TheMaster666
Potential
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2021
- Messages
- 320
Reports of the death of the newspaper, it turns out, have been greatly exaggerated.
Internet news has traditionally been a convenient, and green, alternative to its older cousin, the newspaper. And unlike cable news, it neither requires a tv subscription, nor is it restricted to certain time slots. It's the most up to date source of information, with 24/7 updates as they happen live.
It's also become one of the most difficult methods to obtain the high quality journalism we used to associate with news. For one, the websites are such an eyesore and a headache to navigate. The photos are gigantic, the text is organized into two lines of paragraph that fit the whole screen, followed by giant picture ad (or blank space if you use adblocker), followed by more of the same. Those awful autoplaying videos are everywhere and always pop up first at the top of the screen, and further still, they follow you down the page, making sure your efforts to avoid them are thwarted. The best part is, the videos they so highly emphasize almost always have nothing to even do with the article in question, or just have someone monotonously narrating the very same words you were trying to read in the first place.
Don't forget the constant paywalls: "You've reached your free article limit," notification banners, subscribe to newsletters, et. al.
After all of that bureaucratic, technocratic, corporate b.s., when you get to the heart of the matter, even the actual journalism itself is a shell of its former self.
I can't be alone in recognizing that every news site invariably focuses on the same handful of topics, every single day of the year. It's always Donald Trump in the headlines, it's always some sort of political race, or it's Taylor Swift. Barring some horrific mass shooting or foreign war erupting, it's the same shit every day of the year. I wish I could blame politics, but I actually love politics, in the truest definition of the word. I enjoy reading and thinking about important issues in the current world, and how different perspectives or new bills/laws seek to address them. It doesn't matter if the opinion put forth agrees or disagrees with your beliefs; as long as it makes a well-reasoned and supported case, it encourages you to think intelligently on the matter, and that's what counts.
I don't ever see that in "politics" online, because politics today, in the context of news journalism, is perpetually rooted in the sports-like contest of political races. "My team" vs "your team." These organizations are following the flawed logic of social media, i.e. picking out whatever is "trending" and simply churning out non-stories that are engineered to tick the boxes and appear in search results for those "trending" topics. That's why there are a million topics about Donald Trump every day of the year, even when there isn't really anything new or newsworthy to say about him necessarily. It's just because his name is provocative enough, in their minds, to generate clicks, whether you hate or love him. (And he is far from the only topic to be treated in this fashion, but he's one of the most obvious to point out).
Furthermore, the authors themselves appear terrified of their own audience. They fear that stories of any sizable length might scare away potential readers, who are assumed to have low attention spans and low intelligence. So, they include labels at the top, re-assuring the reader that the story will only take 2-5 minutes to read. Actually, the time spent is generally less than that, because in most instances, only the first handful of paragraphs actually contain new information. The rest of the article is generally just backstory, patronizingly included in case you are a clueless idiot who's been living under the proverbial rock the past several years. So when readers don't read the full article and "bounce" (return to the previous page), in my opinion, it's more likely that either they encounter the bottom half of the article that is merely repeating what most people already are aware of, or it's because the article itself is one of those aforementioned engineered, non-story articles designed to get clicks by gaming the system with lots of trending names or buzzwords put in. People realize the story isn't as interesting upon clicking as it sounded, then quit. The journalists, however, chalk this up to a dwindling national attention span, rather than acknowledging their own scheming and poorly written stories are at least partly to blame. But, in a hubris-fueled feedback loop, this only heightens their efforts to cater to the perceived lowered attention span, rather than brazenly defying it and giving their readers some credit.
___________________________________________
I say all of that as preamble, because when I do pick up and read an actual newspaper, my experience isn't like the above at all. Obviously, a newspaper is far easier to read and follow, simply due to the medium itself following established, centuries-old conventions on design and style. But there's more to it than that. The kind of stories that are written in my local newspaper feel like the way news is supposed to be, the way I remember it being not too long ago. Actual stories about things that are just happening in the world. Some cop was fired for scandalous, racist text messages, and now the DA is throwing out a number of the cases in which he was the primary investigator. Local cities might not receive promised federal funding they already spent to house the homeless during the pandemic. There's an article about the use of a.i. in dating for Valentine's Day. The Op-Ed section is political discussion in the aforementioned classical sense: a well-reasoned and argued piece on why the bipartisan movement to alter or repeal a 1996 law protecting websites on the internet from liability for the free speech of their users is a mistake.
In short, it seems like normal journalism, in a normal, easy-to-read, no bullshit format.
____________________
It's tempting to dismiss all physical media in an era of digital streaming, etc., but with the increasingly poor quality of internet journalism, and how poorly it pays the media companies who produce it, I think we're due for a resurgence in traditional print news. If vinyl records, CD's, and DVD's are on the rise in popularity again, amidst an admittedly niche but nonetheless sizable pushback against the all-digital trend, I think it's past time the tried and tested newspaper re-emerged as a big player in the journalism world. I want my news to be the news, not a glorified Twitter feed, that's been search engine optimized and delivered mobile-first.
There's an old saying in economics, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," or TANSTAFL. The press is increasingly finding that free services don't pay well, and just like the social media companies whose trajectory they now emulate, eventually the quality of the service must lower to the point of reflecting that free entry price. The vacancy they leave behind will create a new demand for services of higher journalistic standards, as others like me get increasingly irate or frustrated at the decrepit state of internet news.
Internet news has traditionally been a convenient, and green, alternative to its older cousin, the newspaper. And unlike cable news, it neither requires a tv subscription, nor is it restricted to certain time slots. It's the most up to date source of information, with 24/7 updates as they happen live.
It's also become one of the most difficult methods to obtain the high quality journalism we used to associate with news. For one, the websites are such an eyesore and a headache to navigate. The photos are gigantic, the text is organized into two lines of paragraph that fit the whole screen, followed by giant picture ad (or blank space if you use adblocker), followed by more of the same. Those awful autoplaying videos are everywhere and always pop up first at the top of the screen, and further still, they follow you down the page, making sure your efforts to avoid them are thwarted. The best part is, the videos they so highly emphasize almost always have nothing to even do with the article in question, or just have someone monotonously narrating the very same words you were trying to read in the first place.
Don't forget the constant paywalls: "You've reached your free article limit," notification banners, subscribe to newsletters, et. al.
After all of that bureaucratic, technocratic, corporate b.s., when you get to the heart of the matter, even the actual journalism itself is a shell of its former self.
I can't be alone in recognizing that every news site invariably focuses on the same handful of topics, every single day of the year. It's always Donald Trump in the headlines, it's always some sort of political race, or it's Taylor Swift. Barring some horrific mass shooting or foreign war erupting, it's the same shit every day of the year. I wish I could blame politics, but I actually love politics, in the truest definition of the word. I enjoy reading and thinking about important issues in the current world, and how different perspectives or new bills/laws seek to address them. It doesn't matter if the opinion put forth agrees or disagrees with your beliefs; as long as it makes a well-reasoned and supported case, it encourages you to think intelligently on the matter, and that's what counts.
I don't ever see that in "politics" online, because politics today, in the context of news journalism, is perpetually rooted in the sports-like contest of political races. "My team" vs "your team." These organizations are following the flawed logic of social media, i.e. picking out whatever is "trending" and simply churning out non-stories that are engineered to tick the boxes and appear in search results for those "trending" topics. That's why there are a million topics about Donald Trump every day of the year, even when there isn't really anything new or newsworthy to say about him necessarily. It's just because his name is provocative enough, in their minds, to generate clicks, whether you hate or love him. (And he is far from the only topic to be treated in this fashion, but he's one of the most obvious to point out).
Furthermore, the authors themselves appear terrified of their own audience. They fear that stories of any sizable length might scare away potential readers, who are assumed to have low attention spans and low intelligence. So, they include labels at the top, re-assuring the reader that the story will only take 2-5 minutes to read. Actually, the time spent is generally less than that, because in most instances, only the first handful of paragraphs actually contain new information. The rest of the article is generally just backstory, patronizingly included in case you are a clueless idiot who's been living under the proverbial rock the past several years. So when readers don't read the full article and "bounce" (return to the previous page), in my opinion, it's more likely that either they encounter the bottom half of the article that is merely repeating what most people already are aware of, or it's because the article itself is one of those aforementioned engineered, non-story articles designed to get clicks by gaming the system with lots of trending names or buzzwords put in. People realize the story isn't as interesting upon clicking as it sounded, then quit. The journalists, however, chalk this up to a dwindling national attention span, rather than acknowledging their own scheming and poorly written stories are at least partly to blame. But, in a hubris-fueled feedback loop, this only heightens their efforts to cater to the perceived lowered attention span, rather than brazenly defying it and giving their readers some credit.
___________________________________________
I say all of that as preamble, because when I do pick up and read an actual newspaper, my experience isn't like the above at all. Obviously, a newspaper is far easier to read and follow, simply due to the medium itself following established, centuries-old conventions on design and style. But there's more to it than that. The kind of stories that are written in my local newspaper feel like the way news is supposed to be, the way I remember it being not too long ago. Actual stories about things that are just happening in the world. Some cop was fired for scandalous, racist text messages, and now the DA is throwing out a number of the cases in which he was the primary investigator. Local cities might not receive promised federal funding they already spent to house the homeless during the pandemic. There's an article about the use of a.i. in dating for Valentine's Day. The Op-Ed section is political discussion in the aforementioned classical sense: a well-reasoned and argued piece on why the bipartisan movement to alter or repeal a 1996 law protecting websites on the internet from liability for the free speech of their users is a mistake.
In short, it seems like normal journalism, in a normal, easy-to-read, no bullshit format.
____________________
It's tempting to dismiss all physical media in an era of digital streaming, etc., but with the increasingly poor quality of internet journalism, and how poorly it pays the media companies who produce it, I think we're due for a resurgence in traditional print news. If vinyl records, CD's, and DVD's are on the rise in popularity again, amidst an admittedly niche but nonetheless sizable pushback against the all-digital trend, I think it's past time the tried and tested newspaper re-emerged as a big player in the journalism world. I want my news to be the news, not a glorified Twitter feed, that's been search engine optimized and delivered mobile-first.
There's an old saying in economics, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," or TANSTAFL. The press is increasingly finding that free services don't pay well, and just like the social media companies whose trajectory they now emulate, eventually the quality of the service must lower to the point of reflecting that free entry price. The vacancy they leave behind will create a new demand for services of higher journalistic standards, as others like me get increasingly irate or frustrated at the decrepit state of internet news.
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