As I have read through all of these comments I had one additional thought. There is a place for advocacy journalism. I think it's important to have a public space where people can advocate for a particular cause. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that advocacy journalism sometimes needs to be sensationalist to get any attention. And getting attention becomes the measure, and then all journalism starts to trend sensationalist. It is a little odd to think that Niche journalism from individuals is the corrective to this sensationalism, or rather that it could be. But, it seems that may be exactly what we need.
Thank you. Some observations: Elon Musk's "we" isn't my "we". And what I mean by that is his "we" provides journalism fodder all on its own and the gap between being content and providing content is easy for his "we" to step over.
I am reminded of the article, "Is there a Santa Claus" wherein Virginia O'Hanlon writes "Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.'" Oh for the days of that kind of confidence in journalism.
I am reminded of the days The New York Times was referred to as "The Old Gray Lady" but has become "The Old Gray Mare" (she ain't what she used to be).
Strong, competent, and well compensated journalism matters and our society suffers for lack of it.
The fix?
Ted Gioia, in an article about the turn around at Barnes & Noble, writes “There is no substitute for good decisions at the top—and no remedy for stupid ones.”
He also adds, "This is James Daunt’s super power: He loves books."
So, we need good decision makers at the top who love their craft. I think that is a start.
I am struggling a great deal with the concept of personal responsibility vs. systemic responsibility. If the “mainstream” populace is uneducated on important topics is it each individual’s responsibility because “the truth is out there” and people don’t work hard enough to find it or is it systemic responsibility because of all the misinformation fed to the populace? My personal belief flip flops on a daily basis depending on how my “rage battery” is operating on that day. I am filled with rage currently but since I can compartmentalize so well, I stuff it into my “battery compartment” and use it to power my resolve (sometimes all I can resolve is to just make it thru another day but that’s a whole different story). I guess my biggest point of hope is that I am not shut down. I am still thinking and trying to puzzle things out, and yes, I do still subscribe to the NYT.
I was the citizen journalist documenting my life on X back in 2024! Enjoyed every second, the good the bad and the ugly. Miss those days! Glad to see it is still going strong without me. So many of us got lost since the election... o well I can enjoy Kats work on here!
Excellent points. I do not use X but I do follow several Substacks in addition to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Not all reporting is partisan. There’s a huge role for simple facts. Unearthing the facts takes time and money. That’s why I subscribe to these papers.
Of course ignoring certain facts is partisan itself. An excellent recent example:
There have been questions about President Biden’s cognitive state following the Biden-Trump debate. It was obvious he was in decline.
But what before the debate? The WSJ had a long, well researched piece interviewing insiders. Turns out Biden has been in cognitive decline for most of the whole four years. Elaborate smokescreens were created. Advisers did most of the work.
This was a huge story. But only the right-leaning WSJ reported it. NYT and WaPo have yet to even acknowledge it, showing their partisan bias.
To balance the bias I subscribe to all three. The WSJ story was far beyond X or a single Substack writer.
I'm not sure X "enriches public discourse," but I agree that nothing on social media, which is basically a sewer, can replace traditional journalism. On X, which I left after the election, partisans would post a photo of someone they don't like, and say "Describe him in two words." They'd get thousands of replies! What is that, exactly? It's certainly not reporting. I know liberals like me have moved to "Bluesky" but what's the value of preaching to the choir? I hate the term "legacy media" and I still get a lot of value from The New York Times (no one has covered Syria or Donald Trump better), The Wall Street Journal, despite the editorials, The Toronto Globe & Mail, Der Spiegel, and other newspapers and magazines (The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, etc.). There's still some great journalism out there, "legacy," or otherwise, but as always, you have to work to find it. One example: Here on Substack I treasure reading Seymour Hersh, who is still at it after a long time, and who knows the Middle East (and has great contacts there) as well as anyone else. I know, I'm "an old guy" and all that. But, damn, social media is nothing like real journalism, which is still out there.
Loved your "fast, good, cheap" point... Unfortunately (though some people think this is a good thing), the worlds of the media and social media have dissolved into a chaotic free-for-all, where the old structures, career paths and business models no longer function. It's not like there's anyone in charge, and it's hard to predict how the coming advances in AI will change everything further. It's one thing to want quality journalism, but another to try to imagine who is going to provide that at scale, and how.
MSM has failed in the west due to 2 things that took root in the U.S. and spread to the rest of the western world.
1> Jornalism schools stopped teaching traditional rules of journalism (neutral reporting) and began teaching advocacy reporting. It is taught that a journalist's first duty is to advocate for right think (whatever that is) in everything they produce
2> the mile high and mile wide wall of seperation between journalism & reporting and the corp pay masters has been fully breached.
the result is everything reported is corrupted by intentional bias of the reporter and the mandated bias if the corp pay master.
I watched this happen over the last 40 years.
Elon Musk has turned X into a global town square.
Thomas Jefferson argued that it is safe to tolerate “error of opinion” because the truth will ultimately prevail in a free and open encounter of ideas.
When enforced right think and right speech is all that is allowed in public forums and in journalism. Freedom is dead and has become a myth of old.
Were it not for Elon buying X and opening the floodgates of discussion globally the reality is that we all would living in a dystopian Oceanus were every part of our lives is controlled by big brother.
NYTimes charges $30/month for a digital subscription. If one deletes money spent on opinion rather than news, perhaps that would be $20/month. That's what 4 substack subscriptions might cost
But NYT has scale. With a small outlet, the marketing strategy would need to start with identifying a small journalistic niche where they could specialize.
Or, maybe the news services like AP and Reuters can figure out a simple aggregation layer that could click with paid subscribers.
Some good points made regarding journalism in general.
The responsibility lies squarely with the reader to read widely and extrapolate their truth from several different publications. That is if the reader is interested in politics/geopolitical developments, which most people aren't.
What X and Telegram have brought about is yet another tool, to visually verify what is being written about or conveniently omitted by journalists.
It is not that difficult to discern an agenda or polarized viewpoint from unbiased reporting if one is willing to do a bit of digging in regards to the sources quoted in articles.
I thought this was a bit of a sprawling mess. You repeatedly circle back to the same points—such as media bias and sensationalism—without adding depth or advancing anything but a same-old, tired argument. There’s nothing original here. You also introduce tangents, like the plumbing metaphor and project management triangle, which distract from the central question rather than reinforcing it. 🤷♂️
Excellent article. The problem, as always, is sm. Yes the legacy media (I hate the term mainstream” has its faults and needs improvement but it’s still by far and away the best chance we have at accurate reportage with as little bias as possible. Citizen journalism inherently lacks the resources needed for thorough investigative journalism, is just as susceptible to bias and lacks the self-monitoring accountability factor.
Furthermore as more people realise they can make money as “journalists”, the standards will drop as they fall prey to all the ills that befall legacy media. Social media is truly toxic sludge, as Maria Ressa so appositely described it in 2021, and I fear it has killed quality journalism permanently. You get what you vote for.
As I have read through all of these comments I had one additional thought. There is a place for advocacy journalism. I think it's important to have a public space where people can advocate for a particular cause. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that advocacy journalism sometimes needs to be sensationalist to get any attention. And getting attention becomes the measure, and then all journalism starts to trend sensationalist. It is a little odd to think that Niche journalism from individuals is the corrective to this sensationalism, or rather that it could be. But, it seems that may be exactly what we need.
Thank you. Some observations: Elon Musk's "we" isn't my "we". And what I mean by that is his "we" provides journalism fodder all on its own and the gap between being content and providing content is easy for his "we" to step over.
I am reminded of the article, "Is there a Santa Claus" wherein Virginia O'Hanlon writes "Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.'" Oh for the days of that kind of confidence in journalism.
I am reminded of the days The New York Times was referred to as "The Old Gray Lady" but has become "The Old Gray Mare" (she ain't what she used to be).
Strong, competent, and well compensated journalism matters and our society suffers for lack of it.
The fix?
Ted Gioia, in an article about the turn around at Barnes & Noble, writes “There is no substitute for good decisions at the top—and no remedy for stupid ones.”
He also adds, "This is James Daunt’s super power: He loves books."
So, we need good decision makers at the top who love their craft. I think that is a start.
I am struggling a great deal with the concept of personal responsibility vs. systemic responsibility. If the “mainstream” populace is uneducated on important topics is it each individual’s responsibility because “the truth is out there” and people don’t work hard enough to find it or is it systemic responsibility because of all the misinformation fed to the populace? My personal belief flip flops on a daily basis depending on how my “rage battery” is operating on that day. I am filled with rage currently but since I can compartmentalize so well, I stuff it into my “battery compartment” and use it to power my resolve (sometimes all I can resolve is to just make it thru another day but that’s a whole different story). I guess my biggest point of hope is that I am not shut down. I am still thinking and trying to puzzle things out, and yes, I do still subscribe to the NYT.
I was the citizen journalist documenting my life on X back in 2024! Enjoyed every second, the good the bad and the ugly. Miss those days! Glad to see it is still going strong without me. So many of us got lost since the election... o well I can enjoy Kats work on here!
Excellent points. I do not use X but I do follow several Substacks in addition to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
Not all reporting is partisan. There’s a huge role for simple facts. Unearthing the facts takes time and money. That’s why I subscribe to these papers.
Of course ignoring certain facts is partisan itself. An excellent recent example:
There have been questions about President Biden’s cognitive state following the Biden-Trump debate. It was obvious he was in decline.
But what before the debate? The WSJ had a long, well researched piece interviewing insiders. Turns out Biden has been in cognitive decline for most of the whole four years. Elaborate smokescreens were created. Advisers did most of the work.
This was a huge story. But only the right-leaning WSJ reported it. NYT and WaPo have yet to even acknowledge it, showing their partisan bias.
To balance the bias I subscribe to all three. The WSJ story was far beyond X or a single Substack writer.
I'm not sure X "enriches public discourse," but I agree that nothing on social media, which is basically a sewer, can replace traditional journalism. On X, which I left after the election, partisans would post a photo of someone they don't like, and say "Describe him in two words." They'd get thousands of replies! What is that, exactly? It's certainly not reporting. I know liberals like me have moved to "Bluesky" but what's the value of preaching to the choir? I hate the term "legacy media" and I still get a lot of value from The New York Times (no one has covered Syria or Donald Trump better), The Wall Street Journal, despite the editorials, The Toronto Globe & Mail, Der Spiegel, and other newspapers and magazines (The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, etc.). There's still some great journalism out there, "legacy," or otherwise, but as always, you have to work to find it. One example: Here on Substack I treasure reading Seymour Hersh, who is still at it after a long time, and who knows the Middle East (and has great contacts there) as well as anyone else. I know, I'm "an old guy" and all that. But, damn, social media is nothing like real journalism, which is still out there.
Loved your "fast, good, cheap" point... Unfortunately (though some people think this is a good thing), the worlds of the media and social media have dissolved into a chaotic free-for-all, where the old structures, career paths and business models no longer function. It's not like there's anyone in charge, and it's hard to predict how the coming advances in AI will change everything further. It's one thing to want quality journalism, but another to try to imagine who is going to provide that at scale, and how.
P.S. Katherine excellent piece of writing
MSM has failed in the west due to 2 things that took root in the U.S. and spread to the rest of the western world.
1> Jornalism schools stopped teaching traditional rules of journalism (neutral reporting) and began teaching advocacy reporting. It is taught that a journalist's first duty is to advocate for right think (whatever that is) in everything they produce
2> the mile high and mile wide wall of seperation between journalism & reporting and the corp pay masters has been fully breached.
the result is everything reported is corrupted by intentional bias of the reporter and the mandated bias if the corp pay master.
I watched this happen over the last 40 years.
Elon Musk has turned X into a global town square.
Thomas Jefferson argued that it is safe to tolerate “error of opinion” because the truth will ultimately prevail in a free and open encounter of ideas.
When enforced right think and right speech is all that is allowed in public forums and in journalism. Freedom is dead and has become a myth of old.
Were it not for Elon buying X and opening the floodgates of discussion globally the reality is that we all would living in a dystopian Oceanus were every part of our lives is controlled by big brother.
Agree 100%.
NYTimes charges $30/month for a digital subscription. If one deletes money spent on opinion rather than news, perhaps that would be $20/month. That's what 4 substack subscriptions might cost
But NYT has scale. With a small outlet, the marketing strategy would need to start with identifying a small journalistic niche where they could specialize.
Or, maybe the news services like AP and Reuters can figure out a simple aggregation layer that could click with paid subscribers.
Some good points made regarding journalism in general.
The responsibility lies squarely with the reader to read widely and extrapolate their truth from several different publications. That is if the reader is interested in politics/geopolitical developments, which most people aren't.
What X and Telegram have brought about is yet another tool, to visually verify what is being written about or conveniently omitted by journalists.
It is not that difficult to discern an agenda or polarized viewpoint from unbiased reporting if one is willing to do a bit of digging in regards to the sources quoted in articles.
I thought this was a bit of a sprawling mess. You repeatedly circle back to the same points—such as media bias and sensationalism—without adding depth or advancing anything but a same-old, tired argument. There’s nothing original here. You also introduce tangents, like the plumbing metaphor and project management triangle, which distract from the central question rather than reinforcing it. 🤷♂️
Excellent article. The problem, as always, is sm. Yes the legacy media (I hate the term mainstream” has its faults and needs improvement but it’s still by far and away the best chance we have at accurate reportage with as little bias as possible. Citizen journalism inherently lacks the resources needed for thorough investigative journalism, is just as susceptible to bias and lacks the self-monitoring accountability factor.
Furthermore as more people realise they can make money as “journalists”, the standards will drop as they fall prey to all the ills that befall legacy media. Social media is truly toxic sludge, as Maria Ressa so appositely described it in 2021, and I fear it has killed quality journalism permanently. You get what you vote for.
Absolutely.
In their anger, many people are missing what it takes to do quality journalism and are betting on those who are even further from it.