[t-3]

For a brief period, journalism was a respected professional-class career. Social media and streaming video killed that, so it's back to muckraking. I have confidence that eventually new economic models will emerge that allow writers to better meet the demand for "real" journalism, but figuring that out will take time and more societal adjustment to technology.

[chongli]

There is still a path to professionalism and respect in journalism. It’s the same tough one that’s always been there. War correspondents, investigative journalists, foreign correspondents in general.

There are still lots of journalists around who are devoting large amounts of their time and often taking substantial or even grave personal risks to their livelihood, their freedom, or even their lives. They’re doing all of this out of a deep conviction and sense of responsibility to uncover the truth about corruption, pollution, war, bribery, murder, and off-shore tax evasion and money laundering by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.

The problem is you won’t find their writing while scrolling through Facebook or YouTube or Twitter. You might find it sometimes here on HN. But otherwise you have to seek it out. It’s a shame so many people can’t be bothered to do so.

[openknot]

See: ProPublica as a great example (source: https://www.propublica.org), along with the ICIJ (behind the Pandora Papers, source: https://www.icij.org/category/investigations/) and other investigative reporting outlets.

The Investigations sections of The Washington Post (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/investigations/), The New York Times, and investigations by local newspapers are often very good, though occasionally they can be of lower quality.

I agree with vast majority of your comment, though to nitpick a bit, a curated social media feed can show this content (e.g. ProPublica's Facebook/YouTube/Twitter, and through using carefully curated Twitter lists). Also, from a cynical perspective, I know of some people doing it for the thrill, the fame, and the power to hold otherwise-powerful people accountable instead of for higher ideals, though I don't mind so long as the results are still ethically produced and rightfully empowering to the disadvantaged.

[idlehand]

I think most people aren't actively seeking out knowledge about the most terrible parts of our modern society. That's why we don't take the time to look these things up, I get enough negativity from the news.

[mantas]

There's already a model for this. Crowd-sourced journalists via Patreon etc.

Even in my small country (~3mio pop), people manage to make a cushy living on this. E.g. covering iffy cases of corruption and neglect that ain't reported much (if at all) on mainstream media. In many cases because media if afraid to loose advertisement money from related business structures.

[chaps]

Hah! No way would that work in any industry-changing way. Maybe some journalists here and there make that work, but it's not a model that scales to many, and it would be unbalanced in a way that promotes the already promoted while leaving those just starting out to traditional freelancing of 200 (maybe) per-piece until they build enough reputation to get patreon followers. In other words -- the same system we have now.

[mantas]

Yes and no. It certainly won't employ the army of want-to-be-a-journalist. But is that a problem if too many people want to work a fancy job and community cannot employ as many? Many people want to be cosmonauts, but we have few seats. Is that an industry problem? Probably not...

However, it can fix the trust issue in journalism industry. Once community is paying journalist wages rather than advertisers, quality should go up.

[krageon]

> For a brief period, journalism was a respected professional-class career.

That must have been an extremely brief period significantly before I was alive, because I have never heard a single human being imply this.

[barry-cotter]

Journalism schools exist. The supply of people stupid enough to get a graduate degree that costs tens of thousands of dollars that takes two years of your life who don’t expect to make a good salary is quite limited. Unless the graduates of J schools always expected to rely on the family money or their supportive spouse.

[krageon]

There's a lot of examples of dumb schooling choices that continue to exist, regardless of prestige. I don't believe I share your outlook on this, especially given that I've seen it first hand.

[throwaway0x7E6]

journalists killed journalism