Many people imagine that journalism has fallen from some golden age of objectivity into today’s landscape of partisan media outlets, influencer commentators, and algorithmic outrage.
Prestige reporting being a job bestowed upon the scions of elites, systematic bias towards the left, low effort reporting, immediate news cycle, and left and right wing infotainment products posing as journalism are the biggest problems.
I am torn about how to engage people from a centrist perspective, because we have to acknowledge a systematic left wing bias in media and institutions. Even Fox News occasionally caves to the left, because many reporters are closet left, and the advertisers demand it. There still is loads of right wing trash on Fox, but this is De facto dismissed by left wing elites. It's important to acknowledge when conservatives are staying the obvious. That opens us to criticize the pathologies that are more specific to the right wing.
There's still a market for top-quality journalism, but it's expensive to produce - and are there still enough people left willing to pay for it? Newspapers and magazines in most countries used to make most of their money from advertising, but that revenue model is of course mostly dead. Most remaining "quality" media have relatively soft paywalls that allow non-subscribers to read the headlines and some free articles, and often to circumvent paywalls entirely through clever bypass tricks. An interesting outlier in the business is The Economist, which has 1.3 million paid subscribers around the world who are still willing to pay some of the highest yearly subscription prices of any publication, since their readers believe they are getting critical insights and analysis every week that they can't get anywhere else. That's a standard few media outlets can aspire to match at this stage.
Two things to start off: Journalism is nothing more than storytelling - pref. non-fiction. We are constantly reminded that humans love stories, we gravitate towards them, we identify with them, they entertain us. Otherwise, journalism would be a gigantic listicle with bullet points for every story.
Secondly, you need a substantial swath of the public to be relatively ignornant of the issues, topics and nuances thereof. And, to sell your stories, you need them coming back for the next installment -- hence, the move from the 24-hour news cycle to the perpetual cycle of what I call "Epsteinism," whereby yet another journalist, newsletter writer, podcaster or YouTuber floats yet another idea, opinion or angle on the same story.
If the goal is to have an "informed public," then most of us can definitely pick and choose the 5...10 or even 20 "sources" of information we want to educate ourselves with. With the death of young people writing and reading, then the town square will devolve into a soddy mix of tabloids, yellow journalism, lies, omissions and any othre technique to capture the public's imagination.
Is there a solution? Yes, I think there is. Make journalism a commodity, a public service, an "utility," if you will. Sure, there will always be "storytellers" in the vein of the National Inquirer, the NY Post and the like which will bend the truth to their needs. However, there should be a consortium of news gatherers whose main aim is to publish truth without the spin, without the bias and without the varnish.
Can it be done? Absolutely, but it has to be baked into law and, of course, we need public servants who have more courage (Dems) and less corruption (MAGAGOP) than today's crop, along with hard and fast laws that will be written unambiguously and enforced critically and empathetically by all law and order agencies.
As long as we have politicians and bureaucrats and oligarchs who flaunt the law and rob us blind, with a flaccid media corps who either look the other way, employ omissions for the sake of "time and budget constraints," or out-and-out lie to our faces, none of what I posit will ever come to pass.
Money must be taken out of journalism, as much so, if not more than money being taking out of politics.
I graduated from journalism school in 1976, which was the beginning of the end for the objectivity we had been taught in the wake of Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate; today we live in a clickbait world.
I don’t know that objectivity will ever come back, although there are certain digital services at least that try to be objective, and I think AP is probably the most objective news source that I know of.
"It wasn’t until journalism schools had appeared that the standard began to change."
that's a passive tense disguised as an active one. Journalism schools didn't just appear on their own. Despite many people's altruistic tendencies, at the end of the day everyone needs to put food on the table and the food (the table too) costs money.
So how about a deep dive into what forced this move away from lucrative publishing models? The human nature hasn't changed -- neither then, nor now. So, what exactly forced the need for the professional veneer. And yes, I do believe it was mostly just a veneer. A way to create a perception of objectivity while still pushing narratives. What we have today is truly chaos, but within the chaos there is tons more democratized truth than an average Joe has ever had access to. The only problem is that Joe does want to shovel for it.
And here's the irony: I unsubscribed from this Substack months ago because the posts reliably feel pat. They name an issue, scratch the cause, shrug at solution, and end on a wistful note that performs thoughtfulness without risking much. Yet every few months I still get notifications for new pieces. Why? Because it’s the exact dynamic the article itself describes: attention frenzy over depth. Substack is brutally efficient at juicing distribution to keep readers hooked, feeding us an endless slurry of "almost good enough" content.
Journalism = the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast:. Never left the MSM. Unbiased INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM died. Big difference. CBC. CNN MSNBC. NEW YORK TIMES. It's "journalism" and it's crap.
Prestige reporting being a job bestowed upon the scions of elites, systematic bias towards the left, low effort reporting, immediate news cycle, and left and right wing infotainment products posing as journalism are the biggest problems.
I am torn about how to engage people from a centrist perspective, because we have to acknowledge a systematic left wing bias in media and institutions. Even Fox News occasionally caves to the left, because many reporters are closet left, and the advertisers demand it. There still is loads of right wing trash on Fox, but this is De facto dismissed by left wing elites. It's important to acknowledge when conservatives are staying the obvious. That opens us to criticize the pathologies that are more specific to the right wing.
There's still a market for top-quality journalism, but it's expensive to produce - and are there still enough people left willing to pay for it? Newspapers and magazines in most countries used to make most of their money from advertising, but that revenue model is of course mostly dead. Most remaining "quality" media have relatively soft paywalls that allow non-subscribers to read the headlines and some free articles, and often to circumvent paywalls entirely through clever bypass tricks. An interesting outlier in the business is The Economist, which has 1.3 million paid subscribers around the world who are still willing to pay some of the highest yearly subscription prices of any publication, since their readers believe they are getting critical insights and analysis every week that they can't get anywhere else. That's a standard few media outlets can aspire to match at this stage.
Two things to start off: Journalism is nothing more than storytelling - pref. non-fiction. We are constantly reminded that humans love stories, we gravitate towards them, we identify with them, they entertain us. Otherwise, journalism would be a gigantic listicle with bullet points for every story.
Secondly, you need a substantial swath of the public to be relatively ignornant of the issues, topics and nuances thereof. And, to sell your stories, you need them coming back for the next installment -- hence, the move from the 24-hour news cycle to the perpetual cycle of what I call "Epsteinism," whereby yet another journalist, newsletter writer, podcaster or YouTuber floats yet another idea, opinion or angle on the same story.
If the goal is to have an "informed public," then most of us can definitely pick and choose the 5...10 or even 20 "sources" of information we want to educate ourselves with. With the death of young people writing and reading, then the town square will devolve into a soddy mix of tabloids, yellow journalism, lies, omissions and any othre technique to capture the public's imagination.
Is there a solution? Yes, I think there is. Make journalism a commodity, a public service, an "utility," if you will. Sure, there will always be "storytellers" in the vein of the National Inquirer, the NY Post and the like which will bend the truth to their needs. However, there should be a consortium of news gatherers whose main aim is to publish truth without the spin, without the bias and without the varnish.
Can it be done? Absolutely, but it has to be baked into law and, of course, we need public servants who have more courage (Dems) and less corruption (MAGAGOP) than today's crop, along with hard and fast laws that will be written unambiguously and enforced critically and empathetically by all law and order agencies.
As long as we have politicians and bureaucrats and oligarchs who flaunt the law and rob us blind, with a flaccid media corps who either look the other way, employ omissions for the sake of "time and budget constraints," or out-and-out lie to our faces, none of what I posit will ever come to pass.
Money must be taken out of journalism, as much so, if not more than money being taking out of politics.
I graduated from journalism school in 1976, which was the beginning of the end for the objectivity we had been taught in the wake of Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate; today we live in a clickbait world.
I don’t know that objectivity will ever come back, although there are certain digital services at least that try to be objective, and I think AP is probably the most objective news source that I know of.
"It wasn’t until journalism schools had appeared that the standard began to change."
that's a passive tense disguised as an active one. Journalism schools didn't just appear on their own. Despite many people's altruistic tendencies, at the end of the day everyone needs to put food on the table and the food (the table too) costs money.
So how about a deep dive into what forced this move away from lucrative publishing models? The human nature hasn't changed -- neither then, nor now. So, what exactly forced the need for the professional veneer. And yes, I do believe it was mostly just a veneer. A way to create a perception of objectivity while still pushing narratives. What we have today is truly chaos, but within the chaos there is tons more democratized truth than an average Joe has ever had access to. The only problem is that Joe does want to shovel for it.
And here's the irony: I unsubscribed from this Substack months ago because the posts reliably feel pat. They name an issue, scratch the cause, shrug at solution, and end on a wistful note that performs thoughtfulness without risking much. Yet every few months I still get notifications for new pieces. Why? Because it’s the exact dynamic the article itself describes: attention frenzy over depth. Substack is brutally efficient at juicing distribution to keep readers hooked, feeding us an endless slurry of "almost good enough" content.
Journalism = the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast:. Never left the MSM. Unbiased INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM died. Big difference. CBC. CNN MSNBC. NEW YORK TIMES. It's "journalism" and it's crap.