

Risks Abound as Reporters Play in Traffic - specialp
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/business/media/risks-abound-as-reporters-play-in-traffic.html

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ballard
Not to come off as green ink, but this narrows the implicit incentive to find
news (eg mostly gossip) and perhaps even incite a little drama to make quota
now and then. It's like the investment timescale of a stockbroker vs Warren
Buffett (G.G.). Basically this trend kills off more potential investigative
journalism stories that would actually matter, or requires a bunch of popular
crap stories to fund them.

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ericd
Yeah, it looks like we'll continue to have one or two sources of original
reporting (like the AP), with all of the various news outlets writing
summaries of that. And now there'll be even less critical analysis applied.

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logn
This kind of parallels the world programmers live in. Most journalists are
like the mobile app developers pumping out games with ads and micropayments.

Other journalists like Glenn Greenwald are the tech co-founders of the world,
carving out their own independent and rewarding path to making money.

Maybe NYTimes, etc journalists can go the way of many programmers working at
large orgs, get hired by a company with a good B2B product. I would guess if
those journalists thought hard, they could find a way to sell their writing
for a much higher price to a much smaller audience. E.g., writing an industry-
specific newsletter or offering advanced analysis of certain topics.

When people hire freelance programmers, they're very aware of the fact that
for however many weeks on a project, that's likely the majority of income for
the worker. I would hope a credible journalist could approach someone like an
investor, politician, think tank, startup, etc., and offer to write a novella-
length article on something relevant to their business.

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hm8
Slightly off topic, but I like what they have done with the site design. Would
look more homogenic across platforms when viewed in the browser. Of course
there is more space on desktops to display more stuff which should be
utilised. This, imo, is a good balance.

