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Comment by bb123 | Hacker News Reader

What is modern journalism’s obsession with putting “quietly“ in the headline of everything they weren’t explicitly informed of in advance? They seem to use it to imply some kind of deceitfulness, when usually it means they actually just had to do their job and investigate a little bit.

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I would not use the phrase "modern journalism" to refer to sites like theverge.com. Instead, I would call them "modern media" which is a stream of opinion pieces that might be better described as commentary on some public event combined with a much larger group of stories that are really press releases or advertisements. Take a look at the "stories" on their main page:

* "Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever" - Now ask yourself -- is this a "news" peice? Is it journalism, or is it opinion?

* "Apple won’t let Fortnite back on iOS until the Epic v. Apple verdict is final" -- What the hell is this? Isn't it normal that verdicts take effect when they are final? What exactly is the story here? There is no story, there is outrage commentary.

Then we have intermixed with the above opinion pieces various P.R. stories and product reviews, none of them labelled as advertisements, all mixing PR with what was traditionally the role of a reviewer:

* "Microsoft’s fall Surface event: the 7 biggest announcements"

* "MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP STUDIO HANDS-ON: ONE WEIRD, POWERFUL COMPUTER"

* "How to preorder all of the new Surface hardware"

* "The Surface Go 3 gets new Intel processors"

* "Microsoft announces Surface Pro 8 with bigger 13-inch 120Hz display and Thunderbolt"

* "Microsoft’s new mouse has a shell that’s 20 percent recycled ocean plastic"

* "How to watch Microsoft’s Surface event today"

* "Gitamini is a cute, compact, cargo-carrying robot that will follow you around like a dog"

* "HP’s new 11-inch tablet has a flipping webcam"

Whatever this is, it's not journalism.

Eh... I've never seen quiet as implying deceitfulness. If anything, to me it implies sincerity. It means someone is using the court system to address a real grievance they have; not just virtue-signal and grandstand for the public, like other recent filings against FB (e.g. the FTC filing an anti-monopoly suit that got summarily dismissed for being unworkably low-quality).

And I have no idea how much effort it would take to find such a lawsuit amidst the huge shuffle of papers that must be the Delaware Chancery.

Agreed. I read "quietly" as "without any money or effort put into advertising, PR, or messaging the fact."

If someone sues Facebook and does the media circuit, advertises the fact, and gets their face out there, and the case just isn't likely to succeed on the merits, that's one thing. If someone sues Facebook, gets to discovery, survives motions to dismiss and "doesn't tell a soul" (though public will find out from court records) that meets my definition of doing it "quietly."

You are perhaps right about what is implied here. But I have noticed the same trend outside of the media in general. There's currently an uproar in my town and I've seen 3 or 4 very outspoken people, including hearing it on a radio interview, say that the school board "quietly" reinstated mask mandates in school, and there's a lot of implication of secret, ulterior motives.

But I also don't understand it. You can't "quietly" enforce a policy against every kid in the school, especially if you expect them to come to school with masks in hand ahead of time. And the uproar started after a widely advertised meeting that was broadcast online and that had solicited public comment. There was nothing quiet about it.

I think it's just a cheap tactic used to convey a lack of trust.

I get what you're saying. I think in general, everything salient and attention-grabbing gets abused, so it all starts leaving us a little cold and cynical towards salient things in general. Like how we've been desensitized by overexposure to violence and sex, but now creeping into more abstract and intellectual things.

On the face of it, it's bizarre that an innocent word like "quietly" has come to have irritating connotations of clickbait for so many. But thousands of people are having meetings every day to discuss how best to grab our attention by any means necessary, and this is the result.

It's something substantive and clearly newsworthy that happened as a matter of public record over a month ago without any media attention. That's pretty much the definition of "quiet" in the context of a notable news event.

For comparison's sake, it's extremely common for those who file lawsuits of this type and magnitude to announce that they are doing it. These plaintiffs did not and that's a relevant detail in the narrative.

I interpreted quietly as meaning there was no previous media attention. So it means they are among the first to uncover it. Not necessarily that it is deceitful

I don't know why you say "modern journalism" when the guy who tweeted this isn't a journalist. Just need a chance to dunk on someone?

The issue is DE chancery courts which charge a lot for filings. No one saw this until yesterday. Links to the complaints here:

https://rfob.medium.com/exclusive-facebook-executives-sued-o...

Only slightly better than adding "slams" to every headline.

It's mentioned in the thread specifically as to why it was 'quietly' :

> As to how this suit wasn't noticed, Delaware Chancery charges a fortune per document limiting public awareness

This isn't to say it was intentionally quietly added, just that it wasn't noticed as easily as some others given the quantity of documents required to pay 200+ iirc

> What is modern journalism’s obsession with putting “quietly“ in the headline of everything they weren’t explicitly informed of in advance?

Could you give other examples?

Quietly makes sense to me - the parties sought no publicity (if I understand correctly).

Search for “quietly” on HackerNews and you’ll get quite literally hundreds of examples

I think "quietly" usually just implies that the company did not issue a press release.

I don't think it ever has anything to do with the media being informed "in advance".

"quietly" implies the suit wasn't accompanied by a PR campaign or media outreach effort

I would not expect more from someone who uses "mother of all lawsuits" as well.

You are correct, it's a trendy word that is often overused for hype. I see it most often used in what we quaintly used to call the "blogosphere" in the ancient times of ten years ago.

But this isn't a journalist. Or a news publication. The closest the author ever came was working for a sports outlet a long time ago.

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