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Comment by simplecomplex | Hacker News Reader

News is no longer what a local paper publishes. It's the latest Instagram story from your friends. It's the Facebook post from a local school informing parents of a PTA meeting. It's the Twitter status update from the President. It's a Reddit post discussing problems with the latest MacBook keyboards.

Why is the newspaper dying? Because updates about what is happening in people's world is no longer constrained by what is published in the local paper! And everyone involved in the old industry still can't wrap their minds around it.

The newspaper was a medium for communication. The World Wide Web is a medium for communication. News didn't die, but what constitutes news is no longer defined by what the local paper decides to publish.

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The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news. They did a fantastic job (in most cases) of making sure they had their facts straight, and local news broke most of the big stories you eventually heard about on national news sources. Even today, a LOT of the national news starts at local news sources, either papers or local channels, but that is getting worse all the time due to the cuts.

Instead, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. you get a flood of "news", but you have to vet it all yourself to see what is true and what isn't. And many many people don't do that - if they trust the person sharing, they trust the "news". Or if it agrees with their world view, they trust the "news". Sometimes amazing things are covered - live Reddit threads have broken some amazing stories, with details from local residents. Same with Twitter, etc. But for every one of those stories there are 100s that are fake, or actually pushing alternative narratives that are not based in reality for their own ends. And that flood is just too much for the average person to actually separate the fact from the fiction.

Social media does not equal journalism. That isn't "old industry" thinking. That is just a sad fact.

It turns out, many people find curating their own updates that are relevant to them from the web more valuable than spending money on a newspaper.

I believe the parent's argument is that people are terrible at "curating their own updates that are relevant to them from the web."

And that having a voter base which exclusively does so is antithetical to objective truth and a functioning democracy.

I am part of the voting base, and I much prefer having greater choice in what I read and where I consume my news. I'm more informed now than I was before the Web. I'd prefer not to go back to a world where the only source of current events was the newspapers and television.

Who's arguing that? You can get important local news from a newspaper/local journalist source and still 'self curate' your own interests. Millions of people are already doing this.

Every time I have known what was going on and read a local newspaper covering it there has been a host of errors. Local news is ok for having a vague idea what's going on, and little else.

So sure, there is some value there. But, less than many people seem to think.

PS: OK, local movie showtimes where generally correct.

I typically find a large amount of information that simply doesn't exist online in my local paper.

And don't get me started on ranting about Facebook trying to hamfistedly assume that mantle.

Have you seen wikinews? Their selection of topics and reporting may be much broader than what you are used to on your local news channel. If you even watch that.

"The difference is, the newspaper paid professional reporters to write the news."

Not write. Gather. The whole point of reporting is someone going out and collecting news. Not someone who already has it issuing a press release. “Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." (Attributed to many, but seen as a desk sign on some newspaper editors desks.)

Aside from the obvious "fake news" dilemma (i.e. How do you trust your aggregated news sources), the unsexy but important data (i.e. Data supporting Quadrant 2 activities ) is not being collected.

This leads to a less informed public, at least locally. Any of the "local" social sites (i.e. Patch/etc) seem to wither or get consumed by politics (national/international) spam (commercials) and propaganda.

The internet of today lacks trustworthiness (probably an engineered outcome).

I disagree. Speaking for myself, I am far more informed because of the Web than I was before the Web where my only option was the newspaper.

Yes, a lot of people prefer to read updates on the Kardashians, just like people prefer to do the crosswords and read the funnies.

I'd argue the difference is in degrees.

With a paper, I can't ignore the front page. On the internet, I can easily cocoon myself in a bubble that exclusively agrees with me.

Which isn't to say I'm suggesting the Luddite path. Change has come and society must adapt. But we (and specifically, Facebook and Google) need to do better at realizing what's being destroyed and replacing it.

People ignored the paper. Some people only watched cartoons and MTV, or the shopping channel, or daytime soaps. I was alive before the Web, and I don't feel the average person was more informed than they are today. I think it was easier to live in a bubble before the Web.

Reading inane clickbait on Facebook and being informed aren't mutually exclusive.

I think one of the big differences is that it's easier now to be in a bubble where you believe nearly all "reasonable" people think like you because it's all you ever see due to reality filters.

  A Facebook post doesn't cover the PTA meeting and compile what occurred. A twitter update from the president is national news and just a snippet where an article about the tweet would provide a larger context about what he's talking about.  Reddit is so likely to be astroturfed by big companies that it is becoming increasingly misinformation.

This is simply not true. There is a huge demand, perhaps now moreso than ever, for trustworthy sources of consolidated information about current events. I don't follow Trump or the White House on Twitter. I don't follow Apple news on Reddit. I don't attend PTA meetings and I don't follow them on Facebook. Do you expect me to start doing all those things to replace reading the paper?

I don't expect you to do anything. I was explaining why the newspaper is dying: Because people (in general, in aggregate) are preferring other forms of communication. It's obvious that in a world where the newspaper is your only option for "updates on things happening that are relevant to you", that it would do better than in a world where there are many more options to fill that need.

The number of Americans reading print newspapers has been declining since the web became popular. The average age of a newspaper reader is somewhere north of 55.

You keep stating your point without addressing the arguments against them.

When people are being paid for the express goal of gathering such data in as unbiased way as possible - how can that be replaced by pure crowdsourcing?

Why are you assuming its unbiased?

Because the audience does not value the "gathering of such data in as unbiased way as possible" enough to make it economically viable, so instead crowdsourcing suffices.

Local newspapers are dying largely due to a change in the audience they once depended upon. This isn't an argument about "better" in some objective manner but instead an observation of the reality of the situation.

It most likely can't be replaced by pure crowdsourcing, but that doesn't mean that newspapers will stay as the mans for "people being paid for the express goal of gathering such data in as unbiased way as possible", all it means that such activity likely will not be properly replaced as newspapers and journalism declines.

There is a desire for "trustworthy sources of consolidated information about current events" and they are important, however, the economic demand for them is low and falling as clearly shown by the fact that people are becoming less willing to pay for that. If you look at what the majority of people do, instead of what some people say, then it's obvious that the willingness to pay for such information is definitely not huge, and now moreso than ever the demand for this is falling - the people choose to do without trustworthy information and prefer free news tidbits that match what they want to hear.

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