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0 pointsacdha3mo ago0 comments

The bigger story is the way tech companies sucked the oxygen out of journalism. This started with capturing a growing chunk of ad revenue but then became editorial control as everyone started picking headlines, writing styles, and publication schedules to please the tech companies which control whether they receive 80% of their traffic.

Everyone writes like Buzzfeed now because Twitter and Facebook made that the most profitable; Google/Twitter/Facebook need a constant stream of new links and incentivize publishing rapidly rather than in-depth; and Facebook severely damaged many outfits with the fraudulent pivot to video pretending they’d start paying more.

Many of the problems we see societally stem back to people not paying for media, leaving the information space dominated by the interest of advertisers and a few wealthy people who will pay to promote their viewpoints.

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themafia3mo ago

> sucked the oxygen out of journalism.

They helped monopolize the industry. Willingly destroying the utility of RSS for end users is a prime example.

> Google/Twitter/Facebook need a constant stream of new links

Yet people can't understand that "AI" is just a tool to rip off copyright. For almost _precisely_ this reason here.

> we see societally stem back to people not paying for media

The problem is there is not infinite bandwidth for media. If a free option exists people will gravitate towards it. The real problem is that media sales people and media editors are allowed to be in the same room. We used to understand the value of a "firewall" in this context.

It has nothing to do with the people. It has everything to do with those holding the profit motive. They'll willingly destroy useful things in order to tilt the field in their direction. Social problems rarely have a distributed social cause.

fatherwavelet3mo ago

Like the good old days when the media was basically complicit in support of Iraq having weapons of mass destruction?

It seems to me that the news has always kind of been mass bullshit. What has changed is we democratized the production of mass bullshit.

Now everyone can make their own version of "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!"

Not to mention, podcasts go deeper on subjects than any investigative journalist ever really could given the format.

acdhaOP3mo ago

Like the good old days where most markets had multiple papers which had to keep readers subscribing, when broadcasters had to follow the Fairness Doctrine and had a push to more moderation because they couldn’t pick and choose their audience.

It was by no means perfect but I think it was better than now where people getting the illusion of information with little accountability for selection or accuracy.

As to the Iraq war, I will note that the media had extensive debates at the time. Ask anyone who was there and outside of a handful of hard-right outlets, the reporting noted that all of the justifications were unverifiable and coming from the same two governments, and plenty of people questioned that. Again, it wasn’t perfect but I think the answer to “the NYT should’ve fired Judith Miller sooner” is that the NYT should have more rather than less competition.

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