Journalism is publishing the truth that someone does not want told; all else is stenography and marketing.
We, the people formerly known as the audience recognize this. We can tell when we are being lied to. We can tell when the truth is being shaded to benefit the beneficiaries of the status quo.
If you hand us shit and call it ice cream we still aren't going to like it, on facebook or anywhere else. We know that our vaunted 'free press' is a bought and paid for lie. We know that much of what passes for journalism is a ham-handed attempt to manufacture social proof for the acceptance of the current order of things.
Burn it down. All the way down. We're going back to word of mouth, moderated by cryptographically attested pseudonymous identities because that will work so much better...
> Journalism is publishing the truth that someone does not want told; all else is stenography and marketing.
Well, it's certainly that, too. But journalism can also be about uncovering truths that hardly anyone knows about, or telling stories that help us understand the world.
> We're going back to word of mouth, moderated by cryptographically attested pseudonymous identities because that will work so much better...
You're probably being sarcastic, but even if word of mouth never passed straight out lies and total myths, journalism isn't just about reporting facts, but putting them in perspective. Perspective is necessary because there are simply too many facts for you to digest. A professional journalist hopefully keeps track of all pertinent facts of her beat, and reports the most important stories in context.
Word of mouth can, at most, be a data collection mechanism. In fact, word of mouth is one of the inputs a journalist works with; it certainly can't substitute the final product.
This is a rant, but there's something to it. Seeing as how the article is about the New York Times, and how real "quality journalism" is bold, "publishing the truth that someone does not want told" here's some more about how the NYT is not as bold and independent a journalistic establishment as it might be:
Journalism is publishing the truth that your owners want :-) see the Barclay brothers and the Daily Telegraph. or the BBC bashing that both the Guardian and Murdochs papers do.
Funny how their lawyers jumped on Nadine Dories when she suggested that they published the expenses scandal to derail the cross party alliance on shutting down the tax havens in the channel islands.
The future of news is halfway between stratfor and private eye magazine. It should be written from an "out-universe" perspective, unlike the "in-universe" perspective of all current journalism, ie. it should treat the upper two or three layers of PR and realpolitik that cover every aspect of modern life as fictional, and skip straight to the real reasons for things: "control over regional energy markets", "elections in 2 years," "these two celebrities are both managed by the same agency and so they are having a fight to boost sales of celebrity A's new book" and so on.
It seems that people don't want a factual news source. Especially not for celebrity coverage. It's the same reason that people flock to talk radio or fringe conspiracy sites: the truth is boring and/or depressing. It's the humor sites that come closest to the bone (the Onion, the Daily Mash etc).
The future of journalism is, imho, oceans of random trash (think Business Insider or the Daily Mail) on the one hand side, and rock star columnists and investigators (think popular bloggers like John Gruber or The Macalope) on the other.
To succeed as a syndication platform in this, methinks you either need to be very good at satisfying yourself with a fickle audience looking for subpar content while making numbers work in your favor, or syndicate the rock stars in razor focused channels (The Magazine or Flipboard) that your quality audience will value enough to stay around.
Whether traditional newspapers will survive this transition any more than music publishers is anyone's guess. I'm not holding my breath for most of them -- quality is simply too low.
I think your placing of John Gruber and theMacalope among the side opposite the "oceans of random trash" really says it all: the future of journalism is not two sides, it's just oceans of trash.
the future of actual journalism is probably something like Pierre Omidyar's new venture - Benevolent billionaires supporting actual investigative journalism because it provides some public good, and not expecting it to be profitable on a scale like big media houses such as the New York Times are expected to work.
For a very long time newspapers and local television stations had a near monopoly on local media. That put them in a unique position to serve as a conduit not just for news but also for things like business advertisements, all of which was enormously lucrative. Many folks fell into the trap of thinking that because local reporting was highly needed and very popular that it was good. You see that in the way that newspapers and journalists are portrayed through most of the 20th century.
And then along came the internet, the king of all disintermediators. First local print news lost its readership and ad revenue, and many thought it was a matter of media, printed matter vs digital matter. Then over many years a lot of newspapers shut down, while others attempted to modernize and enter the digital age. And now we're at a stage where the truth is harder to hide from. The fact is that most journalism just isn't very good, and never has been. But when it was the only thing available it was better than nothing so it was consumed regardless.
Now the regurgitation of wire reports, simple duplicate coverage of a story, and uncritical passing on of news releases from 3rd parties holds no value. Those are things that rely on distribution, and in the internet age that is trivial. This puts into sharper focus the kernel of original, serious reporting that journalist do. And it turns out they have historically done very, very little, and even less of it of any serious value.
The problem isn't that print journalism uses an outdated media, the problem is that the vast majority of what used to pass for journalism is now largely redundant. And most traditional news organizations still don't realize this or understand that the news organizations which will be able to survive in the 21st century will be very, very different from those of the past, and not just old organizations with a few modernizations bolted on. That's a tough pill to swallow because it means both that most journalists have quite frankly not been doing worthwhile work, it also means that there is no place for the vast majority of traditional journalism jobs. People within the industry naturally flinch away from such hard truths, but it won't stop them from being true.
This is an extremely poorly thought out article. The core idea, that you can't be the best at something and still fail, is so naive that it ruins everything else that the guy says.
Yes, the important thing is getting good information to the right readers, for whom it is relevant. Counting absolute page views is in the interests of SEO wizards and social media specialists. They monetize through page views and spam is a legitimate tactic.
It's hard to measure engagement on a news site when someone doesn't "like" and "share" the story because they don't want to share it with their social circles. If only there was a site that kept track of personal bookmarks.
I don't care about the survival of newspapers from a financial or economic perspective, I care about the survival of newspapers from a social good perspective and it's not clear to me that targeted news can supply that since it filters out everything you weren't inclined to already view but was still important. If I bought a newspaper and it had a bunch of stuff in it I didn't care about, I might still pick it up and read an article or two if I got bored enough or was using the bathroom. With targeted news and a smartphone, I don't ever have to do that again.
He rightly criticizes newspapers for all thinking their only problem is getting their impeccable journalism to readers... but then talks only about ways of letting readers organize and select what they want to read--how is that different? If content is the problem, then ease of access is secondary.
I can imagine getting scared off by trying to address the quality issue- the Grey Lady is an institution, a lot of journalists aspire to work there, and journalism has been done in the One True Way for so long it's hard to imagine alternatives.
I remember reading a science article in Ars for the first time, and thinking "wow, this doesn't suck. I thought all articles about science sucked." There was even a link to the paper at the bottom! Ryan Paul wrote articles about programming and open source, and they were nuanced, coherent, and made sense. He could even program!
Still, this is all nerd shit, right? Real people don't care. Vox seems to be addressing this in other fields- you read an article about a speech (http://www.vox.com/2014/6/15/5812752/read-obama-s-full-speec... chosen by fair dice roll), the same article every other two-bit news outlet hammered together in 45 minutes. Then you go down to the bottom of the page, and you've got a bunch of explanations of every related thing. What, why, more details, links to rebuttals.
Still, politics is just nerd shit for innumerate white people. Real people don't care, right? Grantland writes sports articles with heat maps, diagrams, tactical explanations, as well as the usual platitudes about desire, and perfunctory examinations of the politics of sport.
Quality is an issue, and it's certainly becoming more pressing. As to whether or not people who are not insiders are interested in the opinions of subject matter experts over professional summarizers, we'll see. Not everyone wants to know more about everything, but everyone wants to know more about something sometimes.
Journalism forms a cornerstone of our democracies. It's function is as relevant today as it ever was (perhaps more so in the light of Snowden) so we better think carefully before we write it off.
But this is where I think the article falls short. I think if someone is interested in the wider world they will figure out how to get what they want from the newspapers of today. Some news agencies will be bad at it, and some will be good. That's just the nature of diversity.
But, to say that a small percentage of online news is relevant to me is only true if I don't go looking for the parts that interest me. This was never true, not even for the old dead-tree news.
Whilst I think things can be done to make digital news more engaging, I think the real 'problem' is to be found elsewhere in the ever sub-dividing space of our 'free' time.
Journalism thinks it forms a cornerstone of our democracies. But then it also seems to believe that we have democracy, which we plainly don't.
I like the article. It has weaknesses, but it makes some good points.
The bigger issue - to what extent should the media be about political empowerment - is another question.
I'd suggest current branding/advertising strategies are entirely about disempowerment, because they train consumers to think and act passively.
When you believe that politics is about voting for Product A vs Product B, which is almost like a Facebook like only it lasts a little longer, then you've already lost all your political power.
Traditional journalism was sometimes able to hold power to account. We're not going to that from clickbait intent/interest marketing. Can anyone imagine Buzzfeed breaking the next Pentagon Papers?
So who's going to hold power to account now? And how?
At the beginning of the article, the point seems, in line with the title, to be that the core problem is the journalism. By the end of the article, he seems to have come around to the conclusion that the problem really is the marketing and/or delivery, with the supermarket analogy, and especially with the example of ostensibly interesting things like the Takei video from the WP.
There were a lot of interesting points in this post, but they don't seem to add up to a coherent argument.
Neither is war propaganda. Or kowtowing to the government on the Snowden documents. The NYT is the shiniest outlet for establishment "news." At a time when the establishment is so rotten, even the NYT can't make it smell nice.
"You can't be the world's best and fail at the same time." Oh yes you can. You can be the best at providing something people don't want. You can even be the best at providing something people should want but don't. The NY Times is in the same boat as so many smart, literate, thoughtful, and educated communicators before them: either (1) dumb down the content, (2) fight the vain battle of trying to snaz up clever content with whiz-bang visuals and "Tweets" and whatnot, or (3) go out of business. Not a happy choice, but sometimes, when you're surrounded by swine, your pearls have no place to go.
Interesting read but I would disagree that prestige papers aren't like a brand. I use aggregators, mostly, but when I see articles from certain sources (e.g. NYT, Economist or CSMonitor) I'm more likely to click on those. That tells me that quality papers still have some value but maybe only because they have maanged to keep good journalists together.
I'm guessing the future will be individual journalists/columnists marketing themselves directly via aggregators.
So you could amost say that they are winning at journalism and failing at getting their journalism to readers.
The entire article is about how that's not true, but the conclusion was that's true and the way to fix it is for NYT to make a Flipgboard clone. That's actually a great idea, and maybe they already do that I don't know. I use HN to aggregate my news.
Doesn't the second part contradict the first? First part: "It isn't about delivering, your product sucks." Second part: "People have narrow interests, they want to see relevant content and you send them everything mixed up". It looks like the second part is about delivering after all - about better filtering in particular.
The issue is simple. I know what the times is. But I don't know why I would want to read the times. I use news aggregators because other readers seem to be the only ones to know how to deliver what I want to read . Reading the times directly feels like rolling the dice on finding interesting or important news.
But let me ask you this. If The NYT is 'winning at journalism', why is its readership falling significantly? If their daily report is smart and engaging, why are they failing to get its journalism to its readers? If its product is 'the world's best journalism', why does it have a problem growing its audience? You can't be the world's best and fail at the same time.
Of course you can. In fact, that's the normal order of things, because people don't want the best -- they want mid-lowbrow. Ask every starving genius writer/artist. If this logic were correct then crack is the "best" product in the world. Everyone who tries it wants more, so much so that it's physically hard to stop.
The sad truth is that quality and popularity rarely intersect, especially when it comes to intellectual "goods" or art. In fact, producing the best quality in those fields is almost a certain assurance of failure. I would say, "you can't be the world's best and succeed at the same time".
This is also why advertising is failing for newspapers. In a digital world where intent is paramount for advertisers, it's far more valuable to target your advertisers for when people are looking for something specifically, rather than the random 'I don't know what I'm going to get' that we see from the newspapers.
Advertising is failing for newspapers because the revenue it generates is lower than the cost of production, and the revenues are low because of competition with sites that have low production costs.
On social channels, we define what we are interested in by following people and brands that match what we care about.
Yes, and unfortunately quality newspapers and magazines are directed at people with broad horizons and open minds that trust the editors' choices. At people who think, "if the NY Times thinks it's newsworthy then I'd better read it". That actually used to work once.
Following The New York Times on Twitter is just like paging through a print newspaper. Each tweet is about something completely unrelated to the tweets before it. And this is the opposite of why people usually follow people and brands online.
Yes because people are crack addicts. That's what works in the market, but that's not necessarily what's "good" for us.
Today, the newspapers' editorial focus is to create random packages of news.
Yes, well unfortunately that's what the world is. A random package of events.
They are all over the place, and as such there is nothing that we as viewers can connect with. There is no momentum, passion, or reason for watching any of these videos.
With that I actually agree. Of course, if they were to create the journalism they really wish to, they'd fail even harder, but that's another matter.
> because people don't want the best -- they want mid-lowbrow. Ask every starving genius writer/artist
I am glad to read an article like the original post, about how the incentives of the world we live in distort the effects of the things we consume. I am distressed to read top comments like yours, which lazily declare that the world sucks because you're too smart. Even if you were right, and you're not, you wouldn't change anything.
For instance, your comment about '"intellectual goods" like art' is completely off the mark. Having dabbled in both music and writing, I have found that there's a huge difference in attitude between your stereotypical "starving artists" and people who produced art and music that the world actually liked, if only a little bit beyond their circle of friends.
Generally, the people who ranted the most about popular art were people who least understood how to craft music or writing that people wanted to read. This sort can often be found roaming university halls and earning degrees making art nobody actually wants. On the other hand, the guys who played at bars, or published stories in small magazines, almost universally had respect for the extraordinary amounts of talent in even the "lowest" books and music, even if they strongly disagreed with the value of the art. They also had very sharp analytical and critical minds when it came to the art in question.
> if The NYT is 'winning at journalism', why is its readership falling significantly?
I don't understand how a paper that seems to have fired all its researchers and fact checkers can be considered winning at journalism. They continually cannot get the senators from certain states (North & South Dakota) and print unverified opinion as fact.
It is a bit simpler than that though. The NYT is no better than Fox News or MSNBC in its partnership. People don't like to continually read a paper that insults their beliefs in the editorial pages when I can just go to Yahoo and see what's going on.
The low for me was when a ND Senator (whom the identified as coming from South Dakota) has to set them straight on how a hunt in a National Park will save a lot of elk (kill a few vs. starvation), I realized they have no idea how nature or the national parks work and were unwilling to find people who did.
Here in Norway newspapers more or less survive, although perhaps not with the younger generations. They are generally the best source if you want to follow up on local events.
Newspapers that rely solely on local readership are doing okay. NYT is not one of those newspapers. They need national readership to sustain their size.
[+] [-] olefoo|11 years ago|reply
We, the people formerly known as the audience recognize this. We can tell when we are being lied to. We can tell when the truth is being shaded to benefit the beneficiaries of the status quo.
If you hand us shit and call it ice cream we still aren't going to like it, on facebook or anywhere else. We know that our vaunted 'free press' is a bought and paid for lie. We know that much of what passes for journalism is a ham-handed attempt to manufacture social proof for the acceptance of the current order of things.
Burn it down. All the way down. We're going back to word of mouth, moderated by cryptographically attested pseudonymous identities because that will work so much better...
[+] [-] pron|11 years ago|reply
Well, it's certainly that, too. But journalism can also be about uncovering truths that hardly anyone knows about, or telling stories that help us understand the world.
> We're going back to word of mouth, moderated by cryptographically attested pseudonymous identities because that will work so much better...
You're probably being sarcastic, but even if word of mouth never passed straight out lies and total myths, journalism isn't just about reporting facts, but putting them in perspective. Perspective is necessary because there are simply too many facts for you to digest. A professional journalist hopefully keeps track of all pertinent facts of her beat, and reports the most important stories in context.
Word of mouth can, at most, be a data collection mechanism. In fact, word of mouth is one of the inputs a journalist works with; it certainly can't substitute the final product.
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|11 years ago|reply
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-nyti...
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/glenn-greenwald-michae...
[+] [-] walshemj|11 years ago|reply
Funny how their lawyers jumped on Nadine Dories when she suggested that they published the expenses scandal to derail the cross party alliance on shutting down the tax havens in the channel islands.
[+] [-] jevgeni|11 years ago|reply
P.S. No, wait, I can't really tell, if you are being sarcastic or not, so sorry if you are.
[+] [-] JonnieCache|11 years ago|reply
Also it would ignore the news cycle.
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
It seems that people don't want a factual news source. Especially not for celebrity coverage. It's the same reason that people flock to talk radio or fringe conspiracy sites: the truth is boring and/or depressing. It's the humor sites that come closest to the bone (the Onion, the Daily Mash etc).
[+] [-] ddebernardy|11 years ago|reply
To succeed as a syndication platform in this, methinks you either need to be very good at satisfying yourself with a fickle audience looking for subpar content while making numbers work in your favor, or syndicate the rock stars in razor focused channels (The Magazine or Flipboard) that your quality audience will value enough to stay around.
Whether traditional newspapers will survive this transition any more than music publishers is anyone's guess. I'm not holding my breath for most of them -- quality is simply too low.
[+] [-] notatoad|11 years ago|reply
the future of actual journalism is probably something like Pierre Omidyar's new venture - Benevolent billionaires supporting actual investigative journalism because it provides some public good, and not expecting it to be profitable on a scale like big media houses such as the New York Times are expected to work.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|11 years ago|reply
And then along came the internet, the king of all disintermediators. First local print news lost its readership and ad revenue, and many thought it was a matter of media, printed matter vs digital matter. Then over many years a lot of newspapers shut down, while others attempted to modernize and enter the digital age. And now we're at a stage where the truth is harder to hide from. The fact is that most journalism just isn't very good, and never has been. But when it was the only thing available it was better than nothing so it was consumed regardless.
Now the regurgitation of wire reports, simple duplicate coverage of a story, and uncritical passing on of news releases from 3rd parties holds no value. Those are things that rely on distribution, and in the internet age that is trivial. This puts into sharper focus the kernel of original, serious reporting that journalist do. And it turns out they have historically done very, very little, and even less of it of any serious value.
The problem isn't that print journalism uses an outdated media, the problem is that the vast majority of what used to pass for journalism is now largely redundant. And most traditional news organizations still don't realize this or understand that the news organizations which will be able to survive in the 21st century will be very, very different from those of the past, and not just old organizations with a few modernizations bolted on. That's a tough pill to swallow because it means both that most journalists have quite frankly not been doing worthwhile work, it also means that there is no place for the vast majority of traditional journalism jobs. People within the industry naturally flinch away from such hard truths, but it won't stop them from being true.
[+] [-] Liesmith|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Detrus|11 years ago|reply
It's hard to measure engagement on a news site when someone doesn't "like" and "share" the story because they don't want to share it with their social circles. If only there was a site that kept track of personal bookmarks.
[+] [-] A_COMPUTER|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jejones3141|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krakensden|11 years ago|reply
I remember reading a science article in Ars for the first time, and thinking "wow, this doesn't suck. I thought all articles about science sucked." There was even a link to the paper at the bottom! Ryan Paul wrote articles about programming and open source, and they were nuanced, coherent, and made sense. He could even program!
Still, this is all nerd shit, right? Real people don't care. Vox seems to be addressing this in other fields- you read an article about a speech (http://www.vox.com/2014/6/15/5812752/read-obama-s-full-speec... chosen by fair dice roll), the same article every other two-bit news outlet hammered together in 45 minutes. Then you go down to the bottom of the page, and you've got a bunch of explanations of every related thing. What, why, more details, links to rebuttals.
Still, politics is just nerd shit for innumerate white people. Real people don't care, right? Grantland writes sports articles with heat maps, diagrams, tactical explanations, as well as the usual platitudes about desire, and perfunctory examinations of the politics of sport.
Quality is an issue, and it's certainly becoming more pressing. As to whether or not people who are not insiders are interested in the opinions of subject matter experts over professional summarizers, we'll see. Not everyone wants to know more about everything, but everyone wants to know more about something sometimes.
[+] [-] stkni|11 years ago|reply
But this is where I think the article falls short. I think if someone is interested in the wider world they will figure out how to get what they want from the newspapers of today. Some news agencies will be bad at it, and some will be good. That's just the nature of diversity.
But, to say that a small percentage of online news is relevant to me is only true if I don't go looking for the parts that interest me. This was never true, not even for the old dead-tree news.
Whilst I think things can be done to make digital news more engaging, I think the real 'problem' is to be found elsewhere in the ever sub-dividing space of our 'free' time.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|11 years ago|reply
I like the article. It has weaknesses, but it makes some good points.
The bigger issue - to what extent should the media be about political empowerment - is another question.
I'd suggest current branding/advertising strategies are entirely about disempowerment, because they train consumers to think and act passively.
When you believe that politics is about voting for Product A vs Product B, which is almost like a Facebook like only it lasts a little longer, then you've already lost all your political power.
Traditional journalism was sometimes able to hold power to account. We're not going to that from clickbait intent/interest marketing. Can anyone imagine Buzzfeed breaking the next Pentagon Papers?
So who's going to hold power to account now? And how?
[+] [-] randallsquared|11 years ago|reply
There were a lot of interesting points in this post, but they don't seem to add up to a coherent argument.
[+] [-] Zigurd|11 years ago|reply
Neither is war propaganda. Or kowtowing to the government on the Snowden documents. The NYT is the shiniest outlet for establishment "news." At a time when the establishment is so rotten, even the NYT can't make it smell nice.
[+] [-] pertinhower|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zwieback|11 years ago|reply
I'm guessing the future will be individual journalists/columnists marketing themselves directly via aggregators.
[+] [-] bitJericho|11 years ago|reply
The entire article is about how that's not true, but the conclusion was that's true and the way to fix it is for NYT to make a Flipgboard clone. That's actually a great idea, and maybe they already do that I don't know. I use HN to aggregate my news.
[+] [-] praptak|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ASneakyFox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pron|11 years ago|reply
Of course you can. In fact, that's the normal order of things, because people don't want the best -- they want mid-lowbrow. Ask every starving genius writer/artist. If this logic were correct then crack is the "best" product in the world. Everyone who tries it wants more, so much so that it's physically hard to stop.
The sad truth is that quality and popularity rarely intersect, especially when it comes to intellectual "goods" or art. In fact, producing the best quality in those fields is almost a certain assurance of failure. I would say, "you can't be the world's best and succeed at the same time".
This is also why advertising is failing for newspapers. In a digital world where intent is paramount for advertisers, it's far more valuable to target your advertisers for when people are looking for something specifically, rather than the random 'I don't know what I'm going to get' that we see from the newspapers.
Advertising is failing for newspapers because the revenue it generates is lower than the cost of production, and the revenues are low because of competition with sites that have low production costs.
On social channels, we define what we are interested in by following people and brands that match what we care about.
Yes, and unfortunately quality newspapers and magazines are directed at people with broad horizons and open minds that trust the editors' choices. At people who think, "if the NY Times thinks it's newsworthy then I'd better read it". That actually used to work once.
Following The New York Times on Twitter is just like paging through a print newspaper. Each tweet is about something completely unrelated to the tweets before it. And this is the opposite of why people usually follow people and brands online.
Yes because people are crack addicts. That's what works in the market, but that's not necessarily what's "good" for us.
Today, the newspapers' editorial focus is to create random packages of news.
Yes, well unfortunately that's what the world is. A random package of events.
They are all over the place, and as such there is nothing that we as viewers can connect with. There is no momentum, passion, or reason for watching any of these videos.
With that I actually agree. Of course, if they were to create the journalism they really wish to, they'd fail even harder, but that's another matter.
[+] [-] cynicalkane|11 years ago|reply
I am glad to read an article like the original post, about how the incentives of the world we live in distort the effects of the things we consume. I am distressed to read top comments like yours, which lazily declare that the world sucks because you're too smart. Even if you were right, and you're not, you wouldn't change anything.
For instance, your comment about '"intellectual goods" like art' is completely off the mark. Having dabbled in both music and writing, I have found that there's a huge difference in attitude between your stereotypical "starving artists" and people who produced art and music that the world actually liked, if only a little bit beyond their circle of friends.
Generally, the people who ranted the most about popular art were people who least understood how to craft music or writing that people wanted to read. This sort can often be found roaming university halls and earning degrees making art nobody actually wants. On the other hand, the guys who played at bars, or published stories in small magazines, almost universally had respect for the extraordinary amounts of talent in even the "lowest" books and music, even if they strongly disagreed with the value of the art. They also had very sharp analytical and critical minds when it came to the art in question.
[+] [-] protomyth|11 years ago|reply
I don't understand how a paper that seems to have fired all its researchers and fact checkers can be considered winning at journalism. They continually cannot get the senators from certain states (North & South Dakota) and print unverified opinion as fact.
It is a bit simpler than that though. The NYT is no better than Fox News or MSNBC in its partnership. People don't like to continually read a paper that insults their beliefs in the editorial pages when I can just go to Yahoo and see what's going on.
The low for me was when a ND Senator (whom the identified as coming from South Dakota) has to set them straight on how a hunt in a National Park will save a lot of elk (kill a few vs. starvation), I realized they have no idea how nature or the national parks work and were unwilling to find people who did.
[+] [-] IvarTJ|11 years ago|reply
How do Americans follow local news?
[+] [-] TheCoelacanth|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublinben|11 years ago|reply
Local newspapers still dominate the local news field.
[+] [-] pistle|11 years ago|reply
10 Ways Journalism Has Changed You Won't Believe
[+] [-] ZenPro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chondos|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]