Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

It's not Scientific American. It's every medium. The NYT of 2022 is not the NYT of the past, and WP is not the WP of Watergate. And it goes beyond the ideological issues.

In fact, the same declining quality (though not with the same specifics of course) is the case in every industry where they're fighting for increasingly thinner profit margins.

It was the same back in the day (as far back as Mark Twain, Hearst/"Kane" and the first newspapers), where it was all about political and magnate influence to please some sponsor or another, and cheap writing to get people to buy papers.

If journalism had a veneer that it wasn't about the bottom line, that was when money were plenty, because there was a brief (not that innocent, but much better than before and after) period, say between 1940 and 2000), when:

(a) consumer spending got big

(b) advertising budgets grew

(c) while still having no "per page view" metric available,

(d) and before the race-to-the-bottom of the online era, as there weren't hundreds of thousands of competing news sources plus every amateur with a website plus social media plus 24/7 tv

that gave print journalists the luxury of working independently and with more prestige.

Yes.

Popular journalism has never NOT been biased and at worse absolutely awful for those without power. For that reason, freedom of speech and diverse outlets are important. For whatever reason, people just don’t know much about the history of journalism.

- Yellow journalism is a thing and was responsible for riots, murders and possibly a war: https://www.history.com/news/spanish-american-war-yellow-jou...

- The press of the US South openly advocated and encouraged lynchings: https://www.poynter.org/maligned-in-black-white/

- The LA Times apologized for its stereotypical poor chronicling of issues facing people of color: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-09-27/los-angeles...

- The Kansas City Star has apologized for its reporting of minorities: https://eji.org/news/missouri-newspaper-confronts-and-apolog...

Bad journalism in the past, does not mean journalism isn't worse today than it was overall 50 years ago.

This erroneous argument I see frequently is similar to saying "botched surgeries happened in the past, therefor modern surgery is just as bad as it's always been."

...and then I can go on to list three anecdotes like you did about individuals who died under the surgeons knife 50 years ago.

It's not logical. It's also hard to imagine it as being an honest argument. Can you honestly tell us that you haven't noticed a decline in the quality and accuracy of journalism over your lifetime? The contrast from my perspective is blatant and staggering.

If you were born between 1940-2000 then the parent comment would imply that you have seen a decline during your lifetime?

This is accurate, and I'll add this issue also isn't necessarily about "woke culture" at all - the decision makers at these media companies are latching on to memes they think will drive viewership, and in doing so are amplifying questionable voices and poorly-thought-out content, because those decision makers can't tell the difference and likely don't care.

Being "woke" initially just meant acknowledgement of existing social stratification, and was a meme/label just like being a "Chad" or a "Karen". It was a simple state of being, which has been blown out of proportion by the trends OP outlined. Everything gets bastardized and watered down to the point where it isn't the same thing at all anymore. Now, were seeing amplification of people screaming "that's racist" at everything. I think most things deserve scrutiny, bit I agree the bar for that scrutiny needs to be much higher than the SA article.

I agree corporate journalism is a pathetic shell of its former self that can only race bait to get clicks. But I do think there is some good journalism going on in the independent scene. For example, Glenn Greenwald still puts out good investigative journalism, and there is a lot of good content on substack as well. I think this is the future, it just makes sense. In the past, journalists had to group into big organizations as you needed a lot of infrastructure to get the message out - printing presses, delivery workers, etc. Now with the internet all you really need is a single person.

That true, because they use a different model (directly supported by people via subscriptions/donations).

This model can produce good journalism in some cases (when the people have taste and the journalist doesn't try to optimize his way to placating larger masses) but can also produce bad journalism (say, subscriptions are what sustain all kinds of crap content creators via things like Patreon to Twitch, and hell, OnlyFans).

> Glenn Greenwald still puts out good investigative journalism

Everything I’ve seen from Glenn (to be fair, that's filtered by what his fans make popular on other platforms, because I’m not actively following him) since he shed traditional journalistic standards enforced by editorial oversight at the outlet he founded has been fairly naked ideological hackery that demonstrates why he was wise to establish traditional journalistic standards and editorial oversight when he founded the outlet he left for substack.

Previously his ideological bias was pretty clear, but his journalism was nevertheless, if not flawless, at least recognizable as such. Now he's just throwing red meat to an ideologically-allied fan club

Yeah, I don't actively follow him either, and I am aware that he has aligned himself more with the right lately. I do think though that his work on the Snowden case was really courageous - whether or not you agree or disagree with what he did, it certainly takes balls to go up against the NatSec apparatus.

It might have been courageous to take on that story, but Greenwald was also hilariously wrong. If he had bothered to talk to any subject matter expert, he wouldn't have gotten PRISM so incredibly wrong. The New York Times, CNET, etc. were able to get the story right just by being the slightest bit competent.

I think it is hilarious people think Greenwald is aligned to the right just because he is upset with Democrat party making mistakes.

He votes Democraft (despite being upset at them), is gay, and married to a (male) politician of the Brazillian far-left. (not just "left", his party has "socialist" in the name but has people with strong ties to the communist party and several members openly defend communism).

The Democratic party has become dominated by illiberal authoritarians, as I'm sure you've noticed. If you criticize these people, you are the enemy. Just look at Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema.

He left The Intercept because The Intercept wouldn't publish Glenn's story about Hunter Biden because you're not allowed to criticize Biden because TLAs want Biden. Greenwald obviously is mostly known for exposing the crimes of TLAs.

TLAs?

Three letter agencies

This reads more like "he left the Orange-man-bad-echo-bubble/party-line-therefore-he-is-bad".

There are however plenty of journalists to carry the established, tired, party line for mock rage and cheap partisanship. You'd be fine with WP, NYT, the Guardian, and many others, there's no shortage of my-party-right-or-wrong types.

> This reads more like "he left the Orange-man-bad-echo-bubble/party-line-therefore-he-is-bad".

Er, no he was very far outside of that (with very much the same ideological bent he has now) even when he was at the Intercept

The point of journalism is still to make money, not to get the message out.

You're only going to get "good" reporting if it pays well to do so, and pays poorly to do "bad" reporting

Not to mention National Geographic and the Wall Street Journal. Buzzfeed on the other hand has been getting better, from a low base.

It's just capitalism at work. The period between 1940 and 2000, roughly, is when white men had the most disposable income. Unsurprisingly, most media was produced for them, specifically. Now, white men have a very small piece of the disposable income pie. And, we see lots of diversity in media and big media companies trying to appeal to the widest demographic.

So, I'm guessing that Scientific American's readership just changed, and they went with what sells.

This is about declining quality, not increasing diversity (if there's much of the latter).

Today it's mostly cheap gossip (even from major media), rage-inducing pieces, shallow coverage, sponsor ball licking, and "embedded" journalism, that is, exclusives and handouts from the government, the enterprise, and millitary, instead of exposes.

And this goes beyond Scientific American to all media, including those that were already run by and targeted to minorities in the past. It also happened with media in countries without demographic changes, so it's not about whites vs some increased more diverse demographics.

It's the race to the bottom caused by the web, decline of print, rich advertising metrics having them by the balls (not aiming for abstract readers and letting journalists free to write, but being able to micromanage how articles are written to get maximum views).

Newspapers didn't close or go to smaller offices and fire tons of foreign correspondents, staff photographers, and proof editors, for example, "trying to appeal to the widest demographic", but because they couldn't afford them.

The internet has killed most print publication, but the internet does not have good profit margins and so every corner is cut to maintain profitability.

A single ad in a single print issue of the New York Times can easily cost a quarter million dollars. A Google Display ad costs pennies. Online advertisements can no longer support real journalism, only click-bait.

Most news organizations have gone back to the idea that they have to then have users pay subscriptions to view their content online. This, unfortunately breaks the sharability of news stories and creates a frustrating user experience.

I only see two paths forward for print new:

1. Bundle with other services print, streaming, etc etc. Most people won’t pay 20 dollars a month or whatever it costs to subscribe to the NYTimes, but they might if it was part of a package that includes other things.

2. News organizations should go non-profit. This alleviates some pressure to have profit margins and opens up donations as a potential revenue stream.

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