Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism

Re:Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism by tlb on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @12:58PM (#16978905)

I prefer high-quality opinions, such as found in the Atlantic, Economist, and New Yorker, over "breaking news" which is usually just a copy-paste of someone's press release. Opinions have far more intellectual content. You can't have intellectual content without some point of view, and once you understand the POVs of some authors and publications, you can see around things you disagree with.

It's true that there are lots of low-quality opinions too, but there is more than enough high-quality opinionated content to fill your day reading. There's no reason to read "breaking news". If something's important, a weekly publication will soon enough have something thoughtful to say about it.

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Re:Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism by siruncledrew on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:39PM (#16979326)

Opinions are good to read sometimes, but neither "opinion pieces" nor copy/pasted "breaking news" seem to qualify as high-standards journalism (especially from organizational outlets). That's the kind of content I would expect to find on Reddit or HN from user comments, not something a 100+ year old business like the Economist or the Atlantic would produce.

Yea, they get most of their money from ads and also subscriptions so they need to produce a great volume of content to get the most return, but that also sets the bar very low if that's now acceptable "journalism". Compared to what used to be written in newspapers, the average content we are getting now is (subjectively) much worse overall. Rather than numerous well-written text articles with a few ads and one opinion section, most online news websites look like the reverse of that nowadays.

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Re:Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism by eterm on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:42PM (#16979366)

This is why I like the Guardian, because they clearly mark the difference between their News section and their Opinion section, "Comment is free", and they keep the news part relatively opinion-free, subject to certain bias on what they choose to report.

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Re:Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism by ng12 on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @01:48PM (#16979435)

> Atlantic, Economist, and New Yorker

But you know what you're getting into with these pieces -- they largely exist as an outlet for opinion pieces. What I have a problem with are outlets like the NYTimes which blur the line between opinion and news.

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Re:Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Understand Journalism by tlb on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @02:13PM (#16979692)

The NYT is a big conglomerate, so you have to drill down a level when considering that particular source. Also true for the WSJ. You have to have your Paul Krugman filter on reading him, and your David Brooks filter on for him. If you combine insights from all of them, though, you'll end up with some good insights.

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