[Ok, this seems to be the only way I can get this post up properly. Ive pasted the post Im responding to below. May the third time be the charm.] Actually, its easy to tell whos responsible (I dont really do the blame thing anymore). You are. I am. Its all of us. News organisations are, in the end, business entities and will do what they can to stay relevant and make profits. They will write what you want to read. Let me say this again so theres no misunderstanding: NEWS ORGANISATIONS WILL WRITE WHAT YOU WANT TO READ. So if we want better content, we need to demand for it. And we do that not by complaining about it, but by actually having the integrity to match our behaviour with our words. Stop clicking on those 30 XYZs you know or Why you should date a girl who eats cucumbers type articles. Read more real news. Get others who feel the same way to do the same. Vote by being intentional with the articles you read. Its really us. We are responsible for the state of the news industry. And were the only ones who can decide where it heads. ------------ Original post by Mike Hudack at https://facebook/mhudack/posts/10152148792566194 Please allow me to rant for a moment about the state of the media. Its well known that CNN has gone from the network of Bernie Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett reporting live from Baghdad in 1991 to the network of kidnapped white girls. Our nations newspapers have, with the exception of The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal been almost entirely hollowed out. They are ghosts in a shell. Even these three survivors face great challenges and I doubt anyone would call them healthy or laud their courage in journalism. They just report what people tell them, whether its Cheney pulling Judith Millers strings or Snowden through the proxy of Glenn Greenwald doing roughly the same. They seem incapable of breaking real, meaningful news at Internet speed. Its why they like Twitter so much. Twitter does the hard work for them. Evening newscasts are jokes, and copycat television newsmagazines have turned into tabloids -- OK rather than Time. 60 Minutes lives on, suffering only the occasional scandal. More young Americans get their news from The Daily Show than from Brokaws replacement. Can you even name Brokaws replacement? I dont think I can. Meet the Press has become a joke since David Gregory took over. Well probably never get another Tim Russert. And of course Fox News and msnbc care more about telling their viewers what they want to hear than informing the national conversation in any meaningful way. And so we turn to the Internet for our salvation. We could have gotten it in The Huffington Post but we didnt. We could have gotten it in BuzzFeed, but it turns out that BuzzFeeds homepage is like CNNs but only more so. Listicles of the 28 young couples you know replace the kidnapped white girl. Same thing, different demographics. We kind of get it from VICE. In between the salacious articles about Atlanta strip clubs we get the occasional real reporting from North Korea or Donetsk. We celebrate these acts of journalistic bravery specifically because they are today so rare. VICE is so gonzo that its willing to do real journalism in actually dangerous areas! VICE is the savior of news! And we come to Ezra Klein. The great Ezra Klein of Wapo and msnbc. The man who, while a partisan, does not try to keep his own set of facts. He founded Vox. Personally I hoped that we would find a new home for serious journalism in a format that felt Internet-native and natural to people who grew up interacting with screens instead of just watching them from couches with bags of popcorn and a beer to keep their hands busy. And instead they write stupid stories about how you should wash your jeans instead of freezing them. To be fair their top headline right now is How a bill made it through the worst Congress ever. Which is better than you cant clean your jeans by freezing them. The jeans story is their most read story today. Followed by What microsoft doesnt get about tablets and Is 17 People really the best West Wing episode? Its hard to tell whos to blame. But someone should fix this shit. (Updated to reinsert the third paragraph about Judith Miller)
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 15:52:41 +0000
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