Independent media in a democracy

[Scandinavian Nations]

That is true, but the ability to broadcast is obviously not the same as journalism.

Neither is being part of a media empire.

Corporate media has shifted its focus from journalism to lobbying long ago. It's not upholding any professional ethics, and with that, there's nothing special about them anymore - they're just somewhat better-schooled pundits for one side or the other.

a) you wouldn't have the resources to get the raw information anywhere near as quickly or as accurately... I mean, how are you going to get an interview with the relevant minister, or with some affected company CEO, or with some recognised expert at a university across the Atlantic? People can get that information now because some journalist representing a broadly-recognised media company is asking on behalf of some paper or some TV channel.

Personal brand can do the same - with the distinction of the personal brand actually standing for the person who has earned that reputation talking to you, not a random low-rank minion.

There are examples of prominent bloggers and web-only media getting high-profile interviews. CBA to build lists, you know as well as me that there are.
Remove big media from the equation, and their interview spots will be fully absorbed by web and social media.

b) you wouldn't be an expert. When you're working for the WSJ, you can write articles about the media industry for a living, and nothing else.
(...)
There is just no way that you could be that specialised in the media industry and write the same articles to share on social media and still make a living out of it.

This is simply not so. The tech media world is dominated by blogs and web-only media. Why tech? Because big media didn't have an entrenched advantage over them in the field - so they had it all to themselves, and divvied it up successfully.

If anything, in tech media, it's blogs and websites that are the experts, the primary sources, the ones that get the first news, the most accurate news, and deliver the best analysis. And it's TV reporters that are seen as a joke, retelling last week's news from the web with a few mistakes added from their incompetent rephrasing.

And yes, you can definitely make a living out of it. These bloggers are professionals; they generally don't have other major sources of income. Unlike big media employees, though, most of them used to have other sources of income before going full-time - specifically, working in the exact industry they're covering - which only makes them better qualified to report on it.

If you just have people writing stuff on social media, I think we can both agree that editing and editorial policies will fall by the wayside.

Being involved in setting the editorial policies of one such source, it's very difficult for me to agree with this statement - it literally says I'm not doing what I'm currently doing four tabs to the left of here. Dealing with defining the limits for bias in blogs with disclosed affiliation at the moment. And I'm not even a full-timer.

[Gravlen]

McCain has a good viewpoint

The job of the press is to ask critical questions and to enlighten the public. It's got a very important role in modern democracies, and it is mostly doing that job. There are concerns, and most of them seem to be about funding. How do you make sure the news media is well funded without making them dependent on those in charge of the cash?

[Neu Leonstein]

Corporate media has shifted its focus from journalism to lobbying long ago. It's not upholding any professional ethics, and with that, there's nothing special about them anymore - they're just somewhat better-schooled pundits for one side or the other.

The problem is that this is always just an accusation. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty wrong with the way journalism as a business model works right now. Thought this medium post did a good summary. But those problems aren't about media being corporate, they are about the way technology has skewed the incentives for all forms of content creation, whether journalism or otherwise. Just because you're a blog rather than the WSJ, the need to get your thing clicked as often as possible and shared as often as possible is the same. Except the WSJ has more reserves and its employees don't literally have to worry about paying the electricity bill if this next article doesn't get 10,000 clicks.

Personal brand can do the same - with the distinction of the personal brand actually standing for the person who has earned that reputation talking to you, not a random low-rank minion.

There are examples of prominent bloggers and web-only media getting high-profile interviews. CBA to build lists, you know as well as me that there are.
Remove big media from the equation, and their interview spots will be fully absorbed by web and social media.

I'm specifically talking political news though, or even business news. I can think of the Obama interviews on youtube (which were just a marketing stunt after all), and that's more or less it. The good thing about big media was that because they were the established presence that would always be able to get the information and the interviews, they didn't owe the politicians anything. The established norm that the White House wouldn't turn away a question from the NYT or the WaPo or CNN was what gave those outlets the possibility of independent reporting. We see the alternative now with Trump, where we're heading towards a situation where the only ones with access to White House officials end up being Breitbart and Infowars.

Think of popular streamers reviewing games. Think of how often those people end up getting freebies, or early access to games in return for a first play. The lines between advertising, entertainment and critique disappear. That's what we get when we have lots of small independent entities trying desperately to keep the click count up by competing with each other for a bone from the White House.

This is simply not so. The tech media world is dominated by blogs and web-only media. Why tech? Because big media didn't have an entrenched advantage over them in the field - so they had it all to themselves, and divvied it up successfully.

If anything, in tech media, it's blogs and websites that are the experts, the primary sources, the ones that get the first news, the most accurate news, and deliver the best analysis. And it's TV reporters that are seen as a joke, retelling last week's news from the web with a few mistakes added from their incompetent rephrasing.

Fair enough. However, I'm not sure whether it is because big media didn't have a head start, or just because the audience is a different one. When someone wants to know about the details of the new Samsung phone CPU, they probably already know something about CPUs. They have some way of telling who is writing reasonable things and who doesn't have a clue. But is that a good way of delivering information about big picture policy questions to the voting public? Make them go look for it, evaluate the relative merits of the blogs? We're in as deep a hole as we are precisely because people are dumb-ass monkeys who are driven by nothing much besides the need for group validation and confirmation bias. Splitting up the sources of information is a recipe for everyone disappearing into their bubbles, never to be seen again.

And yes, you can definitely make a living out of it. These bloggers are professionals; they generally don't have other major sources of income. Unlike big media employees, though, most of them used to have other sources of income before going full-time - specifically, working in the exact industry they're covering - which only makes them better qualified to report on it.

Does it though? Go back to politics: just because someone was Obama's vice president, do you think that would make them a trusted commentator on the Trump cabinet and Trump policies? Sometimes it can be better for people to go through an independent career path.

Being involved in setting the editorial policies of one such source, it's very difficult for me to agree with this statement - it literally says I'm not doing what I'm currently doing four tabs to the left of here. Dealing with defining the limits for bias in blogs with disclosed affiliation at the moment. And I'm not even a full-timer.

Would be interested to know more. How would you deal with bias in blogs? Why would I be wrong to think that if you just let bloggers to political reporting in the future, we wouldn't just get hyper-partisan click bait, rather than more expensive in-depth reporting or analysis?

[Shofercia]

Just going to leave this here, @3:43: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daTur_-A8IQ

That's Joe Stern, basically admitting that CNN doesn't give a shit about Rasmussen Polls, despite Rasmussen Polling being used by the much more credible RCP. Just one example of how CNN lies through omission. Stern's excuse: "...if someone picked this up, it's not going to change anybody's opinion..."

Which is a bullshit opinion, and not something that a news editor should do. Interestingly enough, if we are to look at Trump's approval/disapproval rating, RCP shows that at 9%, but without Rasmussen, Trump's negative jumps to 11%. Do we want realistic numbers, or do we want to hate on Trump?

Sauce: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

[Scandinavian Nations]

Just because you're a blog rather than the WSJ, the need to get your thing clicked as often as possible and shared as often as possible is the same.

Well, yes. And that's why I don't see the need for WSJ to get special treatment.

The established norm that the White House wouldn't turn away a question from the NYT or the WaPo or CNN was what gave those outlets the possibility of independent reporting.

And did it end up being independent? NYT and WP of 2016 could be easily mistaken for a DNC newsletter.

Again, the established norm is simply tied to those outlets being the biggest dogs. It's nothing other than legacy. And it's bad - it allowed the big outlets (Fox too) to drop any appearance of independence or neutrality, because what makes them special isn't quality, just the size.

Without these old big dogs, the new norm will be that the WH will be expected to take questions from the top 5-6 websites, that's all. Can't say if it will be better or worse, but it won't be radically different.

Fair enough. However, I'm not sure whether it is because big media didn't have a head start, or just because the audience is a different one. When someone wants to know about the details of the new Samsung phone CPU, they probably already know something about CPUs. They have some way of telling who is writing reasonable things and who doesn't have a clue. But is that a good way of delivering information about big picture policy questions to the voting public? Make them go look for it, evaluate the relative merits of the blogs?

It works the same in both worlds. When someone wants to read a long article discussing the merits of the new SCOTUS nomination, they probably already know something about SCOTUS, its role in politics, the other justices, Scalia, and the story with delayed nominations.

Then, readers/aggregators with public influence - generally, ones with a following on social networks, which generate a lot of clicks - gradually figure out which source will tend to have something interesting, which will get them (the aggregator) an edge, increasingly promote these sources, they gain influence, get recognized. And then the public tends to prefer these generally better sources over random junk.

Does it though? Go back to politics: just because someone was Obama's vice president, do you think that would make them a trusted commentator on the Trump cabinet and Trump policies?

Trusted, no. But political experience will give them the tools to understand what's going on. Whether they use them to make good news or lie is up to them.

Why would I be wrong to think that if you just let bloggers to political reporting in the future, we wouldn't just get hyper-partisan click bait, rather than more expensive in-depth reporting or analysis?

In my experience with tech, you need both. Without some clickbait (new phone bends! explodes! requires vulcan grip!), you won't attract a lot of new readers. Without in-depth reporting, you won't keep the readers you've attracted.

First-time readers come for the headlines, but if your sensationalist writing was good enough, it induces them to stay around a bit, swirl the story in their mouth, prolong the pleasure. And they want something to do - post some comments, read some more stories, learn more on the subject. If they get into commenting, they soon get links to other points of view, more in-depth articles. At that point, if you can provide them, you're golden. The bigger you are, the more you want to focus on the latter rather than the former.

In-depth reporting isn't necessarily more expensive. While it takes more skill and more time from the writers, they don't need to pay for hardware or plane tickets to get the news ASAP, and they don't have to work 20 hours straight to post it ASAP. It balances out. Yesterday's clickbait gets no one, and getting hot news first is expensive. Not much different from politics, timeliness has its price.

[Neu Leonstein]

Without these old big dogs, the new norm will be that the WH will be expected to take questions from the top 5-6 websites, that's all. Can't say if it will be better or worse, but it won't be radically different.

Except of course that it will not size that decides at all. It'll be who refrains from reporting unflattering stuff about the person who makes the decision about who to include. That's not a theory, it is now literally what is happening with the press briefing.

It works the same in both worlds. When someone wants to read a long article discussing the merits of the new SCOTUS nomination, they probably already know something about SCOTUS, its role in politics, the other justices, Scalia, and the story with delayed nominations.

Then, readers/aggregators with public influence - generally, ones with a following on social networks, which generate a lot of clicks - gradually figure out which source will tend to have something interesting, which will get them (the aggregator) an edge, increasingly promote these sources, they gain influence, get recognized. And then the public tends to prefer these generally better sources over random junk.

That's a cool story, but it kinda flies in the face of actual experience over the past couple of years. Remember last time someone tried to make a news website dedicated to analysing policies? The public does not "prefer generally better sources", and a long article discussing the merits of SCOTUS nominees does not generate clicks. The public prefers whatever triggers them. This is not exactly a new insight, but as people turn away from the major news outlets, it's become more urgent. There is no way that the correct response to this is to further split up where people get their information based on their own revealed preferences.

Trusted, no. But political experience will give them the tools to understand what's going on. Whether they use them to make good news or lie is up to them.

Of course it is, but we know which of the two will be successful.

In my experience with tech, you need both. Without some clickbait (new phone bends! explodes! requires vulcan grip!), you won't attract a lot of new readers. Without in-depth reporting, you won't keep the readers you've attracted.

First-time readers come for the headlines, but if your sensationalist writing was good enough, it induces them to stay around a bit, swirl the story in their mouth, prolong the pleasure. And they want something to do - post some comments, read some more stories, learn more on the subject. If they get into commenting, they soon get links to other points of view, more in-depth articles. At that point, if you can provide them, you're golden. The bigger you are, the more you want to focus on the latter rather than the former.

In-depth reporting isn't necessarily more expensive. While it takes more skill and more time from the writers, they don't need to pay for hardware or plane tickets to get the news ASAP, and they don't have to work 20 hours straight to post it ASAP. It balances out. Yesterday's clickbait gets no one, and getting hot news first is expensive. Not much different from politics, timeliness has its price.

Maybe that works in writing about tech. But it clearly doesn't in politics. It's not even a matter of bias - I mean, some of the most intelligent and longest-running conservative papers and websites out there were ignored on substance and attacked viciously, including by many of their own readers, because they didn't back the Trump train. That's not because their analysis of Trump's consistency with conservatism or his suitability for office was faulty. It's because the conclusion wasn't in line with what their readers expected.

Aside from the odd console or OS war, in tech people don't readily fall into teams, and they don't perceive tech as a battle in which one's own team must win. But that's what politics is for most people, and it is what triggers our worst behaviours: confirmation bias takes over and the only reason we would ever read an "opposing" bit of news is to find a hole that we can poke at. That's what the attacks on the NYT, WP etc are about as well. It is the job of a national newspaper to investigate whether someone was talking to foreign officials in secret. It is their job to report on whether or not an Administration is functioning well or not, and it is their job to explain to us how it could be that a policy like the refugee/immigration halt can cause that much drama and then be rejected by the courts over the course of an afternoon, and how that policy was created.

But rather than have people congratulating them on journalism, you have one camp cheering them for the munition they delivered to attack Trump, and the other camp calling them fake news that should best be wiped from the earth. And yeah, the news look bad for Trump. But what we're witnessing right now is a reflexive shooting of the messenger by Trump fans, disguised as criticism of supposedly biased monolithic big media.

[Scandinavian Nations]

That's a cool story, but it kinda flies in the face of actual experience over the past couple of years. Remember last time someone tried to make a news website dedicated to analysing policies?

You kinda missed my point. Emphasis on "dedicated". Dedicated doesn't work.
A mix of stuff for the critics and stuff for the public, on the other hand, does. And not just in news, in all of media and entertainment.

But that's what politics is for most people, and it is what triggers our worst behaviours: confirmation bias takes over and the only reason we would ever read an "opposing" bit of news is to find a hole that we can poke at.

And the alternative is? Big media is by now nothing but their respective political parties' unofficial propaganda wings. The left bashes anything Trump, the right bashes anything left-wing. Occasionally, they base their stories on fact.

But just occasionally. Even with both sides available, half the news-related threads I see in General eventually include a retraction or a primary source's rebuttal of the initial story. To the limited extent that independent reporting has ever existed, it's been about as common as bigfoot for the last decade, if not longer.

[Pope Joan]

BO gave the Washington Press Corps the cold shoulder, and went directly to the people with Town Halls. Trump is doing something similar.

The mainstream media no longer act like true journalists. They feel entitled. They sample each other's contents as if they were real news content.

I miss the good old days, but honestly, they were not all that good. Pulitzer was a source of "yellow journalism" years ago, remember?

NY Times has laid off a lot of reportorial staff, and the ones they kept are good at making stuff up.