In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and what doesn't for drawing in readers hasn't changed.
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1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you.
2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
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#1 is the reason that news feels important enough that tuning it out completely feels irresponsible, but it's a very small component of most news.
#2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work, but it's so easy to manipulate, and the incentive to manipulate it is so high, that it's questionable whether this type of news has ever existed without being more manipulation than fact---and this has been true since long before the internet.
#3 is the real reason most people (myself included) read news, even when they convince themselves it's #1 or #2. And it becomes unhealthy because, as long as you're convinced you need to care deeply about what you're reading because it's actually #1 or #2, it will inspire constant anxiety.
I would be interested to see a type of (perhaps government-funded) news service whose sole purpose is to publish only news that fits into category #1: if it is not reasonably likely to affect the average reader in an actionable way in the next 6 months, then it can't be published in this outlet.
Citizens that are active and care, is what's necessary for democracy to work, that is, citizens which actively monitor, and participate in, political developments. Mere "informed voters" just voting once every 4-5 years do not really make democracy, even if we were to be generous and assume that the elections-very-X-years model and the existing representation hierarchies system are adequate.
Beyond that, for real democracy to work, the number one source of information of citizens should be real life experience with other citizens that they're actively learning from (their issues, grievances, etc with laws, political decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate with. Not the media.
In other words, voter who 99.9% of the time tend to their private affairs alone, can't make democracy work.
> 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions.
> 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or whatever else).
The stories people classify as "positive" are exclusively category 3. Crime stories are entertainment, charity porn (especially about children doing charity work), stories about sick people and animals that got well again, all entertainment. Sports. Stories about soldiers and cops that are framed as inspiring and patriotic. None of it is news, it's messaging.
It only makes sense. News that affects people is mostly news of problems, or more accurately, actionable news. "Ongoing Processes Maintaining Themselves As Planned" isn't news that affects you unless it's a followup on "Potential Problem Found In Ongoing Process." The other actionable news is "Event Occurring That You May Wish To Take Part In," and the "news" doesn't care about those unless the "event" writes a check.
I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement.
Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by using shady NSFW ads. That's the closest to the libertarian anarchy ideal we had in 90s.
There's of course alphabet agencies mining data and pushing narratives, but that's fine.
Realize that while they might make it more likely for some, this is not the default. You should not feel anxious just consuming regular news. If you do you should probably talk to a doctor as this seems like an unhealthy thing.
This has been a good opening for niche creators on Youtube and such -- i.e., there are plenty of people out there interested in vegan, oil-free recipes, and that audience can go to a specialist on Youtube and the creator can be successful covering only that one niche. But in aggregate it's not going to outperform food that provides more dopamine, so the major food publications have to deprioritize it.
It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage.
We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than current events.
Most daily-or-faster reporting is so shallow that consuming the information may, at times, be a net-negative to your understanding of whatever issue they're reporting about.
This isn't an argument against the free press or anything. As bad as bias and fearmongering in news is, adding government oversight would make it way worse. It's just a thought experiment.
To elaborate, if news is inherently skewed towards negativity (and I'm just taking that at face value), then maybe it shouldn't be revered as much as it is (by my estimation). I think people tend to think that news is sacred - more is better and it should face no challenges to its existence. But I also think we find ourselves in a predicament that we don't associate with times where news consisted of a daily paper and perhaps the radio. I'm not sure those times were any less prone to bias an negativity. The bigger difference is there was just a lot less news. Maybe the world would be better off with less news.
I'm not really sure what sort of attitude change or direction this would dictate. Like I said, it would be terrible for the government to limit news, and this negativity exists because there is strong demand for it. I guess I think people just shouldn't watch the news much, with some exception. I mean if you look at cable for example, it's virtually all garbage.
A few examples; the Titanic was never called unsinkable until after it sank, no one committed suicide on Black Friday as a result of the stock market crash, and there was no public panic caused by the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast. All of these things were reported by the media at the time.
Think of the stories you see day to day and imagine in 100 years if these are the go-to source for information about our time how skewed a picture you would have of how things actually were.
I think you’re close. There was a lot less repetition of news. Now the need to fill endless hours with content means stories are repeated ad nauseam. Keep in mind that repetition is known and used as a torture technique. “Repetition is an important neural linguistic programming interrogation tactic to influence the target mind” [0].
[0] https://neuralguantanamo.com/no-touch-torture-techniques/
It works for ML too. If Tesla had a set of training data that was inversed, ie the vast majority of cars were involved in a crash, it would have a fully working level 5 autonomous autopilot 2 years ago.
Its much more efficient to have the knowledge of statistically improbable but bad actions to avoid, rather to have a set of good actions where you don't know where the boundaries are.
I suspect discussing knowledge of the news is some kind of social signaling.
In an ideal world, news outlets aren't pushing news that is shocking for the sake of being shocking (and therefore, increasing viewership/readership), but pushing news that is actually relevant to a good percentage of their viewers.
Sure, report things like severe weather forecasts, boil water advisories, etc.
But I don't need to know about every crime, or every scandal in Hollywood, etc. -- and this is most of the negative information that's covered. Not the things that are genuinely relevant to most of us.
Online news (as well as cable news) in particular has taken to farming any kinds of changes to society as moral decay. Airing or printing only outrage is a business model unto its own. See: Huffpost, Breitbart for examples.
I think the way the news is reported says more about us than it does about the organizations that do the reporting. If we didn't want all the negativity, we would reject it, and they'd stop reporting it. But that doesn't happen. So, essentially, we want all the negativity - yes, it's how we're wired. We just don't want to accept it.
Are they the things that matter to the people who have the perception, though?
I don't think it's all about the news.
"... the United States is an outlier among rich Western democracies, with a stagnation in happiness and higher rates of homicide, incarceration, abortion, sexually transmitted disease, child mortality, obesity, educational mediocrity and premature death.... "
Many of these issues are ones people are going to be aware of, and that is going to impact, them on a day to day basis. And that's going to inform their decisions much more than whatever the news is saying. And that was written back in 2018 which absolutely feels like the "good ole days" compared to now a days!
[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/02...
--The Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof
But if your local high school football team wins a state title? You'll sell that paper out. Local refinery explodes? Likewise.
That is, there is a saddlepoint for how much negativity viewers desire.
While I don't personally know what the threshold for psychological damage from exposure to this kind of media is, I would guess it's lower than the average exposure level is now.
I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to the school, and would only allow non-white students to go through, forcing white students to go around and enter the back way, or something to that effect. I felt the all-too-familiar-at-that-point boiling rage enter my mind—this was an outrage! a clumsy attempt at making a political statement about racism, enacted through an act of mass racism. did these idiots not understand that they're not making things better for anyone, that their actions served only to divide rather than unite?! how could they not see this, it was so obvious?!? I could feel my blood start to boil: rrrrRRRRRAAAAUUUUUGHH—
suddenly, I had this moment of clarity out of nowhere, as though from God Himself: I was fully aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, that the whole point of this stunt was to cause outrage locally, and the whole point of the article about it was to spread the outrage globally, even though the article reporting on the event was politically opposed to the actions the students had taken. yet, in the end, their goal was the same: to cause outrage!
woah. "both sides" here want to cause me to be outraged, and here my dumb ass was, just letting it happen. why should I oblige either party? was I really so simple and manipulable that just seeing some words and photos on a screen about something dumb and wholly irrelevant to my own personal daily life could work me up this much? what the hell was wrong with me? why did I let myself fall for this bullshit?
since that day, I have never once felt that familiar blood-boiling rage as the result of reading a headline or news article again. I can't really explain it but something just clicked in my head that day, giving me insight into just how emotionally manipulative pretty much all "news" so obviously is, and how, once I was made consciously aware of this phenomenon, it was really on me to consent to this blatant emotional manipulation—which, I then realized, I had totally been doing for years at that point!
I had nearly forgotten about this having ever happened until recently a very close friend saw a news article about something that had happened over a decade ago, politically framed such that it was relevant to contemporary politics, and it significantly emotionally affected him in a way that reminded me all too much about my past self. I talked him through this story and showed him how much better off I was today now that I choose to refuse to let news headlines and even stories massively emotionally affect me. it took awhile to talk him down from his irrationally outraged state but in the end he calmed down, heard what I had to say, and thanked me profusely for the perspective I gave him, as, much like the story that outraged me years ago, this too had caught him completely off-guard such that before he knew it he was an emotional mess, all because of something he read on the Internet, about something that had happened over a decade prior.
Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics reading at this point. It's no better than gossip columns, and big brother level entertainment, it's just packaged for people who think they're more intelligent than those who watch big brother.
catching oneself in that circular road and taking another turn off that wheel, that aha!, that enlightening moment is what some people invest heavily into, time, energy even money.
and you have it just like so, ten years ago, from that news article on racists blaming anti-racists for a racist anti-racism gig...
what a gift :-)
and thank you for sharing!
Then recognized same pattern in every TV ad afterwards, almost all target some sort of insecurity or feeling of lack.
Welcome to the equanimity of Stoicism.
> With few exceptions, positive stories
and then you wrote
> a whole section for feel-good features
"Positive news" is more or less orthogonal to "feel-good features". When I moved to my current job, I had the option of watching Kansas City news or Topeka news. The KC news stations took the route you're suggesting. Everything was negative and intended to shock/alarm ("Joe Smith was murdered and then the police were involved in a car chase to catch the murderer. When they shot out his tires, he took his own life.") The Topeka stations did mostly positive news, with some negative mixed in. As any sane person would do, it didn't take long for me to go with only the Topeka news. It was nice to know what was going on in the area, to see a review of a local restaurant, or to hear about the debate on a change in the sales tax. I don't watch the news to see someone's good luck.
Don't get me wrong, I think efforts like Little Timmy's are great and in the scope of their lives is probably significant. It doesn't however hit the level of magnitude/significance and scope of their negative counter parts. It's only in local news sources that I tend to see a better balance of things that truly effect, are relevant to me, and aren't full of doom and gloom.
But large notable news probably still drives clicks, yeah? The moon landing was the most watched program in history, after all.
Bad news usually does that - in that it helps us reflect that “well at least i’m not THAT guy!”
I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on Memeorandum if I'm out and about, every week or so. I have found that I no longer have any interest at all in the contents of the stories. Most seem so petty.
I don't honestly give a f*ck if someone on either side of the aisle is caught doing something immoral, because there has been zero consequences during my 50 years of life. The vast majority of power players (politicians, businesspeople and celebrities) get off scott free, so I've just opted out of caring.
So much happier as a result.
It's among the most useful piece of advice I've ever had.
The vast majority of what is offered as 'news' isn't news at all, it's gossip, schadenfreude, arbitrary drama, and frivolous feel-good stories.
'News' has a ring of plausible importance. I wish we had a more accurate name reflecting its mostly unimportant, worthless, and destructive nature.
I'm autistic and vehemently ignore and reject most pieces of news, especially political, and that causes tons of terrible things to happen whenever some sort of spoiler gets out and I happen to see it.
It's like I'm proud of my great ignorance and having that threatened with mere knowledge sends me into a panic of some sort.
It's not just news. If I say "I don't know what that is lol" to someone, 9 times out of 10 their default response to tell me what it is (if it is some cultural/media thing) is the complete opposite of what I want, which is usually just for the other person to move on without telling.
Knowing things can't be undone, so I strive not to know most things, apparently.
And if I weren't doing that, I'd go no-news. That's fine too.
Some of the partisan issues are not silly if you are affected by it. To pick a left issue, if you are gay and would like to marry your partner and get the benefits of such legal recognition, the differences are very consequential. To pick a right issue, if you think that Democrats are voting illegally by the millions, then addressing such threats to Democracy is incredibly important.
There are many other issues where there is a real difference. As an affluent, well educated, older white guy with job security, I'm well insulated from many of the issues. But I have empathy for the people who can't be so aloof; to say "both sides are equally bad" across the board is lazy enlightened centrism.
* news.com.au = clickbait
* government funded ones = abc, sbs are free and ok
* 9 news, 7 news = negative
* google news = aggregator of mostly negative news
* AFR, Sydney Morning Herald, .. few others = ok
My experience with twitter has been the following:
* I look at some content I subscribed for (humor, or tech related)
* Then it feeds suggestions which spiral downwards into negativity (sometimes extreme - like videos of people getting shot). Soon, I resent twitter and the platform.
Experience with youtube: meh, but not as bad as Twitter as described above
Experience with Quora: better and interesting
Facebook: I avoid
TikTok (my wife's): interesting content - but happy to view via my wife's mobile, since it naturally limits my consumption
Netflix: good and bad, but ok
The top article on abc at the moment is clickbaity and niche, although, I give credit to it actually being of relevance to some people.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-18/leaky-buildings-poor-...
While not a news site, Reddit has many large subreddits that repost news from other sites. They frequently make it to the front page.
Banishing every single one of them off my front page definitely makes scrolling through it less headache-inducing.
edit: To add more color: "local news" is increasingly not local anymore. The video I linked to is a collection of "local" stations that are owned by Sinclair reading from the same script rather literally.
What station is it? Asking with an open heart and mind. I would love it if such a thing exists in this day and age.
If not, ignore all news. If the line is crossed or going to be crossed soon. Then get involved.
(I am not judging your choices. I honestly don't know the correct answer.)
I doubt that's true. Certainly not if we are all reading broadly and shallowly, from a few dozen media sources all trying to trigger outrage.
It would be true if we all looked deeply at different topics. Then voting would represent some combination of all of that deep knowledge.
Claiming powerlessness is an excuse to avoid the stress of our times. Now, more than ever, people need to step up and take responsibility.
Expecting someone else to do it is playing a victim and a child - it is us, there's nobody else; there are no parents or authorities to take care of us while we act out. People following your path are why nothing happens. People who act are the reason many do face consequences.
Look at the world that was built for you - the freedom, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the technology, health care, roads, schools, etc. They were built by the prior generations, not by people who quit under stress. What are you building?
The best tactic of the people with power is to get people like you to give up yours, because the public has the ultimate power. Why do you think people in power invest so much in persuasion, disinformation, etc.? If you were powerless, it wouldn't matter.
If you claim news is useless, what are you doing on HN that is so useful? (And see the headlines from Memeorandum, below.)
> there has been zero consequences during my 50 years of life
That's a falsehood, and if more need to face consequences, that is up to you and me.
> Memeorandum
Here are the current headlines. Many have great impact on the future of our country, on the freedom and financial security of hundreds of millions. You don't care about anyone else, including yourself? That's not a persuasive argument.
* Trump attorney ordered to testify before grand jury investigating former president
* Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week
* ‘The Wire’ Star Lance Reddick Dead at 60
* Wyoming Becomes First State to Outlaw Abortion Pills
* My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
* Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says
* ICC issues arrest warrant for Putin over war crimes in Ukraine
* House GOP ignored Capitol Police requests to review public Jan. 6 footage, lawyer says
* Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights ― And A Lot More
* Biden jokes he's ‘really not Irish’ because he's sober, doesn't have relatives ‘in jail’
* America Has Decided It Went Overboard on Covid-19
* Biden asks Congress to impose tougher penalties on executives of failed banks
* Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie
* Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George Floyd, pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
* As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial, right-wing media also scrutinized
... etc. (list is getting too long)
> My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School
> Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says
> Michigan Is Becoming The Anti-Florida On LGBTQ Rights ― And A Lot More
> Biden jokes he's ‘really not Irish’ because he's sober, doesn't have relatives ‘in jail’
> Just Because ChatBots Can't Think Doesn't Mean They Can't Lie
> Derek Chauvin, ex-officer convicted of killing George Floyd, pleads guilty to federal tax evasion
> As crucial legal test for Antifa ideology heads to trial, right-wing media also scrutinized
I live on the west coast and the above items you mentioned are pure sensationalism and have absolutely nothing to do with me, my state, or my local community. They add absolutely no value, informational or otherwise, to my life. They do not help me make more informed choices for me and my family or better my life in any discernible way.
You want to care about all that fluff and noise? Good for you. Just don't go around pretending to be a better person for that, or denigrating others who don't fall for that crap. People like you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Where it is reported a reason for consumption "...negative information automatically activating threat responses and leading one to deduce that ...motivations may make ‘fear’ and ‘anger’ more influential...
And of course, negative news would resonate more with a person who is in a bad mood.
Hope, being good enough, your time is your time and desire mitigation is a solution.
Productize and scale happiness
Here's hoping that we're wise enough to not let reddit admits dictate world health policy again.
I set acceptable times for when I review stuff and even then I try hard to curate it as much as possible to avoid mindless scrolling. It is not easy and you get psychological jitters ( and you try to channel it some other ways ) and you can feel your hard trying to reach for that mouse.
But overall the results were/are worth it. Sure, we are facing eventual extinction of human race, but one could argue that has been the case for several decades now so I sleep much better.
More specifically the things you don't have control over.
https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-j... (New research shows trolls don’t just enjoy hurting others, they also feel good about themselves)
And normal people love self-serving, simplistic, "just so" stories.
I don't bother with online news; most of it is irrelevant to me. If a national story has some bearing on my life, it'll usually end up in the local Sunday paper anyway.
Or consume different news. Ad-driven news is vastly more crisis-impending than subscription-driven news, which tends to be more contemplative as well as zoom out and explore regions and issues that aren't in spotlight. (I read the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Economist, Information, Monde Diplomatique and Paris Review, in addition to a number of stacks.)
All reading the news ever did was make me upset about things I couldn't change.
Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks and natural disasters. After a few months of that I noticed I was getting depressed after consuming all that. I'd wake up feeling fine, go to work and get done and still feeling fine. But after that hour and a half I felt like life sucked.
So I quit watching it and the depression went with it. Since then I've made a point monitor the news and learned to keep that in perspective with what's going on close to me.
BTW, that News station was one of the very 1st to be bought up by "FOX". Since then they pivoted from focusing on tragedy to political outrage, but the effect on ones view of life is obviously very much connected to the "news" they consume, and a great many are attracted to gloom and doom and outrage.
Every state should have a similar paper.
But Nature's running Upworthy and dictionary-based classification? It's almost low-N by today's standards. This is the sort of paper that could have been written a couple of decades ago.
I suspect you wanted research where people look at the world and discover what it means. This is the other kind, where people decide what they want the world to look like, then paint their data to reflect that.
Maybe I'll become informed again when news becomes more balanced, but I am waiting.
TV news has the same problem. After the Eagles broke up, drummer Don Henley nailed it with one of his first solo hits, Dirty Laundry:
I make my livin' off the evenin' news
Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use
People love it when you lose
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
If I had unlimited cash and I was the editor, my front pages would be tongue-in-cheek nods to negative stories, like "CRIME ON PAGE 15" so they'd have to flip through a meadow of full page color ads of sakura trees, the textual equivalent of green noise.
Archive.org has a pleasant viewing experience if you flip through many of the fully-scanned magazines, simply because there are no digital popups- at least the ads on the pages are inert and unable to cause a virus.
Negatives are problems to be solved, if enough people care maybe they will be solved too. Whereas positives don't need solving (though can still be good to think about to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater when addressing a negative.
Of course not all negatives can be solved themselves. If it's "X was killed due to Y" then of course X is dead so nothing more can be done for X but maybe we can prevent issue Y killing someone else Z in the future.
I try to click less on negative stories and more on positive stories. Negative things can make me angry or sad and I dislike being angry or sad. Also I find many negative news to be tiresome.
An alternative approach is to consume news from multiple countries (including your own). It's so interesting to see how all the fnords are different and just how conditioned you were to consume the one kind of media designed for your country.
It’s not just the macabre dopamine rush of car crashes and natural disasters. Critiques involving total and complete destruction of the restaurant/play/movie/album — like this classic takedown of Guy Fieri’s monstrosity of a Times Square restaurant https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/dining/reviews/restaurant... —always draw the most eyeballs.
Let's not forget we went trough four "once in a lifetime disaster" by now. Or more depending how you count.
Today I make a conscious effort to check a channel content before consuming any drama in it. If the channel is 100% drama I pass, regardless of how captivating the original link was,to try and break out of the algorithm.
Great success.
I thought to myself: Why do I need to know person-x was one in 3 million to get killed? Why is this compelling? Is there a risk to me?
Was such an overtly negative feeling to watch that. Turned it off half way through the run.
Actually, it's much more specific than that: outrage.
Novelty makes it more viral.
Propinquity also increases the response (similarity between reader and subject).
In terms of manufacturing consent/sentiment, people who watch more local news tend to drift their views of police and authorities to more favorably. And everyone should know what the effect is of Fox News on its viewers.
At some point, I had to take a break, because awareness of so many problems was overwhelming, and also there were diminishing returns (most problems are ongoing or recurring).
Years later, I found myself following local news for the locale where I was living (and where I had some large complaints about that locale). Eventually, I realized that, unlike before, I was subconsciously looking for and drawn to stories that reinforced my dislike for that locale. Reading was like ranting. This seemed very unhealthy, so I stopped.
One idea for LLMs would be to give me weekly or monthly updates on the news, or catch me up after some arbitrary break period. Maybe a more flexible NYT Week In Review.
Real News should be government driven. News and not click headlines. And it is in finland and GB, atleast one alternative among the market ones. Don't know about the GB one but in finland the YLE has crazy overgrown budget that just grows and grows, too many people working with too much time and the result is that it's not anymore "government basic information agency for every citizen" but a hundreds of ppl with no real work, but just to make gay, lesbian and lqbqt content on the headlines and everywhere. The amount of unbiblical sickness of sex-related vomiting is just so much that it must be the end of times..
I'd be more interested in a study of "persecution" news, the us-vs-them narrative that has become much more common in the last 20-30 years and which I think drives a lot of the so-called polarity of political dialogue.
Also it would be interesting to see effects in decentralized publishing, e.g. youtube/tiktok & independent journalism, since those are so much more prevalent and integral to the broader media narrative now.
Your ancestors clicked on the article that said "lion."
If there's perception of injustice or bad practice in the community, then yes people will click the negativity. Apart from that there's the "popcorn" consumption, where negative things are more entertaining.
Let that shit go immediately, once you become aware. And if at all possible, spend time working to develop mindfulness (a meditation/introspection practice is very helpful).
Freakonomics had a decent episode which explained some of these mechanisms.
Ultimately, news is indistinguishable from information, and information is valuable if you're able to tell the signal from the noise, extract the meaning, and find the balance between getting the most value and not wasting time. You can use that information to make decisions over your own life: should I invest in X? Should I work in Y? Should I move to Z?
For example, amid the tech layoffs and the rise of AI tools to write code, I think one should reconsider starting a career path in software engineering
That is, unless you're completely self sufficient and living off the grid, in which case you don't need any of it.
News(events) = boring but useful News(events + narratives) = juicy and less useful
I wrote about this more extensively here: https://claritynews.substack.com/p/a-lesson-in-how-media-and...
The thing driving consumption is engagement. So what can news provide that drives engagement?
Incomplete narrative.
Conflict is probably the most familiar place to find an incomplete narrative. The easiest way to present conflict is from a negative perspective. A problem that is missing a solution is very easy to engage with.
Mystery is another. What really happened? What will happen next? Speculate!
These are broadly considered "lazy journalism", and for good reason. Controversial narratives are trivial to construct, even when the controversy itself is fake. Mystery is either an incomplete story or speculative fiction.
---
The best works of journalism present a complete story, but that doesn't leave much to engage with. It might be interesting. It might be complicated. It might be important. Is that enough? Sometimes.
Stories that good don't get written every day. If they did, they would become relatively mundane. The news does get published every day. What can we do except to fill the days in between with conflict and mystery?
What kinds of engagement are actually positive? Can they compete?
---
I visit hacker news because it is thriving with examples of positive engagement.
New tools, educational exposition, open questions, historical exploration, etc. Many of the posts here aren't news per se, but they are better than vain controversy.
I think that news organizations should diversify their content and presentation formats. Find more alternatives to "new" than opinion and speculation. Present opportunities for objectivity instead of neatly wrapped conclusions.
Because the business model of media (old or new) requires a large audience, the least common denominator inexorably pushes content towards the basest human emotions and targets the least educated (as they are the vast majority of people).
This is how we end up with the History channel focusing on Nazis and Ancient Aliens and Bravo transforming from a channel focused on the arts such as Opera, to broadcasting Real Housewives non stop.
In terms of social media, it’s the same incentives. Those that post or share the most inflammatory content get more reactions and engagement. Even cat pics produce the same level of emotion, except on the opposite end of the spectrum.
What’s not rewarded is intelligent discourse. See also “eternal September”.
A nice new trend is the small newsletter subscription model, where those that most appreciate in-depth, detailed thought are able to support it directly. But this model is simply a boutique solution, and it won’t result in another Time Warner.
Followed by a row for the Ukraine invasion followed by a spotlight section containing: "the poison umbrella" on cold war killings, some babble about hugh grant and complaining about the Oscars, a somewhat not negative story about childcare funding?
~20 completely negative and/or garbage babbling stories on the page before one somewhat decent one sounds exactly the same to me.
The crime is marketing benign events as risk.
Biden & Trump Get Into Food Fight at Restaurant?
More and More Americans Deal With Evictions.
Question: Which of these two stories will get more clicks for an advertiser? Click-bait pays the bills for our news. NYT is an obvious example. Their stories? How much home can a million buy in Portland. Which $600,000 apartment would you choose in Brooklyn.
Negativity is certainly a factor in click-bait but lets pin the tail on the donkey: targeted advertising as a business model.
All of the profit-driven outleys are subject to market pressures. Even NYTimes which won more Pulitzer prizes than anyone admits to A/B testing headlines for clickbait. Let alone FOX News or YouTubers with “X does Y, immediately regregts it” and “Foo DESTROYS {group we hate}”
The profit motive and private ownership of the social networks and publications inevitably drives people into echo chambers and creates tribalism. Because the market selects for that over anything else. It’s not an accident that Twitter is so toxic, for instance.
Worse than just negativity, the media outlets selectively report on events in order to support their country’s narrative, often due to their government’s pressure. This can lead to wars and misunderstandings between huge populations, leading to violence.
This is why I started https://rational.app
I'd have to see your app in action to know what it really does, but it does sound like the same kind of distribution as Twitter.
It highlights what’s wrong with the for-profit news industry.
Simplify it.
If it bleeds, it leads
[Verse 1] I make my livin' off the evenin' news Just give me somethin', somethin' I can use People love it when you lose They love dirty laundry
[Verse 2] Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear Come and whisper in my ear Give us dirty laundry [Chorus] Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em all around
[Verse 3] We got the bubble-headed bleached-blonde, comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye It's interesting when people die Give us dirty laundry
[Verse 4] Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a running bet Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry
[Verse 5] You don't really need to find out what's goin' on You don't really wanna know just how far it's gone Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry
[Chorus] Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're stiff Kick 'em all around
[Post-Chorus] (Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're stiff Kick 'em all around)
[Verse 6] Dirty little secrets, dirty little lies We got our dirty little fingers in everybody's pie We love to cut you down to size We love dirty laundry [Verse 7] We can do "The Innuendo", we can dance and sing When it's said and done, we haven't told you a thing We all know that crap is king Give us dirty laundry!
[Outro] (Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down When they're up, when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down Kick 'em when they're up Kick 'em when they're down)
