Am I just supposed to know that the string "/culture/" in the URL means it isn't real news and I shouldn't trust it? Even as a big proponent of media literacy, that seems unreasonable. News organizations must be aware that people will believe them when they publish things.
Are you seriously arguing in good faith that you were fooled into thinking that this was a piece of objective journalism?
You are providing a perfect example of my point, which I'll endure the downvotes to point out: rather than see an opnion article with which you disagree and just accept is as an inevitable result of large populations of people living together, you feel the need to explain the disagreement as some kind of existential flaw with the whole field of journalism. Then you feel justified in extending that "mistrust" engendered from Vox authors writing articles you don't like to pieces of real journalism providing real facts with which you also disagree.
And so the whole field of journalism is sullied in your mind, simply because (in this case) you don't like the fact that some people think black mermaids and elves are kinda OK and want to defend their casting against those who don't.
But you seem to be saying it's not journalism at all. So what I'm trying to understand is:
* What is the shape of this "not journalism at all" category? How can I distinguish non-journalism from non-objective journalism or journalism on a topic I don't personally think is important?
* Do news organizations offer any explicit disclaimers that their "non-journalism" has low editorial standards and shouldn't be trusted the same way as their journalism? Or is it just something you have to know?
* Does the average media-literate person know any of this?
Right now I can't answer any of these questions, which makes the entire edifice seem more like a trick than a real distinction. It's not obvious to me why a news organization would want to publish bad articles which don't live up to their journalistic standards in the first place.
This becomes a problem when they go and put it on the same website as "serious" journalism...
> What is the shape of this "not journalism at all" category? How can I distinguish non-journalism from non-objective journalism or journalism on a topic I don't personally think is important?
For the NYTimes, anything from the opinion section, anything the second half of the category list (Arts, Books, Style, Food, Travel, Magazine, etc.) I would consider is held to a lesser standard than the first half (World, U.S., Politics, N.Y., Business). Also, articles in those sections were less likely to be about current events specifically, and might include reviews, interviews, and other content that isn't "of the day". The Opinion section is actually a nice divider.
> Do news organizations offer any explicit disclaimers that their "non-journalism" has low editorial standards and shouldn't be trusted the same way as their journalism? Or is it just something you have to know?
Outside of explicit tagging of Opinion pieces as such, no. In the old days, in paper form, you generally knew that anything in section A was solid journalism, other than the opinion pieces in the back, and in Column 1 of the front page. Section B (Local news), was usually okay, but could get a little weak further to the back. Section C (Sports) was good on game facts, but other stuff could be weak. Section D (Business) was usually good again, but was much more likely to also include PR fluff pieces and other similar stuff. Section E and beyond (Arts/Calendar, Comics, etc.) was all less serious. Parade Magazine, an insert that showed up in many publications across the US was complete garbage.
> * Does the average media-literate person know any of this?
Most people knew about the opinions section, it was pretty clear back then that the paper didn't stand behind those pieces, and they only represented their author's opinion. The feel of each section and the advertisements included therein did give some sense of the importance of the section.
I have felt for some time that the loss of the metadata around opinion pieces has done real damage to Journalism, and that it would be good for publications to come up with some standard for identifying that, to reduce the instances of breathless reports of "The Washington Post is a socialist rag!" after a single opinion piece by an actual socialist is published.
