Toward a viable model of journalism

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Toward a viable model of journalism

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

T Zero posted:

To this forum I pose the following questions:

Be honest: Where is the first place you usually hear about news? Facebook? Twitter? Your groupchat? Or do you actually pick up the paper every morning?

How do you support people doing the kinds of journalism you find valuable?

Do you pay for any forms of media? Why? Or if you used to, what made you stop paying?

Do you have an idea for a media business model?

What's an obscure or non-mainstream source of news you found to be useful or reliable?

Should there be government funding for media a la BBC? Or a bailout for ailing local news outlets?

How do you think the news media industry will actually shake out over the coming years?

* the forums, my union group chats, or from a colleague at work, occasionally directly from the reporter (ex, Chris Hedges on Substack, delivered through email). I guess you could count local news too, but my brain basically filters out everything that's not the weather forecast.

* Throw a few bucks at their substack

* Nope. They've got advertisers for that. I ended my WaPo subscription when it became an Amazon product.

* Nope. Direct readership is good, but how you build that base out from 0? gently caress if I know.

* ??

* Yep, but how you separate government funding from government influence is a process beyond me. We of course can't prove the hypothetical, but one would presume that were, say, PBS or NPR to take a bold anti-arming Ukraine stance and advocate for strictly humanitarian aid most their government funding would be threatened.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2023 20:39

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:41

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

T Zero posted:

I think this is an interesting dilemma. And I actually do kinda agree with twitter's stance on labeling outlets NPR as "government" funded, though NPR obviously has a few layers of abstraction and isn't as directly funded as, say, Al Jazeera. On one hand, if you have media funded by a democratic government, you can have outlets with a public service mission at their core. On the other, it can be an even greater instrument of Chomsky's propaganda model for news by circumscribing the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

With BuzzFeed News and FiveThirtyEight folding this week, I'm still wondering how the hell do you make money with the news?

Technically 538 didn't fold, The Glorious and Venerated Disney Corporation hollowed it out and retained the brand name for ?????????????????

As far as making money goes? The major players rely on ads. Those scammy "buy gold now before the economy collapses (this time for real real!!!!) because it never loses value!!!" ads? Those cover FOX Business News's operating costs and then some.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 13:51

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Staluigi posted:

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 14:07

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Silver2195 posted:

Yeah, I don�t really have an answer to the problems of journalism funding. Part of the problem is that basically all funding models are potentially corrupting in their own way. The problems with advertiser and government funding, as well as the patronage of a �benevolent� individual rich person, are obvious, but what we�ve surprisingly learned over the past few years is that reader funding can have unhealthy effects too. People sometimes talk about the �audience capture� that afflicts Substack types, where the journalist�s worldview becomes more and more aligned with the worldviews of his readers. People like this are sometimes called �grifters,� and maybe that�s not wrong, but the really horrible thing is that I think most of them aren�t even consciously aware that they�re grifting; people are very good at convincing themselves that something that benefits them financially is morally or factually right.

Yeah, the layout of Substack is...well it's something.

On the one hand, you've got someone like the aforementioned Chris Hedges - he's got a long, storied career of journalistic and activist work from reporting on-the-ground during our illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to teaching basic literacy and drama/theater/writing to incarcerated people. He's been featured on Democracy Now!, he's been a Keynote Speaker at the International Festival of Authors, been featured on VICE, and has been ejected from both The New York Times and is a defrocked minister. Love him or hate him, the man is a credentialed, experienced professional.

And then there's the rest of Substack. The Greenwalds, Taibbis, the absolute bottom of the dredge barrel people with takes (note here I'm specifically not using the term 'journalist', rather, portraying these figures as 'take artists').

You can take someone like Hedges and very easily show that he has had the same consistent set of beliefs as an anti-war NYT reporter as he does as a :airquote:

Russian Disinformation Agent :airquote:

after most of the US imperialist media turned on him and forced them out of their reputable spaces (like they did with Tara Reade!).

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 15:34

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

DrSunshine posted:

Perhaps what we are experiencing is a return to the mean, and what we should do rather than vitiate against the death of a single mass narrative is to embrace the bunkerization and compartmentalization of news into whatever hearsay is shared among our close groups of affiliates, our echo-chambers. That's essentially what we ran on for ages - in our villages and tribes - before the rise of mass literacy and newspapers, and perhaps the rise of small group-chats on all forms of social media is a return to that.

Stanford published a wonderful little piece about this, and it's something that Neil Postman wrote about profusely.

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/technorealism/glut.html

quote:

Growing apace with society's burgeoning Internet usage is the increasing volume of information posted online. This volume of information has grown exponentially, resulting in an information overload. This excess of information is a primary example of the Law of Diminishing Returns in action: the more information available to us, the more apathetic we are to it. According to David Shenk's work Data Smog, "the glut of information no longer adds to our quality of life, but instead begins to cultivate stress, confusion, and even ignorance."

After World War II, America's enthusiasm for scientific and technological progress was at its height. As a result, due to the inception of the TV, satellites, and computers, society had increasing access to a growing amount of information. Scientific and technological advancement was sought as an end to itself, and increasingly without a set purpose in mind. Hence, there arose a sense of "technological determinism" in which technological advancements were seen as an inevitably progressive force unto itself. Incidentally, the stage was set for a trend in which more information was produced than could be processed.

Today, this mindset is reflected in our use of the Internet. According to Shenk, "our society has been enabled by computers to capture and reproduce information with minimal cost and effort, which thus precludes the need for planning or thought. We are so information-rich that we take it for granted; the discovery of information, when not so easily acquired, used to mean something." In support of this statement, a recent study conducted by Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles, published in Nature, estimate that there are 800 million web pages on the Internet.

It is also important to realize that there is a subtle but significant difference between information and knowledge. Information may be defined as a collection of facts and truisms. Knowledge, on the other hand, requires the appropriate understanding or application of this information.

Therefore, while it is touted that we are living in the Information Age, that our society is in the midst of an Information Revolution, this does not automatically result in increased knowledge. If anything, an information glut may very well cause greater confusion and inability to gain knowledge. Take, for example, a typical keyword search in a search engine. Frequently, thousands of hits are returned, representing information but not - as many useless search results have shown - knowledge.

Another prominent example is the flood of reported statistics, polling results and other quantifiable "informative" studies - ultimately, the sheer number of results far exceed their critical mass. According to a study measuring the unprecedented level of information in our contemporary society, it was estimated that one weekday edition of today's New York Times contains more information than the average person in seventeenth-century England was likely to encounter in an entire lifetime. Our society is now numb to the latest results of opinion polls and the like. In our never-ending quest for more information, there is no end to the inanity that passes as useful information. In response to this much overlooked problem, President Clinton asserted, "In the information age, there can be too much exposure and too much information and too much sort of quasi-information...There's a danger that too much cramming in on people's minds is just as bad for them as too little, in terms of the ability to understand, to comprehend."

Other tangible manifestations of the information glut:

Spam and Anti-Spam Legislation
Negative Social Consequences
How To Manage the Information Glut

Ultimately, it is worthwhile to examine closely the social ramifications of the Internet's information glut. Society's growing desensitization to information bespeaks the decreased utility of or interest in this information inundation. While detractors may consider such suggested analyses to be the precursor to Internet censorship or regulation, this is not the case. Instead, it is important to reconsider the idea of the Internet as a self-driven, unstoppable, technologically deterministic force. Rather, it is a socially constructed entity which consequently ushers in both positive and negative social implications.

Postman is most widely known for the infinitely-memetic comic that was floating around on the internet years ago which, imo, is still very prescient today:
(Note that the comic itself is credited to the artist, but the material comes from the foreword of Amusing Ourselves to Death

Silver2195 posted:

Seymour Hersh, for instance, was definitely a genuine anti-war investigative journalist back in the day, but is clearly a crank at this point.

How so? By what objective metric? If it's "clear" that he's just a crank, then you should be able to provide something other than the very fact that he's pushing against mainstream/state dept aligned narratives to paint the picture.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 15:49

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Silver2195 posted:

I�m sorry, but if you need to ask, you�re a crank too.

Please be willing to engage in good faith discussion with your fellow D&D posters

# ¿ Apr 26, 2023 15:51

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

WarpedLichen posted:

if a journalist has to hawk Raid Shadow Legends, so be it.

What?

# ¿ Apr 27, 2023 16:18

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Discendo Vox posted:

I am not remotely interested in entertaining explicitly bad faith bullshit about whether or not truthfulness has value, again. I linked an entire thread of trying to push back against that garbage.

Dude you have a Glenn Greenwald avatar, you think you're qualified to determine bad faith argumentation?

Come on.

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2023 11:49

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Sundae posted:

In the dedicated subforum of bad-faith arguments and lovely-rear end red text avatar gifters, you think D.V. of all people bought a Glenn Greenwald avatar?

Sorry, I guess I should keep a weird postingenemies.xlsx file like cinci did :shrug:

# ¿ Apr 29, 2023 18:25

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

One might argue that being out-reported on the Russiagate hoax by a lovely transphobic moron like Greenwald an embarrassment to ~~The Guardian~~ The Intercept rather than to the reporter they kicked to the curb for doubting the official Russiagate narrative but I'm guessing I'm probably dealing with folks that still believe that Russia Did Trump 2016 so I'm not sure there's really any worth in pursuing that argument.

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Necrobama fucked around with this message at 05:14 on May 1, 2023

# ¿ May 1, 2023 05:06

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Cease to Hope posted:

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Greenwald left the Guardian on good terms to found what ended up being the Intercept, years before Trump even announced he was running for president.

Yup, you're 100% right on the publication name - that's what I get for posting at the end of a long day of air travel. Mea culpa.

# ¿ May 1, 2023 05:13

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Inferior Third Season posted:

We don't need two parallel threads on the same topic, and we especially don't need to be quoting the other thread to steer the conversation here. While there is certainly going to be some overlap, please keep posts here relevant to the main topic of "a viable model of journalism".

Would it be too god damned much to ask for to see DV eat more than a token sixer for their consistency in speaking down to other posters as though the simple act of questioning him were a personal offense?

# ¿ May 2, 2023 14:06

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Cease to Hope posted:

I asked those questions because they seem particularly relevant to the topic at hand.

Framing the failings of the press only in terms of malicious actors is polarizing. Helpful if your political goals or business model benefit from inflaming the audience! But I do think there are other sources: simple error, unconscious bias, self-censorship (to avoid criticism, or liability, or loss of access, or indeed stochastic or official harassment), a desire to adhere to convention, socioeconomic factors dictating who is allowed to do the work, etc. Critical theory is obviously relevant here. I was wondering what causes of failures you saw beyond willful deceit, because it does seem to me that those failures increasingly erode people's trust in the media in general.

Similarly, I'm curious what framing you feel is intended (or has the unintentional effect?) to encourage the reader to be suspicious of other sources of news. You seemed to have your sharpest criticism for RT and the Intercept, so I focused on those rather than, say, Fox News, the National Review, or Zerohedge. In particular I am curious about your thoughts on how the Intercept compares with Propublica, which has a similar reporting focus and mission statement (if very different structure). I wonder what the role of reporting-with-a-mission is, as generalized reporting of the day's notable events becomes more centralized.

I'd echo almost all of this verbatim, especially given that The Intercept is one of the few outlets that's actually done much of a deep dive into the tech layoffs that happened at the beginning of the year, and spoken directly to impacted employees. Ms. Lacey there has been doing phenomenal work covering the tech software sector and I'm curious what exactly is wrong with it.

# ¿ May 2, 2023 15:30

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

Willa Rogers posted:

The Intercept also did incredible work in disclosing the government's secret censorship tribunals, although it was pretty much roundly ignored.

Sample graf:

It's terribly unfortunate that our resident expert in dem campaign fundraising and financing got run off the forums because it'd sure be a boon to the community if someone within the company was able to comment on a story like this one: https://theintercept.com/2023/04/23/saudi-arabia-democratic-party-campaign-ngp-van/

Perhaps Vox is simply making the very mistake w/r/t The Intercept that he warns others against:

quote:

and all too often it means rejecting good sources that are just communicating challenging or unappealing information.

It may be unappealing to read that the dem's GOTV and voterfile database is now just another ledger in a private equity firm's catalog rather than an organic tool of the Democratic party, but just because one might not like that conclusion that isn't carte blanche to write the reporting off.

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# ¿ May 2, 2023 16:02

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

socialsecurity posted:

Who or what are you even arguing against here? Did anyone say anything bad about the Intercept? Or does this have something to do with how the Intercept makes money? This feels like yet another thread turned into "yell at the evil dems"

I was building off of this post:

Cease to Hope posted:

Similarly, I'm curious what framing you feel is intended (or has the unintentional effect?) to encourage the reader to be suspicious of other sources of news. You seemed to have your sharpest criticism for RT and the Intercept, so I focused on those rather than, say, Fox News, the National Review, or Zerohedge. In particular I am curious about your thoughts on how the Intercept compares with Propublica, which has a similar reporting focus and mission statement (if very different structure). I wonder what the role of reporting-with-a-mission is, as generalized reporting of the day's notable events becomes more centralized.

I don't care to actually go digging through DV's post history, so I am operating under the good faith assumption that CtH is not simply making things up about DV.

# ¿ May 2, 2023 16:21

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:41

Necrobama: Aug 4, 2006; by the sex ghost

socialsecurity posted:

This ironically circles back to the issue of "people just want to read the headline" DV posted a single Intercept article in that thread that was bad. He then posted dozens of times about how just because a place posts a bad article or has weaknesses doesn't mean it's a useless source of information. So trying to "own" him with good articles from the Intercept just proves the point he was trying to make in the first place.

Which leads to the problem journalism seems have, people mostly only care about headlines and outrage not what actually happened or reading any sort of actual article describing the situation, certainly not enough to pay for it.

So would you agree then, that it's not enough to write off say, journalists with anti-interventionalist biases simply based on which platform was willing to elevate them?

# ¿ May 2, 2023 16:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Toward a viable model of journalism