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Comment by vcarl | Hacker News Reader

> We had to write in the most passive tense possible. That’s why you’d see headlines that appear in an alien-esque, passive language.

I was just thinking that the Facebook summary headlines are surprisingly journalistic compared to Buzzfeed, Upworthy, etc. Seeing somebody complain about that explains why their title is "news curator" and not "journalist."

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After having become so annoyed by the buzzfeedization of even traditional news, I was positively surprised when I discovered the "Current Events" page of wikipedia [1], which contains per-day lists of actually relevant stuff (ok, I would take out the crime and sports sections, but that's just me). I would love more neutral, concise media like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Oh, I would say it's a very "journalistic" complaint, unfortunately. Apparently, there is a fair market for that (given the popularity of sites like newyorker.com on HN), but in general what some journalist wants to write is almost opposite to what I want to read. I want to know news, meaning as short and pointed messages as possible, and "no news today" would be actually a good thing. A journalist who thinks he is "good" (note the "graduated from Ivy League" part) wants presence, wants to be someone, a (or, preferably, "the") trendmaker, the Lord of opinions, like that Spider Jerusalem guy. His ego gets in his way. Which is pretty natural, actually — not only for journalists, but for everyone who wants to be a Person, an Individual, not just a smaller part of the system. Which is actually good, I think, for a human.

It might be somewhat working with printed media and specialized news agencies — after all, agency wants something close to what the journalist wants: to have presence, for public to pay attention to them, not to some other agency. "No news today" would be a disaster for them.

I mean, it's all pretty natural, if we admit that typical news agency's goal is not to "give information". And Facebook's "trending news" section's goal, on the contrary, is quite close to that.

I think that's an unfair dig at Spider Jerusalem. He's a decent (fictional) journalist in my opinion. Trying to uncover truth and stuff, old school.

More on topic though, the comments section of the article is also full of "booohoo they have it sooo tough" comments but I think work conditions are relative. It's the typical job agency treatment only a couple of levels higher. If everyone around you is living the Facebook life and you're curating news in a basement/conference room...sure that's not horrible but it's still fairly indecent treatment.

Disclaimer: Huge Transmetropolitan fan, programmer not journalist :)

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