Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mananaysiempre 247 days ago
A decent newspaper can afford this because it also has a fact checker, a copyeditor, a line editor, and an expectation that a journalist will be fired[1] if they systematically fuck up the substance of their writing. It’s difficult to find a decent newspaper.

[1] Or otherwise not employed—newspapers perfected not treating their core workforce as employees decades before everyone else.
2 comments
eduction 247 days ago
Even if the heyday of profitable journalism fact checkers were a magazine thing. Newspapers generally did not use them, they moved too quickly for that and had too much space (newsprint between the ads) to fill.

On the other hand, in that era a much higher proportion of the news in a paper was directly reported by the journalists - things they physically saw, people they physically talked to or called. They weren’t using some half baked thing from the internet because there as no internet. Although they might run something dodgy from another newspaper or wire service, but that was pretty rare, at least outside of the celebrity gossip and film columns (which were, sexist-ly, considered women’s news and thus not held to the same standards).

link
dragontamer 247 days ago
A decent newspaper today in 2025 writes slop for their website to ensure daily engagement with their readers. To the point that people are talking about AI articles, literally serving slop.

Maybe they have a few AP articles thrown in there.

We have to acknowledge what has changed in our world and why things are the way that they are. Perhaps daily news is simply not profitable enough to provide us with quality information, and our economic incentives (namely advertising dollars from websites, YouTube, TikTok and the like) are having an adverse effect on quality.

link
prerok 247 days ago
Did you mean it was decent in the past?

I think the GP's statement was that there are almost no decent newspapers anymore, which I think nobody would disagree with.

link
zahlman 247 days ago
> A decent newspaper today in 2025 writes slop for their website to ensure daily engagement with their readers. To the point that people are talking about AI articles, literally serving slop.

> Maybe they have a few AP articles thrown in there.

I've seen signs of AI slop on AP (and Reuters).

link