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Comment by testHNac | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that Vice kind of stories are costly to produce. And are not sensational enough to get a lot of clicks.

It's easier to do a typical 'Culture War' fear mongering type content and get easy clicks.

Also, I think we are in an echo chamber where if you don't report on comment on the latest topic, you might be perceived to belong to the other side.

The West seems to lump issues into "Good" vs "Evil". Leaving no space for News media in grey area to succeed.

I can't think of any 'Moderate' News source that is massively successful. Most of the mainstream ones can easily be classified into one camp or the other. May be just degree of devotion to the camp differs.

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I keep hearing these kind of arguments about in-depth reporting being costly.

Vice went bankrupt when it stopped producing those stories.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_Media in 2016, Vice was making $1B ($10^9) with 3000 employees. ~$330,000 / employee. Can probably afford some plane flights and investigative telephone calls.

Per standard work year, every employee's 'supposedly' working 2080 hrs a year. ~6M work hours. You can write a lot of interesting stories, and follow a lot of leads other people are not looking at with 6M hours / year.

If you follow the "copy sensational click" route, you end up with a lot of local media, where it looks like somebody just copied the local police arrest report.

You don't stand out by just copying / dopplegangering whatever looks shiny.

Sometimes (not sure if this what happened here) an organization that works well oversells growth to its investors, and the only way to reach growth is to juice metrics in the most mechanical way possible, destroying what made the organization add value in the first place.

It's a profitable and effective political tactic to force a position on every issue and flush out fence sitters. Even in this thread you've got people classifying institutions by how aggressively they toe the line on one by one political bugbears.

But not profitable enough to avoid bankruptcy?

For political parties, not news organizations.

People keep making the mistake of thinking these organizations are driven by "clicks." They're not, they don't make any money anyway. They're driven by eyes, specifically the right eyes, and impact. They don't need to sell ads, the stories are the ads; they need to sell the stories.

Deutsche Welle seems pretty balanced

Breaking Points (to me at least) fills that middle ground where both sides are open for attack and worth defending.

They have been Intercepted (partnered with the Intercept mainly funded by billionaire Omidyhar). I observe them starting to follow the path of Vice.

> The problem is that Vice kind of stories are costly to produce.

Perhaps. But now look how costly it is not to produce them. You can "save" by being a commodity, but eventually the (missed) opportunity cost (of doing something unique) will catch up to you.

NPR

For all that don’t know you have a text only version: https://text.npr.org/

I love NPR I am just a little sad that for the past 2 years it feels like they switched from raw boring neutral to a little bit left.

The political analysis suggests that NPR has remained pretty stationary; what has swung is that America grew a vocal far-right wing with enough political clout to be heard in the conversation, and that pushed the national centroid away from where NPR sits.

In a world where Tucker Carlson has had a successful television commentary career that didn't immediately result in every show sponsor pulling up stakes and leaving until his networks bade him go elsewhere, NPR looks liberal.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda...

I think people often use "liberal" to mean left-leaning, whereas it's really more like center-right Democrat. If NPR were left-leaning, for example https://www.npr.org/2022/11/21/1137640529/railroads-freight-... wouldn't be titled "Largest rail union rejects contract, stoking fears of a strike" and have a first paragraph of "On the eve of the holiday season, workers at the heart of the supply chain are once again threatening to strike.". Fear the threatening workers. A left-leaning report would emphasize the struggle the workers are having negotiating with the exploitative corporations running the railways, and how Biden and congress pretend to be pro-labor but vote against the workers.

The modern leftism in the US hasn't been about working class for a long time. They use the same Marxist tactic of class divide but apply them to identities like race and gender to divide people in to oppressor and oppressed, and stoke up the current "culture war" to silent political opponent and gain money and power.

NPR was great 10 years ago, but they've also gone all-in on the culture war since then. There's a podcast/Youtube series that was linked here a while ago called All Things Reconsidered that does a good job breaking it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPvNucxB7TI

Perhaps it's the case that the "culture war" isn't a thing media "goes in" on... It's a thing that's happening, and media can either choose to report it or pretend it's not occuring?

... but there's a lot about how the world works these days that just... Doesn't make a lot of sense if we pretend people don't care passionately about some fundamental divisions.

Very interesting video that verbalizes many thoughts I’ve privately had. I agree that NPR has gotten more sensational and hive minded over the recent years. I was pledging 10 years ago or so, not anymore.

Lately I was trying PBS because it’s pretty dry, but they’re also quite left leaning no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-Ug2-Ou2Rc

No PBS is not left leaning. At least in my opinion. One thing I noticed about PBS is they always bring up both sides of the argument. And when they have people on to give opinions they have two people that a very mild mannered and speak eloquently. I also see them report on stories that you would see on either fox news or cnn but it's all facts, and almost always never opinion. It's kind of refreshing to watch. I think that is the reason is seems dry, because what they present are the facts of the story. There is no emotion added in and there is no hidden suggestion to try to alter your emotions.

Do they? I read the website regularly and I feel like I never see culture war bullshit?

NPR has always seemed more neutral than actively tacking toward a moderate position.

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