Hacker News Reader

Comment by avalys | Hacker News Reader

The byline is “The Economist”, and the lack of links is the house style, like a printed newspaper.

A relic from the times when the name and reputation of the institution alone was enough to earn your trust.

Personally I still find them a high-quality source, especially because they are a weekly publication based in the UK and distanced (but not entirely removed) from the bullshit of the US media cycle.

View on HN

It's a foolish tradition of theirs not to provide hyperlinked citations in online articles. It would cost them little.

The Economist a few years back did an article on Steon (free energy engine) but it was essentially a PR piece soliciting investors… so take them with a grain of salt

Journalists fucked up massively when they allowed sponsored content to masquerade as editorial content. Now people don't trust media as much as they used to and are moving to other sources to get their information. What journalists around the world need to do is come together and build consensus in the industry on separating sponsored content from their own. A tiny, fine print at the bottom of a full page sponsor is grossly insufficient. It has to be more explicit. Perhaps reserve colors and styles exclusively for indigenous content or frame all sponsored content in a clearly identifiable manner. One way or another, they need to figure out how to reclaim their reputation.

I canceled my subscription to the local daily over this. Not only were they presenting advertisement as if they were editorial content, they weren’t even reading it themselves. If they were, they would have noticed that they’d printed, on actual paper, an unreadable article full of broken html fragments. That was the last straw for me. Stunning disrespect for the people who pay for the paper.

Or even better, allow people to pay to remove ads.

How few average people care about any of this any more? Especially the incoming generation. There's not care about quality.

    > bullshit of the US media cycle

The UK has their own media cycle. With the exception of Financial Times, the quality of newspapers has fallen dramatically in the last 30 years. Even the FT prints low quality "political swamp reporting" articles. I am always surprised how poor is their reporting on national UK politics. As a result, I avoid those articles. Even the BBC News is much worse than 10 years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com