Re:A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts
by toomanybeersies on Thursday July 02, 2020 @01:15AM
(#23710227)
Is it the news agency's fault, or the reader's fault? In this case, it really isn't clear that it's not "real news". But I see plenty of people on social media sharing articles from news sites where they're clearly marked as an editorial or opinion piece, and believing or treating them as if they were exactly the same as a news article that attempts to paint a neutral picture of the facts.
Do newspapers need to put an explanation of what an opinion piece is at the top of every opinion piece?
Re:A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts
by manigandham on Thursday July 02, 2020 @02:21AM
(#23710528)
Perhaps newspapers should stop running opinions and editorials altogether, or move them to an entirely different brand.
Re:A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts
by dahfizz on Thursday July 02, 2020 @08:08AM
(#23712251)
I don't really think that's the answer. Actual physical newspapers ran editorials / opinions for decades without a problem. I think the solution is better UI/UX.
Re:A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts
by manigandham on Thursday July 02, 2020 @11:54AM
(#23714660)
A separate brand would be a better UX.
It's clear that internet distribution is very different from physical newspapers and people don't pay much attention to the domain and styling.
Re:A Google bot scrapes pricing info by adding items to carts
by dahfizz on Thursday July 02, 2020 @07:57AM
(#23712183)
IMO, it is the news agency's responsibility to make it absolutely clear to the user what they are reading. If a majority of people come away with the wrong understanding after visiting a website, that is the website's fault. It's a clear UX problem.
Old paper newspapers accomplished this by physically having a separate section for opinion pieces. It's a harder problem when people share direct links to an article.
That said, news agencies don't try very hard. I think it's easy to argue they intentionally make it hard to differentiate. If WSJ really cared about making it clear to the user what this article was, they would have done more than hiding the word "A-hed" in a small font in the top corner.
I think this is the core issue that leads to sentiment like OPs. Real news still exists, but it's the highly editorialized and opinionated articles that are shared more widely. News agencies universally are terrible at obviously differentiating the two to users.
99% of people when they open an article scroll directly to the content. But any discerning features (in this case, a small font A-hed link) are tucked way at the top. In this case, the A-hed link takes you to the A-hed home page but still does not offer any context to what A-hed is.
> So you don't have to worry that it's some broad decline in journalistic standards (at least based on this).
As long as the WSJ does such a bad job at separating "WSJ the proper news room" and "A-hed the not proper news room", their brand will suffer. OP is proof of that, and I think it's safe to assume the average HN reader is more astute than the average citizen. A tiny link to nowhere useful is not enough of a UI change for us to blame the user. The onus is on the news agencies to do a better job giving context for articles.