The “professional journalists” aren’t that great either. The field has been overtaken by 20 year olds. Even Matt Yglesias, who has spent most of his career to the left of Democrats as a whole, has been grumbling on his podcast about journalists these days failing to respect the difference between journalism and advocacy. Matt Taibbi (who I don’t like as a person but who is at least a real journalist) has written an entire book about it: https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/02/19/review-matt-taibbi-s-...
The field being taken over by 20 year olds is a consequence of the field's revenue being eaten by tech. There's not enough money to make a decent living on now, so those filling the void will be more ideologically motivated.
Many journalists today come from wealthy families and have went to schools like Harvard and Princeton. They don’t need the shitty pay (although many are well paid) and are driven by the desire to be influential (i.e. power) more than any coherent ideology.
The change in journalism is one of the most important developments in recent decades. While always a business the economic incentives have completely changed and thus the product has been reshaped to best profit from the new environment. Things like accuracy and objectivity are now counterproductive both increasing costs and losing revenue.
Taibbi’s book does a good job of explaining these changes but the situation is still evolving and the definitive analysis has yet to be written. Much like the news today the story has to be pieced together from multiple sources with varying biases including outright misinformation.
I’m starting to think that this is the actual “normal” information situation. It’s everyone’s responsibility to determine the truth for themselves by comparing multiple sources, getting primary information and thinking hard about what’s going on.
It's about hiring people that will blindly follow orders, hence young and impressionable 20 year olds. Same thing that's been happening in Silicon Valley for years now.
Another part of the problem of journalism/advocacy is cancel culture. Some people want to deny that it exists, or that it's problem, even if it does. But it's precisely the reason that you felt the need to virtue-signal that you didn't like Taibbi (whoever he/she is; I don't know). Everyone feels the need to "take sides" in whatever is being discussed. All of this tribalism is part and parcel to the problem you're decrying. It's the thing that's blurring the line. The twenty-somethings have been raised in this culture, and it is a normal function of society to them. Only people in middle age or better can readily remember what the world looked like before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, and opened the gates for pure advocacy. We're all living in Rush Limbaugh's media world now, and Twitter just gives everyone a platform, and takes it to the extreme.
It is super weird to read a comment about the difference between advocates and journalists holding Matt Taibbi out as a "real journalist". Taibbi is the apotheosis of the journaladvocate you're talking about. He's also a lot of other things that you don't like about journalism; for instance, see his coverage of financial engineering topics during the "sucking blood funnel days" of the 2008 crisis, for some Crichton Amnesia Effect fodder.
As always I'll point out that the real controlling law for all this stuff --- the quality of journalism, the quality of advocacy, the quality of software engineering, law, medicine, whatever --- is Sturgeon's.
That’s fair. I was going to add in a comment about how Taibbi presaged the phenomenon that he’s now complaining about but that seemed like an unnecessary dig.
Completely disagree. You just don’t like like Taibbi because you wear your politics on your sleeve and you just don’t like some of the things he’s uncovered in recent years. He’s just part of the prior generation of journalists with the old goals and a great writer with a great sense of humor. The “blood funnel” line about Goldman Sachs was both creative and hilarious.
Sturgeon’s law (most stuff is crap) does little to shed light on the massive CHANGES to journalism in recent years. Of course 90%+ don’t even realized it like you.
This response shows the quality of your discourse: quickly declare victory and walk away. Would have been great to know even a single specific issue you have with Taibbi.
I'll just add that Rayiner's politics are extremely similar to mine (we identify with different parties but have an almost identical set of positions), so your "politics" rebuttal is not the persuasive mic drop you're hoping for.
I'm not debating Taibbi with you because we don't share premises, so there's no point. You can feel free to declare victory to those who share your own premises!
We as consumers should be valuing real journalism and actually paying money for it. Otherwise this carries on going downhill. Journalism, at least some of it, should not be about clicks and sound bites.
I tried paying money for it. I fought with one newspaper's website for an hour to figure out how to buy one year of access without recurring charges to my credit card. When I finally figured out that I needed to buy a gift subscription for myself it turns out their credit card form only has the next four years as expiration date options (my credit card expires six years from now).
The media isn't interested in financial support from their readership. Too many of us to deal with. They prefer a few powerful interests and a small number of big checks written.
having watched the media landscape over the past two decades, the market for real journalism is apparently small and shrinking. there's not enough such money available to support it at its desired size.
"real news" loses to social media because it can't compete on the novelty dopamine feedback loop (otherwise known as popularity): being the first to bring up new info or make a novel comment about it, getting a dopamine hit (esteem), then going back to the trough for more. old journalism is comparatively too slow and sparse at this.
so traditional news, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to join the fray instead of being crowded out. this won't change until good journalism can compete for (enough) attention without being subsumed by the social novelty feedback loop.
it's not so much about value or even actualizing journalists' activist stances (as others seem to be arguing), but the competitive dynamics of the market they're in.
The idea of free journalism sounds great until it's all ad driven and click bait-y. A digital news subscription cost less than $1 daily and it's still a challenge to convince people to commit to one. I'm glad some long form journalists are moving to substack.
I have subscribed to like seven newspapers this year and i have to say their use of technology is awful. They should get a revenue sharing system like ASCAP for music - I pay so much per year and then they distribute it amongst the sites I view. I only want to check Houston papers when they have flooding but I don’t want them to die out. I only want to read Wilmington paper when they get a hurricane or a spike in Covid cases in the nursing homes, but I can’t see paying $1000 per year for all of the places I click in on from time to time.
We need to consider that some things are a public good that must be paid for as such, not as merely a commodity. Public broadcasting is the model that works best and achieves the correct balance between public good and market forces.It can be neither entirely one (state controlled media) nor the other (click bait drivel).
That is why we are in this mess. Social media was fun before "professional journalism" started getting involved.
Think about it. The toxicity on social media is entirely driven by the news media. The culture wars and everything from smollet to "culture of rape on campus". The news blames social media but it's actually the news traveling within social media that is the problem.