engages in business. You have to sell out-dated tree-based pamphlets to suckers, sure, but maybe you can see why we'd all be a little better off if Fox News was abolished entirely. They can still show cartoons, I guess.
If our professionals are not serving us well right now, there are things we should be doing but 'replace all the professionals with amateurs and dilettetants' is not a workable solution.
I'll take an honest "amateur" over a professional hack any day. Cool position assuming that everyone not associated with a big professional news organization cannot possibly speak the truth any better than they could, I guess!
If you think I am being flippant with that last line, please direct me to an online-only newspaper with the resources comparable to a conventional print publication (old print publications that have packed up and moved entirely over to the internt notwithstanding - actually this may be the way things go in a lot of places).
You can't fool me old man Kill.
Reporting the news well takes resources and, as with any profession, a degree of professionalism. Therefore, only the funded can tell us the true news?
Both of which are in short supply to online-only news outlets.Therefore, their words are false?
I'm being a prick here, but come on.
Given time, this may change, in fact, it probably WILL change.
I would ask one question though: Who decided what gets shut down? How?
The government? The public that's lapping up the tripe being peddled?
Good point and basically my only acceptable outcome, barring some sort of destiny/life-changing desire and momentum to go change things myself. I opted to simply never enter journalism in the first place.
But as of right now, all the most respected online news sites are mere extensions of well-repected print publications.
If you're not going to bother looking, I'm not either.
And I do not want to think about what a government could do in even a five-year stretch where no serious news investigations take place. Please don't say something excruciating like "that's what we already have".
TRUTH HURTS DON'T IT
Even in the darkest days of the Bush Empire, there were more than a few papers doing good work and publishing stories. If the news media were truly as monolithically slavish as it is being painted here, it would be all MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners 24/7.
(http://doom.pyoko.org/ThatsTheJoke.jpg)
As an aside, that's why I'd go with reform over actual blow-it-all-up. Maybe there are people who get nice jobs and can still report serious, hard-hitting stories as they occur.
And maybe playboy.com and a pair of "unprofessionals" broke the Tea Party origins.
Aside Aside as I write that: And they didn't need a bunch of business-sponsored money to do some simple online page history checks. The same medium that could mark the doom of print news is providing most of the tools to do so on both ends of Reporter and Reader. Walkin' around and askin' questions hasn't gotten more expensive aside from gas prices joke goes here.
Finally, I'm saying it's intentional on your part but you guys seriously ignoring the elephant in the room that is the consumer. If people want to read drivel and pap, if they flock to trash that tells them only what they want to hear, then they must share the blame for not demanding better.
If people want to read tabloids, fine. Tabloids are clearly labeled. But reform my news so that the flow of information is pure and refined. And never pretend that because the mass thinks it's cool, who could object? Otherwise I'd go back to being a prick in the Pokemon thread.
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Ah yes. You always know things are getting dumb when you hit the line-by-line reply stage.
I am touched that you would quote my post for no reason other than to let everyone read it twice. It was a pretty good post I think but I try to be humble.
I quoted it because there were three more posts between yours and mine. Woo.
I'm not saying to "deal with it". I have never said that.
I am sure avid readers can find your charming Canadianisms themselves. (http://brontoforum.us/index.php?board=4.0)
Cute. Just so long as you don't have to back up anything you say. That's a good journalist.
I am only saying that blowing it all up is stupid.
Good thing I am arguing for reform and oversight, then!
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend anything of value would be lost either.
:facepalm:
You know I sometimes often make dumb blanket statements which start an argument. Guess what? I don't have an exclusive license on that.
Forget the parable. We have an institution, it is - let's face it - a Business. A business that is nominally intended to serve the public good. It is not doing that very well right now. It just strikes me as extraordinay stupidy to say we should be abolishing the profession as a result.
See above. I guess I am a naive fool with high-minded ideals but there should be a strict definition and separation of news as a business and news that engages in business. You have to sell out-dated tree-based pamphlets to suckers, sure, but maybe you can see why we'd all be a little better off if Fox News was abolished entirely. They can still show cartoons, I guess.
If our professionals are not serving us well right now, there are things we should be doing but 'replace all the professionals with amateurs and dilettetants' is not a workable solution.
I'll take an honest "amateur" over a professional hack any day. Cool position assuming that everyone not associated with a big professional news organization cannot possibly speak the truth any better than they could, I guess!
If you think I am being flippant with that last line, please direct me to an online-only newspaper with the resources comparable to a conventional print publication (old print publications that have packed up and moved entirely over to the internt notwithstanding - actually this may be the way things go in a lot of places).
You can't fool me old man Kill.
Reporting the news well takes resources and, as with any profession, a degree of professionalism. Therefore, only the funded can tell us the true news?
Both of which are in short supply to online-only news outlets.Therefore, their words are false?
I'm being a prick here, but come on.
Son, you are living in a god-damned dreamworld if you think reporting the news doesn't take resources.
At the very very least, lawyers cost a hell of a lot of money. Detailed investigations, protection of sources, the ability to travel freely and on short notice, access to records, equipment, legal challenges - all these take time and money. The fact that Playboy broke a story once over something insufferably retarded, does not invalidate the whole concept of investigative journalism. Nor does two guys with a blog breaking a story invalidate a lifetime of learning that a good, sound journalist has accrued. Good, fair journaists are not mythical bogeymen used to scare the Bill O'Reillys of the world, they do exist, even if they are the minority these days.
And my saying this DOES NOT mean, that I am advocating for corporate mastodons to fund in-house PR machines disguised as 'independant' news sources. I'm trying to have a fair discussion here you guys keep trying to paint me into as the defender of the Fox News bunch.
Yes. You ARE being a prick. And it's stupid because you're looking for an enemy where there isn't one. I already agreed that we have a serious problem.
Given time, this may change, in fact, it probably WILL change.
I would ask one question though: Who decided what gets shut down? How?
The government? The public that's lapping up the tripe being peddled?
Good point and basically my only acceptable outcome, barring some sort of destiny/life-changing desire and momentum to go change things myself. I opted to simply never enter journalism in the first place.
If I was being more of a dick, I would call that cop-out. But I don't have the answer either - that's why I asked: to put the damn question up for discussion.
But as of right now, all the most respected online news sites are mere extensions of well-repected print publications.
If you're not going to bother looking, I'm not either.
And I do not want to think about what a government could do in even a five-year stretch where no serious news investigations take place. Please don't say something excruciating like "that's what we already have".
TRUTH HURTS DON'T IT
Even in the darkest days of the Bush Empire, there were more than a few papers doing good work and publishing stories. If the news media were truly as monolithically slavish as it is being painted here, it would be all MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banners 24/7.
(http://doom.pyoko.org/ThatsTheJoke.jpg)
As an aside, that's why I'd go with reform over actual blow-it-all-up. Maybe there are people who get nice jobs and can still report serious, hard-hitting stories as they occur.
And maybe playboy.com and a pair of "unprofessionals" broke the Tea Party origins.
Aside Aside as I write that: And they didn't need a bunch of business-sponsored money to do some simple online page history checks. The same medium that could mark the doom of print news is providing most of the tools to do so on both ends of Reporter and Reader. Walkin' around and askin' questions hasn't gotten more expensive aside from gas prices joke goes here.
I think I replied to this collected gabble above.
Finally, I'm saying it's intentional on your part but you guys seriously ignoring the elephant in the room that is the consumer. If people want to read drivel and pap, if they flock to trash that tells them only what they want to hear, then they must share the blame for not demanding better.
If people want to read tabloids, fine. Tabloids are clearly labeled. But reform my news so that the flow of information is pure and refined. And never pretend that because the mass thinks it's cool, who could object? Otherwise I'd go back to being a prick in the Pokemon thread.
I'm not talking about tabloids. I'm talking about most news these days. Look at how large and hideous the celebrity pages have become. It's almost inescapable.
If we displayed even half the obsession for our leaders every word and action that we do for some of these random china dolls, our democracies would be a hell of a lot healthier.
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Ah yes. You always know things are getting dumb when you hit the line-by-line reply stage.
I actually just like it, it is not a part of the patented Doom-tech arsenal.
I quoted it because there were three more posts between yours and mine. Woo.
thatsthejoke.jpg
Nothing of value was lost
Doom, if they abolished all current journalism, what would you think?
Doom: And nothing of value was lost.
Doom, you just want to blow it all up! Isn't there another way?
Doom: If we are not Mad Stan, I guess I could go for some reform.
AH HAH, YOU ARE A TWO-FACED FELLOW.
Doom: :( ): Oh no.
Is this the part where I mention that you are also known for winning arguments with yourself?
The fact that Playboy broke a story once over something insufferably retarded
Sup personal bias. "Just because they did it doesn't mean I have to value it objectively." I thought you might appreciate the one time I bothered to reply to your half-assed "well, JUST PROVE ME WRONG THEN :smug:" questions.
I don't support Fox
So when I say reform and oversight is good, and that we can probably get a lot more good from "amateurs" then from professional hacks, did you make a colossal typo in agreeing with me?
It was sort of the first serious thing I said, so let me say it again: The News needs business support to run. I get that. The News should not allow itself to become engulfed by such and become exclusively a Business. This is what I really believe!
Yes. You ARE being a prick. And it's stupid because you're looking for an enemy where there isn't one. I already agreed that we have a serious problem.
I'm not looking for an enemy, but just so you believe me:
(http://doom.pyoko.org/TheySeeMeTrollin.png)
If I was being more of a dick, I would call that cop-out, but i don't have the answer either - that's why I asked: to put the damn question up for discussion.
You know what I would propose in this discussion? Reform and Oversight! At best I could hope for as neutral a government body as we could hope for(Ha!) or more realistically one of those actually neutral think-tank groups. Real power in the hands of scholars and the unbiased? madness
I think I replied to this collected gabble above.
By equating journalism to a service that is literally impossible without a crack legal team and a private jet I guess, also by "it doesn't matter to ME so it doesn't matter."
I'm not talking about tabloids. I'm talking about most news these days. Look at how large and hideous the celebrity pages have become. It's almost inescapable.
If we displayed even half the obsession for our leaders every word and action that we do for some of these random china dolls, our democracies would be a hell of a lot healthier.
Example of tabloids is that tabloids are bodies of information that can rarely convey breaking information, but the average consumer will recognize their shoddy average.
Now just go Reform and Oversight the current body of The News so that everyone knows what is tabloid-bad and what isn't and we're cooking with gas.
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That's fine I'm totally down with that, but that's a nuanced view that isn't really represented by blanket stements of "Kill em all! Rawr!". that's not really what you guys were saying.
Yes it is.
Forget it, it looks like the Word Train has left Iron-Mongrel's-Imaginary-World Station anyway.
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Doom, if they abolished all current journalism, what would you think?
Doom: And nothing of value was lost.
Doom, you just want to blow it all up! Isn't there another way?
Doom: If we are not Mad Stan, I guess I could go for some reform.
AH HAH, YOU ARE A TWO-FACED FELLOW.
Doom: :( ): Oh no.
Is this the part where I mention that you are also known for winning arguments with yourself?
I stand by my previous statement. You guys made several blanket comments that we'd be better off if the current old guard were destroyed. I disagreed.
If you want to come in a half page later and temper that view by saying you want reform that's fine. What's dumb is pigeonholing me a defender of the corporate old guard for questioning your intial off-the-cuff comment. Or pretending you were advocating a moderate view point from the beginning.
Damn right I'm going to call someone out on that.
That's fine I'm totally down with that, but that's a nuanced view that isn't really represented by blanket stements of "Kill em all! Rawr!". that's not really what you guys were saying.
Yes it is.
No it isn't. See? I can do this too.
If that wasn't what you guys MEANT to say, then perhaps your posts should have been phrased better.
Sup personal bias. "Just because they did it doesn't mean I have to value it objectively." I thought you might appreciate the one time I bothered to reply to your half-assed "well, JUST PROVE ME WRONG THEN :smug:" questions.
Okay, that's my fault for not being clear and I'll man up on this one. I honestly wasn't saying that that the the Tea Party shit was an irrelevant story. I was saying that the Tea Party bullshit in-and-of-itself was retarded. Grumbling along with my grumbling, so to speak.
So when I say reform and oversight is good, and that we can probably get a lot more good from "amateurs" then from professional hacks, did you make a colossal typo in agreeing with me?
It was sort of the first serious thing I said, so let me say it again: The News needs business support to run. I get that. The News should not allow itself to become engulfed by such and become exclusively a Business. This is what I really believe!
I agree that reform is needed. I don't agree that ALL AMATEUR HOUR is the answer. My reasons for this were stated in more detail in the post above, but overall I think professionals still have a role to play and should be supported.
This does not mean that I think there's no room for amateurs. But extremes are in no one's interest.
You know what I would propose in this discussion? Reform and Oversight! At best I could hope for as neutral a government body as we could hope for(Ha!) or more realistically one of those actually neutral think-tank groups. Real power in the hands of scholars and the unbiased? madness
Honestly? My gut reaction to this is that it's pretty vague. If you're gonna fight this hard, you need to have better solutions too. Carrots and sticks m'boy.
Example of tabloids is that tabloids are bodies of information that can rarely convey breaking information, but the average consumer will recognize their shoddy average.
Now just go Reform and Oversight the current body of The News so that everyone knows what is tabloid-bad and what isn't and we're cooking with gas.
See, now this, this is getting somewhere. Other helpful things might be to force the re-adoption of the Fairness doctrine. The first place we can look for solution is to ask what other regulations governing journalism have been imposed (or repealed) by Regan/Bush era foolishness?
By equating journalism to a service that is literally impossible without a crack legal team and a private jet I guess, also by "it doesn't matter to ME so it doesn't matter."
Hyperbole about private jets aside. Yes. As I stated above "Lawyers cost money".
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So is this thread about the demise of the newspaper as a medium? This is a problem that doesn't just affect the U.S., you know. It'll affect those magical lands with better reporting.
And I seriously doubt that these magically objective internet sites have enough funding to send journalists to all the continents in the world. There are too many and internet ads do not give you that much money.
And that playboy article was primarily fucking google detective work. Show me some examples where they have the funding to cross-reference all the crazy shit you see in Abu-Ghraib or Watergate for a more historical example.
News of this scale needs a serious amount of funding. If it crashes and burns we'll be left crawling in the dark. Not because the Media makes shit up sometimes, but because there'll barely be anything there.
I'll need a list of things blogger/aggregators/whatever have done that are not glorified anecdotes or Op-ed pieces. These sites feed on the much lampooned traditional media like parasites and I see no reason for them to spontaneously develop independence or standards. The Media used to have those and still does on a few occasions and torching that institutional memory in favor of internet diaries is childish revenge at best.
Not to mention the much superior Non-U.S. media who will suffer the same problem
The only real solutions to this are massive reform or pretending the U.S. can make PBS as important as the BBC. The latter seems more likely as for profit reporting seems on the way out and some kind of public or charity-based model is the most likely.
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I think i may have accidentally confused the stances of most people here by posting in the thread at all, thus making the canadians among us think that everyone, not just me, is in favor of drastically reforming the media, by which i mean stringing up Rupert Murdoch in times square with his guts hanging out.
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stringing up Rupert Murdoch in times square with his guts hanging out.
I was about to reply "Now see, I'd be totally down with that." when I realized that I couldn't count on none of you taking that at face value.
:humpf:
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The Word Train just ran off of the rails and is now flying right off the Cliffs of Irony.
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So are these pretend arguments or real ones?
I'd like to know, as I am meeting some conservative friends later and I want to conserve my outrage.
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The White Cliffs of Irony, thank you.
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:racist:
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In Communist Russia, they use to just print propaganda straight from the government with no fact checking as though it real news. I'm glad we have a fair and free journalism in this country run by billionaires who business interests run counter to the government, so they're always providing balanced, considered arguments against any malfeasance. Whoo!
I'd like to know, as I am meeting some conservative friends later and I want to conserve my outrage.
A true liberal conserves nothing.
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conservative friends
... i'm... sorry, i don't quite follow.
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I consider them misled and do my best to show them, gently, because they really are misled since birth, generally, that their assumptions about gays and abortion and etc are incredibly fucking retarded beyond all possible belief.
I mean, I know this sweet girl, married to a really sweet friend of mine from way back, and she's about the nicest goddamn person you could ever know. I mean she's the type of girl who will cry over anything even remotely sad. She's always thinking about others and wants to help the world and cries over just about anything sad.
She was raised pretty hardcore Christian and loses her shit if anyone says the word "evolution" around her. She also considers homosexuality a disease, and abortion a sin. She's real nice but not very smart, she believes these things because her less nice and less smart family did nothing but force them down her throat for her entire life.
People just have to be shown the way. Any way. Show them a bad way and they'll go down it, because they don't know the difference. Sure, some people are capable of striking out on their own because they've got brains or willpower or wisdom or all three. But you can't hate someone for repeating what their mother told them, or their father told them, or their entire goddamn social network told them; they parrot their teachers because it's all they've ever been told.
Do I have the urge to lock her and her husband up in a room and brandish guns while I rage about how goddamn fucking hypocritical it is to profess being a Christian who loves others and at the same time be prejudiced against gays and ex-mothers? Yes. But all I'd do is scare her. And like I said she's a nice girl and apart from her upbringing and her beliefs therefore I really love her to death.
(also yes I know you were 75% joking as usual, but I do think it's possible to be friends with people who don't share your beliefs and I'm sure you have friends likewise or maybe not maybe you are a fucking communist you red bastard)
Also holy goddamn shit I have been reading too much fucking Steinbeck and it is starting to show in my writing
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Again, 100 is the average IQ by definition. And in my experience, that's not enough to be able to distinguish between right and wrong for one's own self.
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Hell I know people who are really fucking smart and they really believe in some really stupid shit
I just wrote really three times in the same sentence
Fuck you, Steinbeck, I am not writing about labor camps and so I do not need your simpleminded cadences to convey the proper downtrodden atmosphere
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Again, 100 is the average IQ by definition. And in my experience, that's not enough to be able to distinguish between right and wrong for one's own self.
Actually i think the average is up to 110/120? by now? Flynn Effect, etc.
And no, i don't have anyone i would consider both a conservative and a friend in my life. My mother's a conservative, and while i make small talk with her, i despise her for her beliefs, heart and soul. She voted for McCain on the strength of the fact that Palin was his running mate, and she wanted to see a woman in the white house. I told her that Palin was objectively pro-rape and had single-handedly destroyed Wasilla and she neither cared nor changed her vote. I hate her for this.
Why do i think like this? Because there IS a culture war going on, and, unwitting or not, they are the footsoldiers. They carry the torch for the ultra-wealthy and the intolerant. I have gay friends. I have poor friends (i myself am way, way below the poverty line). I have friends who are teenaged mothers. Conservatives, even the ones who smile nicely and say sweet things and feel bad about bunnies who get hit by cars, want my friends, and me, and most of you, to die.
Or, put another way: there's a point when stupidity becomes malicious. After around a decade of environmental, economic and human destruction on an incredible scale, if someone's unwilling to rethink their beliefs -- or if they really think that people like me and you are traitors -- then in the end i must concede that we really don't have as much in common as it might first seem.
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Transportation: I wish to point out that the Economist Group seems to be doing well. As per a year ago, they went over and beyond their expectations for revenue. This year as their CEO steps down, it is still sunshine and lollypops (http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS138246+09-Apr-2008+RNS20080409). Privately owned news papers are starting to fail, there is no doubt about that. You can say the same about some state-sponsored news organizations.
The press has been a bit thick with journalists who do not accomplish much anything, following the path of dozens of others. Expect those sorts to be weeded out by market forces.
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Again, 100 is the average IQ by definition. And in my experience, that's not enough to be able to distinguish between right and wrong for one's own self.
Actually i think the average is up to 110/120? by now? Flynn Effect, etc.
Before someone else has a chance to answer this and be a dick about it, 100 is literally average by definition. It's a bell-shaped curve with 100 at the center, so if we all became amazing future cyborgs that can computer pi in our sleep, the average for our crazy future society would still be 100.
People are fit to the curve, not the other way around.
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Thanks, Romo. I was going to be a dick about it.
That said, you could make the argument that today's 100 is yesterday's 110, which may or may not be true. It all depends on whether or not the people of yesterday understood what "be definition" means or not.
Oops, guess I was a dick anyway.
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I don't understand what "be definition" means either.
:nyoro~n:
(that was fair game)
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Clearly you're not smart enough.
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ok yes true i was just saying
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Or, put another way: there's a point when stupidity becomes malicious.
You don't say.
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And that playboy article was primarily fucking google detective work. Show me some examples where they have the funding to cross-reference all the crazy shit you see in Abu-Ghraib or Watergate for a more historical example.
That's my point, though. Money helps. News can benefit from business. But it's not like the two will live and die together.
Hell, I can't get most foreign news without looking because the US just doesn't care and covering a stalemate or losing war is depressing to Americans I guess.
Also I'm not up for "all amateurs" either, and hell we both agreed that by sheer inertia any internet amateurs can become as vaunted as professionals. I just think that with a reform to The News as a professional body we can get a huge benefit while those happy amateurs get their thing done.
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I'd like a clarification of who we're even talking about here. Do you guys think the AP is going to disappear anytime soon?
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Hopefully.
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Noro, I understand what you're saying and your position. I am sick of intolerance and hate, even covered by a thin veneer of kindness towards those whom the intolerant deem tolerable.
My friend doesn't want ex-mothers and gays to die. If she did, she wouldn't be my friend. Anyone who wants another person to die is pretty much someone I wouldn't consider as a friend. Conservatives (or anyone) like that deserve to be despised.
On the other hand, she and I will never be good friends precisely because of her idiotic views, forced on her or not. I have attempted a few times to discuss things with her, because I feel that people generally can be brought around to the correct way of thinking about issues if you approach them without hatred in your heart.
She's a footsoldier, yes, I'll agree with that, even though she was pressed into service. But I've always thought it was better to win a solider over to your side than simply kill them in your pursuit of victory.
I'm not saying FUCK YOU NORO, YOU SHOULD HAVE CONSERVATIVE FRIENDS. It's fine if you hate your mom, I hate my mom, and she's a liberal, so you're certainly allowed. Your mom, if it's true that she voted McCain entirely because he picked a female VP while ignoring the actual personality/thoughts of said female VP, sounds like a retard of the nth degree who deserves to be ridiculed for her idiotic sheeplike mind.
Let me clarify my position: I despise the ideas in the head of my friend(s), I like the person. You can make an argument that they are one and the same, and you would not be without merit. But (I hope/believe) sometimes ideas can change, sometimes a person can realize they were wrong. I have to believe this, (despite all evidence to the contrary) or else, well, I probably really will just start shooting people.
My hatred of ideas is not restricted to conservative ideas, either. Just throwing that out there to show that I despise people's ideas if they are wrong, period. I'm mostly liberal with a few exceptions (gun control and the death penalty being the largest two that come to mind, I have had long discussions about both these issues with my liberal friends) so a lot of the time what I oppose ends up being conservative, but not always. I fucking vomit whenever a liberal blithely shits out more gun control rhetoric, and I will argue the point with them until I'm blue in the face. (I also vomit whenever a conservative shits out the other side of the gun control rhetoric, so there you go.)
Noro, the fact is, I can't think of a single issue I've ever disagreed with you on that I can remember on these boards, unless this one counts. I'm sure we could find something, but I'm just saying for the most part I am right there with you on the radical side of things.
there's a point when stupidity becomes malicious.
I agree. It's a sad truth, but truth nonetheless.
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You probably won't get through to him, Friday; he seems to honestly believe that conservatism is about exterminating all dissent against theocratic corporate slavery. What you're proposing will sound to him like bringing a dictionary to a gunfight.
Good journalism is expensive. At the very least, you'll need people to go to far-off places and/or perform excruciatingly boring research in order to publicize important but inconspicuous facts. The sheer quantity of important facts out there means that journalism cannot help but be a Lots Of Money Undertaking.
The main questions that present problems with the future of traditional news media are:
- Many customers prefer news that is banal and sensational rather than important or even accurate
- Many customers prefer their news to be presented from an editorial context that other customers do not share
- Many customers seem to prefer to get their news from free online mirrors of individual articles
- It's not yet clear whether it's possible to make that kind of money from this kind of enterprise using the Internet
- Anti-competitive trends in both the production and the distribution of journalism means that it is very easy to subtly manipulate reporting and very few alternatives to turn to in order to punish the sources that engage in this
There is a certain, almost poetic tension between the nature of the world and the requirements of a market. Although multiple political interpretations are possible, there is just one single sequence of events. Multiple providers of the same facts would be an inefficient redundancy. But without that redundancy, there is nothing to stop the political interpretation from coloring or supplanting the basic reporting of the fact.
As in science, the availability of the basic unbiased fact is important; it does not matter as much whether it is consumed with a liberal* garnish of editorializing, as long as it is built upon an accurate and verifiable account of the event. Editorializing is cheap; most people with an opinion will give it to you for free. It seems to me that the big weakness of journalism in general has been that the revenue stream was tied to the finished product - the facts plus a particular context, rather than the facts independently. The actual consumer of news is buying facts plus context, rather than just facts, and they are buying it from the producer of the context, who produces local facts in-house buy buys national and world facts from someone bigger.
The Internet means that nobody can charge for context any more, which means that context providers can't make a business out of buying facts. Which means that fact providers are in big trouble. How to ensure that people still get facts? I don't know.
*used in the quantitative rather than political sense; please forgive my wordplay
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Honestly i was actually conservative-by-association until my third year of high school.
I don't think that all conservatism is like that. I think that the heads of the american conservative movement -- both the religious and economic branches of it -- have that endgame in mind, and there's no dissenting moderate voice within the Republican party, as anyone who seeks to climb the ranks has to kiss Limbaugh's ring to get anywhere. I notably think this because as in all things i am right -- note the backlash within the party against absolutely anyone who goes along with anything that anyone on the left says, does or thinks. I am similarly frustrated that the left has no powerful media outlet, no discipline, no battle plan to win the war for hearts and minds. They think that people know, care, or can be made to care about the truth -- that minorities (even ones who hate other minorities, the stupid fuckers) need legal protection against exploitation, supply-side economics is so much bullshit, etc. -- and they aren't right, not at all.
And your icy-cold burns aside, i am trying to be part of the solution, in my own way. The party heads of the right have been smearing liberals for a long time simply by out-crazying us, and having enough control of the media zeitgeist to be able to decry all positions left of theirs as total madness. It's to the point that "liberal" itself is a swear-word. The gradual slide to the right has to be countered by an opposing force pulling left, and we have nothing like that -- We have people like Michael Moore being compared to Mann Coulter, for the love of god. Kazz already pointed it out, but without extremists on the left there is no way to tell what leftist positions actually are sane.
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The Internet means that nobody can charge for context any more, which means that context providers can't make a business out of buying facts. Which means that fact providers are in big trouble. How to ensure that people still get facts? I don't know.
Uh, did you mean content?
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No, I meant context. Perspective. Analysis. Commentary. Editorializing. Opinions. What it means.
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Nobody ever charged for context. You always had to supply that yourself.
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Nonsense. People charge for context all the time. If you buy a newspaper, you are being charged for context - all but the driest of articles has somebody's opinion in it. An interviewee talking about more than what they saw, relating an event to previous similar events or a popular subject of discussion, speculation about the future of the stock market, input from an expert, a letter to the editor that makes reference to an event - all of that is a particular interpretation of the significance of a fact. That is context. And unless you were the only person involved in the making of that newspaper, it came from somebody else.
Most people are more interested in what it means when something happens than what actually did happen. It is true that most people are capable of figuring this out for themselves, but that doesn't mean that they are only rarely interested in hearing what somebody else has to say about it.
I will give an example from one of the top articles in Google News right at the moment: Obama keeps Bush polar bear rules (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8040913.stm). The facts being reported are what Ken Salazar decided, what he said about his decision, and what a representative of Greenpeace said about it. The context is provided in the form of some of the probable environmental and political implications of his choice, the implications of an alternative, a brief history of the policy's establishment, and the reaction of an interested party.
The other facts surrounding the one that the article is about make it easier for the reader to understand the significance of the decision and the circumstances in which it was made, as well as the vague outline of some of the controversy that may result. These are all useful and interesting and valuable things to report - but, given the three basic facts of the story (what he decided, what he said about it, and what someone else said about it), you can probably find several bloggers who just can't wait to tell you what they think about them. You can form your own context, and so can everyone else.
The only parts of that article that can't be done basically for free are finding out that the decision was made and getting comments from the two people quoted there. It's the most important part, too. However, a superior product - that is, the facts plus some thoughtful commentary - can be obtained for free. So where does the money come from that funds the original research?
It's the triviality of reproduction that causes the big problem.
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This thread was bad enough when I was posting in it, but the last two pages are just...
(http://www.avnrt.com/docs/tings/imroll.gif)
You guys are depressing the hell outta me.
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:fukit: BLOW IT ALL UP :fukit:
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:madstan:
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tv newspaper books radio videogames and computers will all break down when the apocalypse comes
we'll all go back to telling stories by the fire
and all the stories will be boring
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:goodnews: Gather round children, as I tell you of the time President Obama went to get a hamburger.
:;_;: But I wanna play Team Fortress! They just released rocks and Timmy's been kind of a little bitch lately!
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Rock on.
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All right, playing two-month-old catchup here; this thread started three days before Dad had his dog put down, so uh yeah I was a little preoccupied.
Newspapers cost a quarter unless you buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. Online newspapers cost nothing unless you have to buy a subscription and then they cost like a cent, and make their money mostly off ads and personals. The difference is you can't pick one up to read if you're stuck at a gas station or something, unless of course you've got a notebook or something.
The problem hasn't a god damned thing to do with technology, that's just a convenient thing to blame (see also: music.) The problem is that the mainstream is succumbing to entropy while remaining so consolidated that it's rare for anything to be able to replace its falling-off pieces.
True for the most part, but Craigslist has pretty much killed the classified section. That's hurting mainstream papers, and killing altweeklies. Tom Tomorrow (http://www.thismodernworld.com/4677) commented a few months back, "All of the crazed ubercapitalists running around during the days of Web 1.0, and my industry gets shivved by the lone idealist."
I mean, web or not, it's these people that have the Method to find news and report them down pat - at least news as they're commonly understood. Remember all the complaints that newspapers don't cover science and whatnot? Now web-based publications can fill those holes (see just how popular Slashdot is)
And when the hell has Slashdot ever actually broken, not linked to but actually BROKEN, an important story?
This is exactly what Bongo was saying -- sites that link to articles from mainstream sources are great, but they're not going to do a whole lot of good if the mainstream sources go under. If Slashdot points me toward a good science article in Wired or Nature or wherever, great, but if those magazines go under, Slashdot's not going to be able to link to their stories.
The aggregate-and-link model simply suggests that, in order to earn a profit, a news site must actually report on articles that are worth reading. Tying profit to actual quality isn't a terrible thing for most of us, just those who have coasted too long on being able to turn in crud and making a buck anyway for being the only game in town.
True too. There's no question that a big chunk of the problem is self-inflicted by lazy, infotainment-focused MSM abrogating their standards and responsibility. But if people can't make a living reporting the news, well, we're pretty fucked.
I need to point out that I still believe strongly in organizations such as the BBC, and the case for public-funded, independent news casts whenever possible. Ditto for the CBC, although I really couldn't care about the fiction they produce short of the tradition sketch comedies. These outlets report where traditional private-owned media falls short.
In the US, we've got PBS and NPR, which are theoretically government-funded but in practice survive by begging their audience for money every couple of months.
So if we take away the valuable corporate money backing of news sites, we will somehow be worse off for losing the news we got from those corporate money backed news groups.
Nobody's saying the MSM's perfect. But it takes an outlet with the resources of the Washington Post to break a story like the Walter Reed scandal.
I'm not following this argument at all. Question: are you under the impression that aggregators are directing traffic away from the sites that they are feeding from?
In the case of aggregators that reprint all or most of the text from the orginal articles, yes. I agree that a fair-handed aggregator will simply provide links.
This is an important distinction. The AP has gone into full-on RIAA "sue everything in sight" mode, to the point of actually shouting "Copyright infringement!" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/09/ap_youtube/) when its paying affiliates embed YouTube videos from the official AP YouTube account which fucking allows embedding.
Right now there are publishers taking Google to court saying Google News is hurting them. This is fucking asinine. Google News is the best thing they have going for them; we've already seen what head-in-the-sand attacks on technology do to an industry.
I'd say the issue is more the echo chamber -- blogs repeating other blogs repeating other blogs about a story so that most people hear about it from a source other than where it originally appeared. That's not illegal (except in cases like IM mentions where the articles are actually plagiarized), but it's certainly problematic; if those sites don't get the traffic, they don't get the revenue, and then who's going to actually report the news rather than just repeating it?
And again, there's Craigslist -- also not illegal (well...there's some debate over the whole "erotic services" part), but has gutted for-pay classifieds. The industry needs to find a new way to make money. Banner ads are a start, but banner ads alone aren't going to pay many salaries.
See above. I guess I am a naive fool with high-minded ideals but there should be a strict definition and separation of news as a business and news that engages in business. You have to sell out-dated tree-based pamphlets to suckers, sure, but maybe you can see why we'd all be a little better off if Fox News was abolished entirely. They can still show cartoons, I guess.
But Fox News isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about news media going out of business because they can't make money. Fox News isn't doing as well as a few years ago, but it's still the most successful "news" source of its type.
I'll take an honest "amateur" over a professional hack any day. Cool position assuming that everyone not associated with a big professional news organization cannot possibly speak the truth any better than they could, I guess!
Are you being deliberately thick?
Find me an amateur blogger who could have possibly dug up, say, what was going on at Abu Ghraib. It's not a question of integrity, it's a question of resources and access.
Reporting the news well takes resources and, as with any profession, a degree of professionalism. Therefore, only the funded can tell us the true news?
YES!
How the hell are you going to fly to a foreign country without money?
How the hell are you going to pay your RENT without money?
Journalists need to make a living. If they can't make a living as journalists, then they're going to have to get income somewhere else. Working another job means a lot less time to spend breaking important news stories.
And maybe playboy.com and a pair of "unprofessionals" broke the Tea Party origins.
Playboy is an internationally-recognized brand with a 50-plus-year history IN THE FUCKING PRINT INDUSTRY, THAT IS CURRENTLY HAVING TROUBLE STAYING IN THE BLACK. It is PRECISELY THE FUCKING THING IM IS TALKING ABOUT when he refers to quality traditional news sources that are currently having trouble staying afloat.
...okay, I've written enough and frankly there's a vein starting to bulge in my forehead. I'll stop there and get back to the rest of the thread later.
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The playboy example was more that some rote googling revealed the truth behind the Tea Party movement and I think google is pretty cheap to use these days. That it is hosted on playboy does not necessarily indicate it needed their mighty resources.
If traditional media must exist, I'd really just like it to be slapped about the face a few times so it can reform and I can get better feeds of issues I am interested in without them being designed for the tripe-consumption-by-masses Killjoy was refering to.
Otherwise bibiduuuuu I am defeated by killer insight.
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If the news appeals to you, rather than the masses, the masses won't consume it, and the market will crumble. shocking.
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It's true, I guess I should care what Miss California thinks about anything.
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Such is the curse of an undereducated populace.
The higher the education level (in real, practical terms, not just "Hey I finished grade 12 dur hur"), the less you will be interested in stupid distractions and the more that you'll pay attention to - and even understand - the shit that will actually affect your life.
Course, solving that problem is a whole hell of a can of worms.
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I'll need a list of things blogger/aggregators/whatever have done that are not glorified anecdotes or Op-ed pieces.
Off the top of my head: Drudge broke the Lewinsky story, left-wing bloggers dethroned Trent Lott, right-wing bloggers picked up on the probable forging of the Bush National Guard documents (though I still suspect this was a deliberate plant on the White House's part), and YouTube cost George Allen his Senate seat.
On the other hand, the Enquirer broke Limbaugh's drug addiction and Edwards's affair, and Hustler helped bring down Gingrich and Barr. I think blogs, at least as of now, fall under the same heading as tabloids: they'll break an important story now and again, but the signal-to-noise ratio is not good.
Hell, I can't get most foreign news without looking because the US just doesn't care and covering a stalemate or losing war is depressing to Americans I guess.
:facepalm:
The foreign news media are still news media.
This reasoning is the same as "If the MSM goes under, we'll be fine because we still have bloggers to report stories they heard about in the MSM."
This isn't just an American problem; traditional media outlets are hurting all over the world.
Also I'm not up for "all amateurs" either, and hell we both agreed that by sheer inertia any internet amateurs can become as vaunted as professionals. I just think that with a reform to The News as a professional body we can get a huge benefit while those happy amateurs get their thing done.
You keep making vague references to "reform" but not actually describing what kinds of reform you're talking about. IM suggested a return to the Fairness Doctrine (something nobody in either mainstream party in America seems that damned interested in). What other regulation and reform would you suggest?
I'd like a clarification of who we're even talking about here. Do you guys think the AP is going to disappear anytime soon?
The AP does.
...and then there's all Bongo's stuff, which is quite good! Though I note he focuses on stupid consumers who like crappy news while omitting the agendas of media owners and advertisers who push their own agenda. It's not an either-or situation; both are very big problems.
The playboy example was more that some rote googling revealed the truth behind the Tea Party movement and I think google is pretty cheap to use these days. That it is hosted on playboy does not necessarily indicate it needed their mighty resources.
Fair, then -- some important stories can be broken by amateurs with a little bit of free time and the skill to use Google.
Do you really think ALL important stories can?
If traditional media must exist, I'd really just like it to be slapped about the face a few times so it can reform and I can get better feeds of issues I am interested in without them being designed for the tripe-consumption-by-masses Killjoy was refering to.
There's that vague hand-waving reference to "reform" again. What are you actually proposing?
If the news appeals to you, rather than the masses, the masses won't consume it, and the market will crumble. shocking.
Like I said above, there's some truth to the "audiences are dumb and want car chases" point, but it's not the only problem. People DO care about important stories like, to reuse these examples again because they're easy, Abu Ghraib and Walter Reed. The debate about the Bush torture memos is...well, I don't want to say it's important or worthwhile because I'm frankly horrified that we're even DEBATING whether it's ever okay to torture prisoners, but it's something that people on both sides of the issue are certainly enthusiastic about.
Point is, I think there IS an audience for stories that actually matter. A big one. And I'd furthermore make the claim that, if mindless non-stories are what the major news providers focus on, then, well, they ARE going to have a lot of trouble competing with the Internet, because the Internet has more of those than even the most dedicated infotainment producers could ever hope to generate.
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And I'd furthermore make the claim that, if mindless non-stories are what the major news providers focus on, then, well, they ARE going to have a lot of trouble competing with the Internet, because the Internet has more of those than even the most dedicated infotainment producers could ever hope to generate.
:lol: :perfect:
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Fair, then -- some important stories can be broken by amateurs with a little bit of free time and the skill to use Google.
Do you really think ALL important stories can?
No, but so long as we won't disqualify the efforts of the amateurs.
And yeah Fairness Doctrine sound good, but insert cynical head-shaking regarding modern America here.
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No, but so long as we won't disqualify the efforts of the amateurs.
I wasn't.
IM, were you?
I'm all for citizen journalism. It's just that it's not likely to get you a ticket to Basra.
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High-Fives all around.
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No, but so long as we won't disqualify the efforts of the amateurs.
I wasn't.
IM, were you?
I'm all for citizen journalism. It's just that it's not likely to get you a ticket to Basra.
Nope, I wasn't either. You pretty much just rephrased all my arguments from earlier, only, y'know, in a more coherent way.
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An insider's view of the Washington Journalism machine after 40 years. (http://prorev.com/2009/05/why-washington-doesnt-work.html)
It's a bit blustery and the fellow has his own axe to grind, but he plays it mostly straight. Interesting to read about the work done by non-profits, as well as several other points.
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Two things:
1) As always, the Economist delivers a valid, if possibly not accurate viewpoint (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13649304)
2) In Canuckistan, the privately owned television giant CTV is in desperation campaign mode (http://savelocal.ctv.ca/)
If CTV loses its local, I won't notice. What worries me is that for most local stuff - I usually read the Times Colonist, which is a part of the Canwest Global media corporation. They're hit bad, and now require to drop the Monday edition - It pains me to think when they lose another day, and maybe another... to the point where they're either a weekly or dead.
There are the freebies like the "Victoria News" and "Monday Magazine", but both have either too many ads, or an approaching-extremist left angle that leaves me away from their editorials.
As my world requires me to move to Ottawa in eight days, I will not notice the change, but I will say that it is starting to move fast and hard in Canada. Between this and a <50% turnout rate for a recent election, I almost get the feeling that we may live to see a social/cultural revolution from a distance. The winter olympics might serve as a catalyst.
Sucks to be Fredward.
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Jon Stewart: most trusted newsman in America. (http://cbs4.com/entertainment/jon.stewart.trusted.2.1098089.html)
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It's funny (in a sad way) that in this day and age only a comedy show would have the gall to report honestly.
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As much as I would like to parade this around... it's an online poll. Remember the other Time online poll where it was decided that moot was the most influential human being alive?
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And denied Mick Foley his rightful place as the most influential Dude Love in the world?
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Decrying the profit-driven nature of American news media is seeign the forest for the trees in a Real and Serious Way.
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What does that even mean
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I think it means (http://hundredcoins.org/brentai/images/captainobvious.gif)
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I watched CNN the other day.
If I was on a show, I would prefer to go on the daily than any other real media station in the states, safe for NPR.
I have seen him debate with everyone from the right winger politicians with a strong respect for the oposing position that allows the other side to get the message across. Many other people do not let this happen.
Jon stewart also does a fantastic job of bringing other people around from Musharif, the present ambassador to pakistan, Liberia's current pres, and many a other diplomat or bureaucrat in a fashion unheard of.
He's almost like our rick mercer up north, except rick mercer really only wants to be light hearted and to show the human side of people he usually mocks. I still remember the episode where he met our former prime minister in our version of the whitehouse, 24 sussex drive only to find the porch wasn't weather-sealed. He went with the PM to Canadian Tire - a department store to purchase the sealing, then they both did it on national television.
Jon Stewart shows both those sides, and this is why he gets respect from all sides (except for those in the conservative media).
On another note in Canada's media problems, three local news stations in victoria, prince george, and red deer under the global banner went dead....
There goes the local stations..
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Jon Stewart shows both those sides, and this is why he gets respect from all sides (except for those in the conservative media and many of those consuming it).
fixt
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This is unreal (http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site).
After going pay-only three months back in November - to either $5 a month or $260 a year - Newsday has accumulated only 35 subscribers.
35.
That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn't know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.
Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.
"I heard you say 35 people," he said, from Newsday's auditorium in Melville. "Is that number correct?"
Mr. Jimenez nodded.
The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million, according to Mr. Jimenez. With those 35 people, they've grossed about $9,000.
:nyoro~n:
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Mr. Jimenez was in no mood to apologize. "That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been," said Mr. Jimenez to the assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday staffers.
ha
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Yeah, I've heard about that NYT drive for newspaper sites to go back to hiding behind pay walls. There are a few unavoidable problems there:
1) It will only work if everyone does it. Okay, this MIGHT happen in the long run. MAYBE.
2) It reduces casual traffic generated by one person linking stories to a non-subscriber (you must be a subscriber to read this story...).
3) all it takes is one subscriber copying and pasting an important news story and there you go. Is it illegal? Sure! Is that gonna stop people? Hahaha!
4) Many cities in North America now have actual print newspapers distributed for free. Sure all they do is reprint stories put together by better papers (or else they're obviously published by a special interest group), but they demonstrate where things are going.
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Your point #4 is invalid in terms of journalistic integrety. You're not the only city with the metro and 24. Pure rubbish that fails to keep readers informed about the real issues that surround them and generally have a bias so strong to the left that it would make Constantine gag. I still haven't forgiven the metro for publishing the page long critique of the repeal of the long arms registry, yet refused to publish any letters (including my own) that quote hard statistics on why the system failed apart. They chose touchy feely over facts, not unlike the IPCC.
Otherwise, (http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu23/Bon_Bon_2009/scruffy-1.jpg)
Edit for devils advocate: How much money are they getting from the cable companies for the access? How long are they locked in for? It will hurt the paper in the longterm, but perhaps the mgmt saw its demise coming and that as the root that it could grab as it fell down the cliff.
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Can you really call metro a newspaper? It's really just something you read while waiting to transfer buses.
4) Many cities in North America now have actual print newspapers distributed for free. Sure all they do is reprint stories put together by better papers (or else they're obviously published by a special interest group), but they demonstrate where things are going.
That's not entirely true. My city has a free newspaper, Pulse, that... well, actually, you can see for yourself: http://www.pulseniagara.com/ (http://www.pulseniagara.com/)
It's a very local grassroots, indie style paper. As such, it does have a liberal bent to it.
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Your point #4 is invalid in terms of journalistic integrety. You're not the only city with the metro and 24. Pure rubbish that fails to keep readers informed about the real issues that surround them and generally have a bias so strong to the left that it would make Constantine gag. I still haven't forgiven the metro for publishing the page long critique of the repeal of the long arms registry, yet refused to publish any letters (including my own) that quote hard statistics on why the system failed apart. They chose touchy feely over facts, not unlike the IPCC.
Otherwise, (http://i630.photobucket.com/albums/uu23/Bon_Bon_2009/scruffy-1.jpg)
Edit for devils advocate: How much money are they getting from the cable companies for the access? How long are they locked in for? It will hurt the paper in the longterm, but perhaps the mgmt saw its demise coming and that as the root that it could grab as it fell down the cliff.
You may not have noticed yet, but Metro actually just reprints most of their articles verbatim from the Toronto Star (so in that case "better newpapers" is a very relative term, LOL), which was the main gist of my point.
It's a worthless leech of a paper, but they're the ones with an increasing circulation. Which is all that matters for this argument: The free stuff is circulating and the pay stuff is declining.
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I am still not seeing how people are supposed to make a living in this brave new world of news media where nobody ever pays for anything. I mean, I know some people find the idea of paying for the services of the Fourth Branch a little distasteful but the less financially rewarding and cutthroat journalism is, the more we will have to endure semi-literate 20-something hacks writing Wikipedia-researched fluff pieces about viagra because they are the only people dumb enough to take their college degrees and happily march right into careers that pay 25 grand a year with no benefits and even less stability.
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and the chinese
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I am still not seeing how people are supposed to make a living in this brave new world of news media where nobody ever pays for anything. I mean, I know some people find the idea of paying for the services of the Fourth Branch a little distasteful but the less financially rewarding and cutthroat journalism is, the more we will have to endure semi-literate 20-something hacks writing Wikipedia-researched fluff pieces about viagra because they are the only people dumb enough to take their college degrees and happily march right into careers that pay 25 grand a year with no benefits and even less stability.
Well, that's kind of the point yeah.
The problem is assuming that the average person thinks the fourth estate is important enough to pay for when you can get that hack fluff for free ("Hey, that's still news, right? And besides, all journalism is biased anyway!" or worse yet "InTouch magazine is news").
It's a bad situation all 'round. But then, watching people try and put genies back into bottles is always painful.
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Reminds me of this anecdote: And if only 1% of those people... (http://sivers.org/1pct)
I'm still baffled how anyone spends $4 million on a website. That's 16,000 man-hours at the rates of some very high-end developers, or ten very well paid devs working for 28 forty-hour weeks. Even so, what sort of business plan is it to increase the price of your product when the market is full of competitors who give an equivalent or better product away for free?
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You know, for the record, my preferred newpaper (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/) is doing very well in the internet era. They have remained profitable, all current content is free, and they still maintain a very high standard of reporting - I would say that they break more signifiant news stories than any other paper in the country.
In fact they are profitable enough that they make snide comments about how they're in the black and aren't planning to go back to a for-pay model whenever they report on these 'demise of traditional media' type stories.
So, while anecdotal evidence is not data, there is at least one example that demonstrates that it is possible to survive and prosper in the new era.
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Not related to the original "will newspapers survive?" issue, but this is still the best thread I would say.
Decent musings on the future of books. (http://www.american.com/archive/2011/may/the-end-of-the-book)
That's pretty much what I've been assuming for a while now and there aren't any real surprises. The article's still a good read nonetheless.
Books have qualities that screens don't and e-readers have functionality that books don't. It used to be ALL books, now there will be a mix. Going to a hybrid or mixture where there was once a monoculture doesn't necessarily mean one form becomes wholly extinct.
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how is the hot girl at starbucks going to know i am reading salman rushdie if i have a kindle
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oh wow a book about salman are they wild or farmed i heard farmed have more mercury
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hey did you know salman travel 500 miles upstream during mating season to spawn and then collapse from exhaustion
you might say they.......rush to die
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they die of heart failure
my salman you're fatwa have you been eating to get so 'bese??? :HUGE:
[spoiler]hajjen dazs[/spoiler]
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Another newspaper bites the dust. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14070733)
Admittedly, it's because the editors authorized hacking into the cellphone of a murder victim, but still.
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This has been a pretty huge story for a number of weeks (no, I'm not saying Buge's late to the party or anything like that - it's really biggest in England, not so much elsewhere). The parent company has pretty much controlled British politics for almost fourty years by basically acting as a gigantic blackmail machine who's sole aim was to increase the size of Rupert Murdoch's ego. Makes ol' Conrad Black look like a sainted aunt.
One thing this got me to thinking is that the worst long-term fallout may be increased regulations upon the press. Not just in England either. News International's reach is vampire-squid like (to steal a term), and they're already facing possible prosecution in the US and maybe Australia.
I think chances of that are low, but if anyone was looking for an excuse, it sure doesn't get any better than this.
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News International's reach is vampire-squid like (to steal a term),
That's a rather poor simile. The Vampire Squid is confined to a strata of the ocean that is virtually uninhabitable by most other forms of sea life, and furthermore, they're only about a foot in length. Their reach is not only short, it is limited to the smallest and simplest of prey.
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Perhaps he meant a vampire that is also a squid
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It was a reference to the Rolling Stone article on Goldman Sachs. I know most folks haven't read the article, but the term "giant vampire squid" (used to describe G-S) has become something of a very minor meme.
News International shares similar business ethics and practices, so, bad joke only I get follows. Naturally.
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So here's this giant enemy vampire squid.
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Admittedly, it's because the editors authorized hacking into the cellphone of a murder victim, but still.
...we really should stop fucking calling it "hacking" when somebody tries the default PIN and it works.
But yeah, it's downright goddamned horrifying. Who'd have thought Fox News was Murdoch's HONEST news outlet?
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In related news, John Oliver did a Daily Show segment on Monday the 11th!
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Anybody following this story has been treated to a veritable smorgasboard of stories today.
- The Chief of London's Met police resigned
- Rebekah Brooks was arrested (later released... for now)
- The commissioner of Scotland Yard resigned
- One of the original whistleblowers was found dead in his apartment (It honestly looks like a coincidental OD - he had lots of well-documented substance use. Of course conspiracy nuts will have a field day anyway.)
- LulzSec hijacked the online front page of London's Sun newspaper and ran a story stating Rupert Murdoch had committed suicide by ingesting large amounts of palladium (har har).
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Turns out, ground up moon rocks are pure poison!
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Uh, in case it wasn't clear the LulzSec/Sun story was a hoax.
I'm as saddened as the rest of you.
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So it turns out NewsCorp has been artificially inflating the WSJ's subscription numbers through a practice that looks an awful lot like money laundering.
Guardian: Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/12/wall-street-journal-andrew-langhoff)
The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.
Link via Stross (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/10/going-down-hard.html), who adds:
What's significant about this revelation it that it comes from the opposite end of the organization — advertising and circulation — from the previous allegations — of journalistic and editorial corrupt practices — that shut down the News of the World and got Rupe up in front of a Commons Committee. Previously, NewsCo could maintain that it was just the misdeeds of a few bad apples in the news side of the business. With this latest revelation it looks as if the whole organisation has out of control, to the point of committing what looks very like circulation fraud.
And while the large corporate advertisers might be willing to put up with dirty tricks aimed at the readers, this is something else. (I expect a collapse in NewsCo's advertising revenue, not to mention an imminent FBI investigation ...)
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So apparently as the phone "hacking" scandal started heating up last year, News of the World hired an ex-cop to surveil the victims' lawyers and their families. (BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15627609))
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"While surveillance is not illegal, it was clearly deeply inappropriate in these circumstances. This action was not condoned by any current executive at the company."
I would like to hear the name of the executive who did condone it and the exact amount of his severance package, then.
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So apparently James Murdoch (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/23/james_murdoch/) resigned from the News Group Newspapers board some two months ago and we're just now hearing about it.
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Amazing what information you can keep from the public if you control the media.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/jk-rowling-sienna-miller-testify-on-practices-of-british-tabloids/2011/11/25/gIQAm6tdvN_blog.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/jk-rowling-sienna-miller-testify-on-practices-of-british-tabloids/2011/11/25/gIQAm6tdvN_blog.html)
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“I would often find myself — I was 21 — at midnight running down a dark street on my own with ten big men chasing me and the fact that they had cameras in their hands meant that that was legal, but if you take away the cameras, what have you got? You’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman and obviously that’s a very intimidating situation to be in.”
I have no love in my heart for paparazzis of course, but dang, putting it this way... They're even more ignoble than I thought possible.
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(http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Foxneverstopslying.jpg)
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Oh man it just keeps averaging higher and higher and-
...
:oic:
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I wonder what the trend has been from 2007-11.
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On that chart, it would be very different visually from numerically.
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From the 2012 thread:
Hannity: Would a Ron Paul Win in Iowa Hand the Election to Obama? (http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/2011/12/15/would-ron-paul-win-iowa-hand-election-obama)
I think this is a big part of why people like Ron Paul.
(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9002997/Screen%20shot%202011-12-15%20at%2018.36.09.png)
Hannity said Paul was in second at 21%, but the graphic said 23%. I'm starting to wonder whether their graphic designers are incompetent, or whether they're doing it intentionally as a prank.
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Newspapers today are run by terrified beancounters. The industry is dying. They know it. They are casting about for any strategy to delay the inevitable and, personally, they are casting about for any parachute they can find. The beancounters owe their primary allegiance to "the company," and not to the reporter in the field. The beancounter editors and sub-editors at many — if not most — major newspapers and broadcast outlets would sell their grandmothers to the Somali pirates for a bigger office and two steps further up the masthead, which will get them closer to where the parachutes are kept. Most newspapers — most especially, the New York Times — have forced upon their reporters what are called "ethics codes," but which, in reality, are speech codes written to prevent the beancounters and careerists from having to answer angry phone calls from wingnuts. I am not kidding — under some of these abominations, a reporter literally could be disciplined for spouting off about, say, Willard Romney in a bar, if someone heard the reporter, and called the beancounter to complain. The campaign buses are filled now with young reporters who know full well that, given sufficient pressure from either inside or outside "the company," their bosses do not have their backs.
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http://www.alternet.org/sex/154196/10_things_the_american_media_really_need_to_learn_about_sex/?page=entire (http://www.alternet.org/sex/154196/10_things_the_american_media_really_need_to_learn_about_sex/?page=entire)
I dunno if we've got a Journalism topic or not, but this seemed like a better place than Guild Hall.
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James Murdoch to resign as chairman of News International (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/james-murdoch-to-resign-as-chairman-of-news-international/2012/02/29/gIQAzRjJiR_story.html)
It's a start.
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Rebekah Brooks and several others arrested in ongoing News International phone hacking busts (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/rebekah-brooks-five-others-arrested-in-uk-phone-hacking-probe/article2367495/)
They're being charged with obstruction of justice. Wonder if this is a move to see if anyone will turn State's King's Queen's Evidence.
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Encyclopedia Britannica retires. (http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/books/encyclopaedia-britannica-to-cease-print-edition/story-fn9412vp-1226299187258)
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I dunno, they're still online and I don't think the death of print editions of reference materials is really a big loss. This actually makes sense and is practical.
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Hey, MSM. Is there anything you can do that will encapsulate absolutely everything I hate about you?
Oh. Your top story is about a child abduction from 33 years ago. That'll do nicely.
I'm not saying that it ISN'T news that somebody's come forward and confessed. I AM saying that maybe you could stick it somewhere in the middle of the news and not make it your TOP story until you can verify that, you know, it actually happened.
Remember a couple of years ago when that guy confessed to the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder and you fell all over yourselves? I mean, I'll grant that it was nice seeing you all acting sheepish and apologetic for convicting her parents without a trial, but then it turned out he was just making the whole thing up and you went back to blaming her parents.
(I mean yeah don't get me wrong of course it was probably her parents, but there's a difference between saying that's where the evidence points and having a YEARS-LONG MEDIA CIRCUS over it.)
If it turns out he's telling the truth, then hopefully that'll mean the family finally gets some closure. But if he's just a nut like the Jon-Benet guy was, then all you're doing is bringing the trauma back up, complete with lurid headlines, for nothing.
...well, at least today the top story is SPACE, MOTHERFUCKERS. Now THAT I can get behind.
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Searchable index of 350,000 US news broadcasts (http://boingboing.net/2012/09/18/searchable-index-of-350000-us.html)
One of our test users found some interesting clips that may help illustrate the usefulness of this service to people who are trying to make voting decisions: 2008: Obama says marriage is between a man and a woman (http://archive.org/details/FOXNEWS_20120508_060000_The_Five#start/1690/end/1720); 2012: Obama says same sex couples should be able to marry (http://archive.org/details/WMAR_20120509_223000_ABC_World_News_With_Diane_Sawyer#start/150/end/180); 1994: Romney says he supports legal abortion and Roe v. Wade (http://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20120713_080000_The_Rachel_Maddow_Show#start/23/end/40); 2012: Romney says he supports overturning Roe v. Wade (http://archive.org/details/WJLA_20120108_020000_Republican_Debate#start/2490/end/2511)
So building your own Daily Show-style then-and-now comparison video just got a hell of a lot easier.
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KTVU Flight 214 Fail (Original) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqjlhtKIToo#)
Oliver and Colbert are back on Monday, right?
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Dammit Thad, I was just coming here to post that.
Good to see that unpaid interns are worth the price they're paid (the names were "confirmed" by an unpaid NTSB summer intern).
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They will literally read anything on their prompter ala "I'm Ron Burgandy?", I guess
the best part is how carefully she pronounces all the names, as if she's aware that if she doesn't say them right she'll end up saying holy fuck
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"Wellllll, this was like fact-checked and stuff, I guess?"
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Of course news anchors will read anything off the teleprompter. They aren't digesting what they're saying, they're focusing on enunciation and pronunciation as they read the prompter aloud. I don't know why she's pinned as a dipshit for going along with it.
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Let me ask you: Do you think it is literally impossible to think about the content of a sentence while simultaneously making sure your enunciation is clear?
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I get the feeling that anchors are heavily admonished for attempting to second-guess the report. As people have pointed out, the one in question seemed quite aware that something was wrong.
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In this case I just think she trusted that it had been fact-checked. Like "This sounds wrong, but... they checked this... right?"
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"It is a job that discourages any exercise of even the most basic personal judgement" is never a defense I've been terribly sympathetic to.
That said, she's the last in a line of people who really should have fucking caught that. Blaming it on an intern is cute, but how many people have to see those names between receiving the tip and reading it on the air? Every single one of those people is some varying degree of an idiot.
(Well, that's not entirely true. I'm sure at least a couple in there -- possibly including the intern -- caught the joke but went ahead with it anyway and just PRETENDED not to have noticed.)
I know sometimes people see a name and don't hear it phonetically in their heads. (Hell, one of the major plot twists in American Gods relies on this exact assumption; a minor character's name is a play on words that is patently obvious if you read it aloud but easy to miss if you don't.) And it'd be one thing if it were just ONE name. Or hell, two.
But four? Nah. Anyone who looked at that for more than a few seconds should have realized there was zero probability that it was legitimate, whether an unpaid intern claimed it was verified or not.
I don't think it would have been remiss for the anchor to break from the script and say "I'm sorry, this is obviously some kind of joke; I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it and have more on the story as it develops." But it should damn well have been caught before it ever made it to air.
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Well, in this instance, no, but I can think of enough scenarios where anchors have to report on something completely unbelievable with a perfectly straight face. I mean, they do cover politics. On the weird off chance that those had been their actual names, acting like they were a joke would have pretty much sank her career.
I get where you're going with this, but the woman aint exactly waterboarding people here. "Get through the colossal mess with as much tact as possible and try not to call attention back to it" was probably honestly the best choice.
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I get where you're going with this, but the woman aint exactly waterboarding people here.
Or flying a plane.
Seems to me this is the PERFECT story to make a point about the importance of telling someone they're doing their job wrong.
But you're right, she didn't exactly have anything to gain by it (aside from not looking like an idiot in a viral video, I suppose). I think that's the problem as much as anything.
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Most of the hearsay about the crash right now involves people not doing what they were supposed to be trained to do, so if anything that would strengthen the argument for discipline. I don't think it really relates though.
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Saw this tweet on some journalism feed:
Glimpse of journalism's future on Merkel campaign trail today - camera drone flying above the crowd in Dresden.
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TV was on in the break room at lunch today.
One of the cable news stations (CNN, I think) was interviewing two people who recently sat by the shooter on a plane.
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TV was on in the break room at lunch today.
One of the cable news stations (CNN, I think) was interviewing two people who recently sat by the shooter on a plane.
Did you mean to post that here? I guess I can see why it might be here, so I'm not sure?
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It's very clearly about the frivolousness of media. Nobody should care what two people who once sat next to a shooter on a plane have to say about the shootings.
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BUT DID HE LOOK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON
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It's very clearly about the frivolousness of media. Nobody should care what two people who once sat next to a shooter on a plane have to say about the shootings.
Yeah, that's the angle I figured Thad was going for if he did mean to post it here.
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News editor loses his shit, blaming a rather odd demographic for, well, the demise of traditional media (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/01/journal_inquirer_editor_chris_powell_blames_the_decline_of_journalism_on.html)
Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households—two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read.
Haha holy shit.
Also, here is their "newly redesigned" website:
Big screenshot (http://i.imgur.com/1ddTyv5.png)
And it's behind a pay-wall! :whoops:
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Huh. I had no idea those people were such prolific newspaper-buyers in the eighties and nineties. Who'd think that shedding such a limited demographic would destroy an entire industry?
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"Welfare Queen awaaaaaaay!"
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...I'm surprised nobody did that in City of Heroes. That would have been the damn most hilarious thing ever.
Super speed power RP'd as turbo-charged Escalade SUV with a chandelier, spinning rims, and neons.
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"Welfare Queen awaaaaaaay!"
It's WEREWOLF QUEEN! OK!? IT'S ALWAYS WEREWOLF QUEEN.
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Goddamned welfare werewolves.
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Welfarewolves.
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Welfarewolves.
Each player starts with 2 kids and no money. Each turn, you may have another kid if you choose. Welfare will give you 10 gold per kid, but kids eat 3 gold worth of food per turn. You also must eat 5 gold worth of food each turn, or 1 kid. You may claim fathership of your kids on any other player, that player must roll 1d10 and pay 5 gold to go through the court system. On a 1, 2, 3, or 4, they must pay alimony of 5 gold per turn. 5, 6, 7, results in no effect, 8 or 9 the father at least gets his legal fees back, and a 10 the Judge cuts off the mother's welfare.
Roles:
I Ain't The Daddy: Cannot be held responsible for Alimony.
Breeder: May have up to 3 kids per turn. May claim Alimony against 2 players per turn.
Werewolf Queen: Wins any fight.
Chick still smoking through hole in neck: May have up to 2 kids per turn. At the start of each turn, roll 1d10. If 10, dies of lung cancer. All kids die from neglect.
Facebook Slut: May claim Alimony against any number of players per turn. Like, omg. She was almost raped.
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On a 2, 3, or 4, they must pay alimony of 5 gold per turn. 5, 6, 7, results in no effect, 8 or 9 the father at least gets his legal fees back, and a 10 the Judge cuts off the mother's welfare.
Because on a 1, a dragon eats you.
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Hermaphrodite werewolves is a nice touch.
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I have no idea where to put this link: Open-source anti-plagiarism utility, featuring a browser plugin (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/is-it-journalism-or-just-a-repackaged-press-release-heres-a-tool-to-help-you-find-out/275206/)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/business/media/an-interview-with-pierre-omidyar.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1& (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/business/media/an-interview-with-pierre-omidyar.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&)
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HH: Now Senator Rubio, you’re one of the few Republicans, you know, Jeb Bush is another one, who are actually fluent in Spanish, can read and absorb Spanish media. What is Spanish media saying? And what are you saying to your Spanish-speaking constituents, or at least those who speak primarily in Spanish, about this fiasco?
Marco Rubio: Well, unfortunately, they’ve been highly susceptible to the propaganda from the administration about how good this is going to be. It’s largely been marketed to people as free health insurance, you’re going to be able to go out and get very affordable health insurance if you don’t have any now. And the rate of uninsured among Hispanic-Americans is very high. So it has some appeal. But I think the reality of this is going to affect that community as much as any other in the country. There are people in the Hispanic community that have health insurance now who are happy with it, and they’re going to lose it. There are people who are going to see premiums skyrocket. And I’m sure there are people that are struggling with the websites. In fact, the Spanish language website, which they touted, isn’t even up and running. So that’s one more reason why this needs to be delayed.
HH: What? It’s not up?
Marco Rubio: It’s not, no, not yet.
HH: That’s incredible. That has not been covered at all.
Marco Rubio: Yeah. It has in Spanish. I mean, so again, but the bottom line is you know, this is just part of an ongoing problem with implementation. This thing is not ready for prime time. There’s a reason why they’ve delayed the mandate for businesses. And quite frankly, it’s unfair that they don’t do the same for individuals. No matter how you may feel about this law, people know how I feel about it. But come on, you’re going to go punish people for not signing up for something that they can’t sign up for because the website doesn’t work? That’s just not fair.
Take that, liberals
https://www.cuidadodesalud.gov/es/ (https://www.cuidadodesalud.gov/es/)
Many thanks to the dedicated efforts of our army of fact-checkers, each of whom invested many hundreds of hours of hard work in order to verify the statement of Senator Rubio.
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It's funny, I can actually see him lie-flinching in the fucking textbox.
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I'm putting this here because reasons
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/ (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/)
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Gawker Op-Ed on Snark, Smarm, and the efforts to shape our modern cultural conversations (http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977)
On the long side, but a really good deconstruction, I think. Love to hear what any of you think.
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I've found the problem with being pro or against aggressive conversation is that people will think rules of conversation that apply to discussing the newest iteration of Star Wars also apply to a telephone call you made to a lesbian single mother whose opinions you disagree with.
I guess people confuse having an opinion, expressing that opinion and acting on that opinion.
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I don't think the article was so much pro-aggressive conversation as it was pointing out that calls for "civility" are being used to mask real civility, avoid clarity, and stifle legitimate criticism.
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So does this thread include news about the mail system? Because it looks like Canada Post is going to start phasing out home delivery. (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/12/11/canada_post_to_announce_radical_changes_to_save_itself.html)
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Canada Post has been pretty good at not delivering my mail for a while now. I guess it's sort of newsworthy how they're finally admitting to it? "Shitty service becoming shittier, more expensive" seems par for the course for so much nowadays.
Also: community mailbox, in this neighborhood. hahaha
hope you like your restaurant fliers soaked with urine
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"Shitty service becoming shittier, more expensive" seems par for the course for so much nowadays.
Yep.