News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Slower News by timwaagh on Friday December 25, 2020 @08:33AM (#25536365)
I feel the name is a misnomer. These articles are opinion and analysis. News is different. Slow news would not be very interesting, either.
Re:Slower News by smarx007 on Friday December 25, 2020 @08:41AM (#25536414)
Well, I think that's the key observation: when you no longer chase "breaking" news, you have to provide more analysis. When "X does Y", you don't usually need to learn about it within 60 minutes. You usually need to understand "What are the implications of this? Is Y really necessary? What is the motivation driving X?". I can recommend subscribing to the paper version of The Economist, you will see that the "breaking" news section is usually just 2 pages long ("The world this week" in https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2020-12-05). The rest is mostly analysis (of the current events) and opinion.
Re:Slower News by laurent92 on Friday December 25, 2020 @12:13PM (#25537625)
Providing analysis is one direction.

But there is another: Reporting news that already happened.

See, most news report on what will happen today, what is expected to happen within 3 days, 1 month. It builds expectations and stress in the mindset of the listener; It keeps the audience hung to the news stream but I think it is the most toxic characteristic, even before the divisive aspect of current news providers.

It’s as if we got so fast that instead of reporting on news « within 1 day! » or « within 1 hour! », we provide the news within « -3 hours ».

Re:Slower News by fakedang on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:33AM (#25537007)
> when you no longer chase "breaking" news, you have to provide more analysis

Which is why there's a sea of difference in the quality between an Economist opinion piece (which takes a week to craft), a Bloomberg opinion piece (which takes a couple of days unless it's an expert or Matt Levine), or a standard run of the mill media outlet opinion piece (usually the next day).

Re:Slower News by CraigJPerry on Friday December 25, 2020 @08:45AM (#25536430)
Is news different?

If you’re reading the AP wire then yes it is different, it’s just dry facts with limited context or framing.

That’s not how most people consume news though. That is far too dry for most and you’ll likely miss key observations because you can’t possibly be up to speed with every context. In mainstream news the correspondent for X will helpfully add that knowledge to the story being reported so you can understand the new facts in context.

News as I’m thinking you’re meaning it, would be that model, the facts and a curtailed context, often eliding the “for and against” arguments to go straight to a ready to consume conclusion that should neatly fit the reader’s prior preferences.

The exploration of the for and against is usually cut out of news since it sells better and costs less to produce.

Re:Slower News by Proziam on Friday December 25, 2020 @09:17AM (#25536595)
> That is far too dry for most and you’ll likely miss key observations because you can’t possibly be up to speed with every context.

This is true, but I don't see this as a huge problem. Most 'big news' is very easily understood by lay people (e.g. "Congress is debating a pandemic relief bill" or "The World Trade Center has been struck by aircraft"), or it has a long delay before the news is actionable.

Something complex like the financial response to the pandemic leaves plenty of time to write a more thoughtful analysis. The only fast 'news' the mainstream should be reporting on is what various interested parties are saying and when to expect certain details. Anything more than that and they themselves become the fount of misinformation because they can't possibly have all the details. If the people voting on the 5,000+ page omnibus spending bill didn't have time to read it, with all their support staff pitching in ~ and considering the fact that they helped write it ~ what chance does a news organization have?

> In mainstream news the correspondent for X will helpfully add that knowledge to the story being reported so you can understand the new facts in context.

I don't think this is actually helpful at all. Very rarely is the information complete or accurate. It's always presented as being fact, when it is often more opinion. We killed a lot of people over yellowcake uranium that never actually existed while the news assured everyone it did. [0]Of course, the evidence the news was citing was debunked by our allies almost immediately.

Personally, I think so-called news should behave more responsibly, take their time, and produce more complete analysis so they can actually inform instead of mislead the people.

[0]https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-wh...

Re:Slower News by nojito on Friday December 25, 2020 @08:51AM (#25536452)
Yes news and opinions are different. Which is why there’s an entire editorial or opinion section in news.

The internet has managed to blur the lines and people are convinced anything and everything is automatically news.

Re:Slower News by CraigJPerry on Friday December 25, 2020 @09:50AM (#25536763)
The choice to report or not report new information is itself an expression of opinion. I’m not sure there ever could be lines other than of the blurry variety?

E.g. my OnlyTheFacts (tm) news org who doesn’t add any form of opinion to the news they report might still choose to just not report some types of story and choose to always cover a relatively rare type of event skewing the perception of reportable news in the world.

I’m not aware of any news vendors who list the stories they choose not to cover.

I don’t think this is anything new to the 21st or even to the 20th century.

Re:Slower News by webmaven on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:44AM (#25537061)
> I’m not aware of any news vendors who list the stories they choose not to cover.

The only thing I am aware of that is even close is Project Censored, which aims to document the most important stories that have been ignored by all major news outlets each year:

https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-top-25-censored...

Re:Slower News by shaunregenbaum on Friday December 25, 2020 @11:05AM (#25537192)
All of these pieces of 'news' are just outright opinion pieces on issues that have been covered in the news...
Re:Slower News by CraigJPerry on Friday December 25, 2020 @11:32AM (#25537347)
Are they? I’ve read two of the articles so far and i haven’t run across editorial opinion yet.

Can you point out an opinion expressed by the publication?

As for covered in the news, they do reference the niche sites which cover the stories they’re reporting but i would take it to mean they’ve not been reported in the mainstream news. The two stories i read don't appear in a google news search for example?

Re:Slower News by CraigJPerry on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:54AM (#25537115)
That is an awesome find! Thank you very much
Re:Slower News by skybrian on Friday December 25, 2020 @01:01PM (#25537944)
Slower news should be a bit more like writing history. You probably already remember the top-level facts for the stuff that made headlines for a few days, but what about specialized fields?

I’d be happy to read a well-written yearly summary of the most important news in neuroscience, for example.

Re:Slower News by theoka on Friday December 25, 2020 @09:04PM (#25540761)
https://www.slow-journalism.com/

I can't speak on their printed work but my first issue is arriving any day.

Re:Slower News by jonnycomputer on Friday December 25, 2020 @11:00AM (#25537149)
Actually, I've been interested in reviving something that might be called slow news. Its more like the weekly news digest. Lots of times first reports are inaccurate, or woefully incomplete, and the corrections never get noticed; also, sometimes we need to slow down to cogitate on the news instead of just reacting to it.
Re:Slower News by nostrademons on Friday December 25, 2020 @11:06AM (#25537199)
I'd like to see something that detects trends, not fads. Basically "slow news" that detects news that continues to be news long after the story has broken.

Google actually had this c. 2012 - there was a portion of the SRP that was devoted to "long form" articles, long articles that continued to get searched for months after they came out. It surfaced some really good content, but the SRP was probably was the wrong format to put this on. I think it was unlaunched after a few years, unfortunately.

Re:Slower News by jonnycomputer on Friday December 25, 2020 @11:39AM (#25537393)
I have actually found that wikipedia articles on current events can fulfill this role (or at least the one I imagined) in a decent way (ie. constructing more and more complete news pictures).
Re:Slower News by chasely on Friday December 25, 2020 @12:24PM (#25537698)
The best news for me would be a service that would be okay with reporting "there was no important news", but that is not how the industry works. I'd be willing to pay for that if when news did happen, the reporting/analysis was exceptional.

Not sure where I read this idea first, may have been Taleb, but it's something I've seen pop up as wanted in this hyperactive news environment.

Re:Slower News by philliphaydon on Friday December 25, 2020 @09:02AM (#25536524)
Slow news would probably be more factual correct as the story can have time to be verified and researched. Rather than the... fake news that main stream media has fallen into. Write now fact check later and follow up later on a hidden post.
Re:Slower News by briefcomment on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:19AM (#25536917)
I’d like the opposite. A twitter feed with just facts, (or allegations with timely follow ups) relevant to a specific topic. The hard part is getting one entity to report this with no bias. Maybe this is a job for bots + AI.
Re:Slower News by montagg on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:33AM (#25537004)
If one day we can solve for how AI is just bias enshrined in software.
Re:Slower News by agakshat on Friday December 25, 2020 @12:33PM (#25537760)
I think the Reuters news website [0] comes close to this ideal. Generally neutral reporting of facts with few, if any, embellishments. [0] https://mobile.reuters.com/
Re:Slower News by criley2 on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:32AM (#25537002)
Facts are bad business. They don't sell well, people don't like hearing them, they're expensive to get, and provide only intangible benefit to fake facts. Many societies these days seem to be operating just fine purely on fake news, demonstrating the (at least temporary) irrelevance of the truth
Re:Slower News by cup_of_joe on Friday December 25, 2020 @10:41AM (#25537046)
so something like this but with non-biased articles?

https://www.memeorandum.com/