
The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism - prostoalex
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-mark-zuckerberg-manifesto-is-a-blueprint-for-destroying-journalism/517113/?single_page=true
======
hxta98596
This is an odd editorial. The author stretches to explain how Zuck's Manifesto
released this week could destroy journalism. But then she provides evidence
that journalism is for all intents and purposes already dead. She cites a
(possibly inflated) prime time news audience size of ~3 million people, and
1.5 million digital subscribers for the NYT...So less than 1% of America are
using these previously major sources of news. How did that happen guys?

I'm the last person you will find defending Zuck or Facebook (which I do not
use and have deleted other apps as facebook buys them). But this Atlantic
article felt like a desperate plea for charity of some sort, and preferably
cash since the Chan-Zuckerberg Empire has so much. This is yet another
editorial complaining about themselves but _the author does not offer an
alternative idea for journalism to avoid its own demise_. Why and how would
she? Journalists don't seem to understand business at all and are scared to
try.

In just 3 months since the election, journalists and many people in this
country seem to have forgotten how biased, incompetent, clueless, fake and
corrupt even the "real" news organizations are today. There was no mea culpa
in the article for these issues, just a misguided complaint. The pre-internet
old days were not so perfect either if anyone reads history...can anyone
explain why newspapers, these supposed bastions of objectivity for
communities, even endorse political candidates? Is that a newspapers job?

This whole situation reminds me of another time there was a Harvard guy's
looong manifesto that no one had the patience to read in full and it was on a
very similar topic...the news industry was running around like a chicken with
its head cut off back then too [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Industrial_Socie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future)

~~~
cylinder
I'm surprised the left has become so sympathetic to the corporate media all of
a sudden. These people colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in
Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so
we ended up with Donald Trump. This was only a year ago.

~~~
krschultz
This going way over the line for politics on HN but I can't let it go.
Everyone repeating the story you are pushing is robbing the Hillary supporters
of their agency. I've voted for Democrats for years and years. I didn't view
Bernie as a once in a lifetime opportunity. I saw him as way too far left for
me.

I was clearly wrong on the relative electability of Hillary & Bernie, but I'm
voted in the primary for the candidate that better represented my views. I
didn't vote for Hillary because the DNC made me do it or the media lied to me.
I watched their speeches, I read their websites, I watched the debates, and I
decided I'd rather have Hillary than Bernie. That's it.

It's not a giant conspiracy, there's just a lot of rank and file Democratic
voters that aren't all in on Bernie's worldview. If you want to make an
argument for why I should be more in on the Bernie plan than Hillary's plan
I'd hear it (I guess not on HN), but stop pretending like the majority of
Democratic primary voters were duped.

~~~
maxerickson
We have little to no evidence about the electability of Bernie.

~~~
ABCLAW
A number of comparative studies were performed during the primaries regarding
the electibility of various candidates against their counterparts on the other
side. Sanders performed very well against Trump on those metrics.

There are a number of people advancing the 'we have no evidence' banner in
this thread, which is strange because studies of electibility were commonly
discussed here during the primaries.

~~~
maxerickson
I just happen to believe it.

What it comes down to is that I don't think electability polls taken before
the conventions can really tell us much about how people would feel about
Sanders after he started getting hammered in a general election.

~~~
ABCLAW
Certainly! That's a fair criticism. I just wanted to point out that the
statement that there is 'little or no evidence' is not accurate. Many rounds
of electability analysis were performed.

------
seanot
The author cites research that ties a downfall in civic engagement to the
demise of local news coverage. While I find this correlation to be obvious (to
my line of thinking), she assigns no responsibility for this demise to her
peers -- the ones writing news and opinion.

In the large Midwestern cities in which I have lived, local newspapers
generally choose to align themselves on the side of local governments and
chambers-of-commerce on virtually every new development subsidy or tax deal
regardless of the costs to be incurred by local residents and businesses
and/or the sketchiness of the scheme.

Readers look to the fourth estate for a voice when elected representatives
collude with special interests. If they are merely mouthpieces and
cheerleaders for those in power, readers will look elsewhere or disengage.

~~~
dredmorbius
I.F. Stone had a great deal to say on journalistic independence in a 1974
public television interview on "Day at Night".

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g)

Small-town papers are beholden to small-town interests. Stone notes that the
large-city and national dailies (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, possibly
the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal at the itme) were freed of
dependence on any one advertiser (or political interest). That may have been a
peculiar circumstance of the 1960s and 1970s.

~~~
oever
The last observation in that interview is still current.

> The president, irrespective of who he is, today, is so powerful that the
> temptations of the office for good or evil are too great for any one man. I
> think we ought to begin to dismantle the office. I think we ought to have a
> head of state symbolizing the country around whom the natural feeling of
> patriotism and reverence accrue and separate him from the head of the
> government.

~~~
erikpukinskis
This will happen naturally as small scale self e-gocernance takes on more and
more responsibility. As the _responsibilities_ of the state dry up, city,
state, and federal government figures naturally become more figureheads. It
will be a race to who has the best parades and funnest hats.

------
DanielBMarkham
We as an industry have kicked around "how to save journalism" for years now.
Here's what I've got:

If you want journalism, sponsor endowments for journalists to report in
certain areas, like foreign policy or local government. At the same time, and
critically, sponsor endowments for editors to put a tight reign on these
journalists.

Completely decouple good journalism for hunting-for-eyeballs. Then let the
content curators and aggregators make some kind of business out of it, if they
can.

In the past, whenever we consumed quality content, it was always there because
some commercial interest paid for it to be there. Somehow we've forgotten
about that. There has always been a difference between what the commercial
interests wanted and what quality content demanded, but in the past the
feedback loop was so slow and diffuse that good content happened anyway. This
is no longer the case.

So if you want good content, you're going to have to completely decouple it
from commercial interests -- and apply rigorous quality standards as well.
Good editors are sorely missing in modern content creation, and everybody
seems to want to take the old models, including ad-sponsored material, and
make them work. They will not work.

~~~
hxta98596
For the most part I agree. Some version of this has been discussed for years:
_basically a non-profit, non-commercial, bipartisan, transparent, independent,
professional journalism organization(s) using an endowment or donation-based
funding model seems to be one of the best options at the moment._

The cynics and trolls will attack the idea that it's impossible. Ignore them
of course, _it is possible but it will not be perfect, and it must be open
about it not being perfect_. The pragmatists have the more valid pushback:
implementing such a solution is still too difficult, too expensive, it will
take too long and it may crowd-out remaining journalists who are still in
business while discouraging other solutions coming forward.

I think it can start small. It has to. But the seeds how this could work can
be seen in organizations like C-SPAN, National Public Radio and Wikipedia
(Yes, Wikipedia is also not perfect but it's pretty damn good and arguably
better than for-profit journalism right now in terms accuracy and staying
close to the center on stories). Expanding on those models has potential if
support for doing so can be rallied and the idea can be paid for.

Who knows, this could turn into a US version of Pravda, if it even gets off
the ground. Maybe. But when current journalism is already a biased disaster
still going out of business, what's the harm in trying a little experiment and
giving other options like this a try?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You know, baseball is quite the pastime in the US. Professional players make a
lot of money and have their salaries paid for by wealthy folks. (Where they
get their money is important, but let's ignore it for now)

But there are a ton of folks playing baseball for a small salary -- the minor
leagues. There's also scads of folks playing baseball recreationally.

I don't see any reason professional news journalism couldn't be done in a
similar way: more secure, rewarding jobs for those at the top of their fields
paid for by a permanent endowment. A "middle league" that may only get
internet like points or small payments for worth contributions. And tons of
folks yukking it up on the sidelines doing the best they can and hoping one
day to make it to the major leagues.

~~~
hxta98596
I get what you're saying. Though I'm not sure baseball is the best example
here as baseball is kind of broken right now. Look at the strikes, bargaining
issues and communist cartel of baseball team owners needing to cooperate to
keep it together, just barely.

Other industries have similar development programs like pro baseball's farm
and minor leagues. But all these are getting difficult to maintain. Pro
baseball teams supporting minor leagues isn't what it used to be and they have
become harder to afford. Still I agree there are many lessons to take from
what baseball does well and not so well.

I do agree a lesson from baseball is that the best in journalism should be
highly paid for their work. Journalism needs to continue to attract and retain
talented professionals who are compensated competitively. This is harder than
it might sound though. Professional baseball players don't really have their
salaries paid for by wealthy folks; rather players make a lot of money because
of MLB television and media rights in the billions of dollars. Players play
162 games on television every season so TV commercials and expensive TV cable
packages is what pays for baseball.

One big advantage if the endowment model can be pulled off and funded as a
source for journalists income is it could in theory help minimize the
corruption and pandering to advertisers at the higher levels of journalism
too.

------
ForrestN
I recently saw a very astute analogy between Facebook and cigarette companies.
I suspect that in some years there will be testimony about what Facebook knew,
and when, with respect to the addictiveness of its product and its links to
mental health problems. I'm quite sure they know how harmful their product is
and that's probably behind a lot of this absurd "we're going to save the
world" rhetoric. This whole fight elevates Facebook, so they'll try their best
to keep people talking about it.

In the sphere of journalism, it's very hard to say what is cause and effect.
Facebook aside, and even money aside, some journalists will say that good
journalism isn't widely read, and that readers have driven the shift to
shallow, celebrity-driven coverage. Facebook can make the same argument—this
is what people want, who are we to question them?

I agree with the others that point to Journalism's business model as the
problem. It's a public good to bring hidden facts related to the public
interest into the light. We as a society should subsidize these efforts the
way we do other sources of public good that aren't viable as profitable
businesses: let them become non-profit organizations and support them with
donations and tax incentives. This protects their independence and also
removes the regressive paywalls that signal to poor people that knowledge of
the day's events is not for them.

Facebook, in general, needs to ask much more fundamental questions than how it
affects the news. What is the product for? What does it actually do? Is its
responsibility to earn profit in conflict with the interests of its users? Is
it being candid with the public about how its product affects its users? Or is
it just reacting to PR crises as they happen without actually taking
responsibility for its place in the world?

~~~
thr0waway1239
Remember Steve Jobs' quote about A players hiring A players? There is a
similar pattern at play here where the D-level folks (in terms of ethics) hire
E and F-level folks and on it goes. You only need one ethically compromised
individual at the top - e.g. Zuck, and soon the org is infested with replicas
of similarly compromised folks.

>>respect to the addictiveness of its product

You forgot to mention that this addictiveness is not even a natural thing - it
has been refined and A/B tested with 1% improvement week over week until the
user base has been turned into the 21st century version of Pavlov's dogs -
that image is exactly what I see when I look at people who get anxiety over a
lack of instant messages for a WHOLE 15 MINUTES.

~~~
dredmorbius
I like your observation on ethics. Is that original to you?

I've been seeing Gresham's Law dynamics in a tremendous number of places.
Ethical races to the bottom are one instance of this.

------
DenisM
Here's an interesting observation.

Distributing information in its written form used to be the domain of the
Church. Printing press has democratized that, for a while. Eventually the
diversity of information was roped in to serve the agenda of the new,
capitalist elites. While individual journalists often thrive to deliver the
best work, the editors inevitably arrange things to serve the interests of
particular business groups, and those who don't toe the line fall into
obscurity for lack of funds.

Now, the Internet has produced a new information diversity, which is bubbling
and foaming as we speak. That too will get roped in. The viral effect will
become the domain of well-funded teams, not of lone geniuses. As the art is
perfected it will become more capital-intensive, we will see consolidation in
the business. Eventually the bulk of it will be divided between few large
players, well-aligned with other businesses, and the whole thing will become
orderly and predictable once again. Maybe.

~~~
erikpukinskis
The difference between the printing press and the internet is that you and me
could make a whole new Internet happen with just two $70 handheld computing
devices.

The printing press needed a newsroom with typists and ad salesmen and a team
of people wrestling with an ink belching mechanical beast. The minimum
corporate interest required to feed such a beast is substantially more than
the Internet business, the physical plant of which costs pennies a day in
overhead to maintain (i.e. your cell phone and a few gigs of bandwidth.)

~~~
DenisM
Money still buys you a lot of upgrades to your $70 internet. Ad campaigns,
talented copy writers, data scientist, psychologists, computing resources for
data analysis, large training datasets, cross-channel promotion (e.g. internet
+ billboards), astroturfers, community management, marketing, focus groups.

The amateur hour will come to an end. Especially now that the presidential
election campaign has shown us how it's done.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I don't understand what your last sentence means, but it scared me for some
reason. Like a threat?

~~~
DenisM
It means that all the viral news and memes stuff so far have been the work of
amateurs. Now that the effectiveness of this approach was proven, well-funded
professional teams will move in and drive out the amateurs. Same as it
happened with newspapers.

It seems you are afraid, but you shouldn't be. The professionals are funded by
big businesses, they aren't looking to take your life, they want you buy their
products, and they want you to be happy while doing it.

It's really the same picture we've had for the last few decades, only the
technology is a bit different. If you weren't upset back then, there is no
reason to be upset now.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Big business needs both a healthy consumer class and a poverty/continuously
violated class to act as a "this is what happens if you are a bad
consumer/employee" example to scare people into various kinds of compliance,
and maximize profit/minimize wages.

It's comforting if you believe you can keep yourself and your friends out of
that second category.

I keep making new friends in low places so that's not the case for me.

------
vinhboy
> It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model
> in journalism. (One could argue he has a moral imperative to do so, given
> his position of power, but that’s not the same thing.)

That line is pretty much all you need to know about the article, despite what
the title is claiming.

In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half
this country does not care for fact vs fiction. [0]

If some guy with a catchy domain name can produce content that goes viral, it
doesn't matter how many Pulitzer the NYTimes has.

If anything, as someone who actually cares about facts, the latest changes in
my Facebook newsfeed has gotten me to read a lot more publications because my
friends are sharing stories from journals I don't normally read.

The author is misplacing the blame.

[0]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-
finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs)

~~~
RyanZAG
> In my opinion. If anything is destroying journalism, it's the fact that half
> this country does not care for fact vs fiction.

Why is this a problem that needs to be solved though? A big part of being free
is being able to choose what you get to care about, being able to choose what
you get to read, and being able to have your own opinions.

Remove that, and you're no longer free. Would it be better to not be a free
people? I can see the benefits of both sides, but I think freedom is a better
long term solution for a multitude of historical reasons.

~~~
eropple
You can, and should, have your own _opinions_.

Does that extend to _facts_?

~~~
hkmurakami
Questioning our assumptions and commonly held beliefs (even facts!) should be
_encouraged_ as an integral part of intellectual discourse.

I'm saddened by the current state of affairs where increasingly polarized
factions feel that taking nuanced (rather than absolutist) positions threatens
their positions and gives up ground to the opposition.

~~~
kelnos
Questioning established beliefs and fact should absolutely be encouraged. But
that questioning must be grounded in a good-faith, logical, reasonable belief
that contrary evidence exists. When mountains of evidence are provided that
support existing facts, and you are unable to come up with any persuasive
evidence or avenues of research to contradict those facts, you are an idiot
and have no place influencing or making public policy.

~~~
mistermann
And what about the cases where there isn't a mountain of evidence supporting
one side or the other?

At least from my observation, the general stance of most people is 100%
complete belief in any partisan theory, and complete rejection of any opposing
ideas, regardless of the amount of evidence supporting each.

~~~
kelnos
Well, duh, then there's more room for doubt.

Look, we're talking about the difference between opinion and fact here. By its
very nature, "fact" implies that you have enough evidence already that
questioning that fact requires evidence of its own. If I hold some weaker
opinion, then sure, it's entirely reasonable to hold an opinion contrary to
that without the burden of proof immediately being on you.

------
paulsutter
The author doesn't realize that whatever Mark Zuckerberg does next, it's
likely to fail. But Facebook will learn far more for trying than the news
community will learn from sticking to the same old same old.

News will get reinvented, and the optimist in me hopes it will be a much
better product than it is today. But that process will be hard to predict and
the winners will be among the folks who take risks and try new approaches.

------
ThomPete
I think the problem with journalism is that it was never the actual business.
What it was, were supporting and adding sophistication to the news industry,
but it was never actually central to the business. But the value of news was
that it didnt used to be widely available. That was actually what people paid
for. The news and clssifieds, not the journalism. And so what we see are all
these people in the news industry trying to improve their business by
improving journalism.

~~~
eigenvalue
The actual business was really the classified advertisement section, which was
killed by Craigslist and eBay!

~~~
ThomPete
agree added it in

------
rjvir
This chart
([https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/778260618914652164](https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/778260618914652164))
suggests that Facebook should not a lone scapegoat for journalism's decline -
the internet as a whole is a more reasonable target.

~~~
WildUtah
_Facebook should not a lone scapegoat_

Actually it was Craigslist. Back before the internet, the single biggest pot
of newspaper revenue was classified ads.

~~~
kraftomatic
I think Craigslist is a US problem. Internationally I think the traditional
news approach has had many different challenges. Classified advertising also
has had different challenges around the world, such as dedicated publications.

~~~
rjvir
The fundamental challenge is that of having hand-delivered paper newspapers be
the centralized hub of information.

Any manifestation of the Internet makes that obsolete - but the specific
method of obsoletion may be different by country.

------
Animats
Crowd-sourcing news quality does not work. There's no ground truth.

Google News is suffering from this. I noted on Wikipedia today, in a
discussion of reliable sources, that I had searched for info about a Wikipedia
topic with Google news search, with terrible results. The top three results
were Algemeiner (Jewish), Breitbart News (alt-right), and Mondoweiss
("progressive and anti-Zionist"). This is pathetic.

~~~
paradite
I assume they were ranked by views or CTR, which is perfectly normal given the
current circumstances.

How else can Google News rank them? Follow some news media objectivity ranking
on imgur? Hire tons of unbiased people to verify the integrity of all news
before adding them into the index?

I'm not playing devil's advocate here but given an uninformed electorate, some
form of authoritative truth by either a independent watchdog or government
agency is probably a better idea than letting private companies run the media.

~~~
Animats
There was an effort at Google last year to measure site objectivity. I met the
woman running it when she gave a talk in EE380 at Stanford. They have a a
database of hard facts, and they're trying to check sites to see if they
contradict them. This reduces the site's credibility metric. This was aimed
more at medical promotion than politics. The technology was still R&D back
then, not production.

------
StreamBright
The problem with "journalism" is that it got degraded to infotainment over the
last decade and there is barely any real journalism left. If you have to make
money, you have to cater to a large group of people and also for your
advertisers. This essentially making sure most of your output is clickbait
titles and nothing too crazy. There are few exceptions though like the
intercept and similar news outlets.

~~~
cylinder
Entertainment is the product. See Neil Postman's _Amused to Death._ If people
really wanted quality journalism, they'd be lining up to pay for it. This is
not a market failure.

~~~
dredmorbius
NB: _Amusing Ourselves to Death_

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-
death/oc...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-
death/oclc/699013936&referer=brief_results)

------
jondubois
Facebook is scary. It ought to be heavily regulated or nationalised entirely.
The side effects it has had on society are catastrophic.

Once FB gets a monopoly on news, it'll be able to control everyone.

~~~
Oxitendwe
>The side effects it has had on society are catastrophic.

>It out to be nationalized entirely.

You don't think those two things are at odds with each other? Why do you think
the federal government will be any more trustyworthy than Mark Zuckerberg? Not
to mention that then it will have no incentive to improve or make a profit.

~~~
jondubois
The government has no financial incentive to turn a profit - All the proceeds
would go to back to government projects or be wasted on bureaucracy. Nobody
who works for government at any point in the chain could benefit financially
from this; that is why the government is far more trustworthy than Mark
Zuckerberg and his executive friends.

The idea that a few wealthy FB shareholders can profit from using other
people's data to manipulate those people's behaviour illustrates the problem
very clearly.

What's worse is that even if you are not susceptible to FB's targeted
advertising directly, FB will trick your friends and family into a particular
behaviour pattern and then force you to follow suite.

It's just like when FB was in its early growth stages; even people who
resisted joining FB initially gave in once all their friends had joined up...
People would get offended if you didn't add them as friends on Facebook. It's
the same principle at play here except it's around lifestyle and consumerism.

I actually think that this "don't trust the government" propaganda was
masterminded by tech companies (on the back of the Edward Snowden drama) to
help their own corporate agendas.

50 years ago, it would never have even occurred to anyone that a profit-making
entity could be more trustworthy than the government because it makes
absolutely no sense.

------
Klockan
I tend to prefer wikipedia over traditional news outlets since their editors
actually cares about unbiased truth instead of sensationalist garbage. If I
could find a news outlet that had the same quality as good wikipedia articles
then I would be happy, but even supposedly respected outlets like WSJ
publishes crap like this:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-
youtube...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube-star-
pewdiepie-after-anti-semitic-posts-1487034533)

The sooner traditional sensationalist journalism dies the better.

------
onion2k
News organisations are finding that if your product has too little value that
you have to support it with advertising instead of selling it directly then
your business will fail as soon as someone figures out a better way of
delivering adverts.

In the future I suspect Facebook and Google will have the _exact_ same
problem.

------
gamesbrainiac
I think the real threat to journalism is the fact that news outlets have
decided to "cater" to a certain section of the population. I don't think
Facebook started or is to blame for the demise of journalism, but outlets like
Fox show deep systemic problems in the world of journalism.

------
dirkg
Most people in this country are idiots, and celebrate idiocy. People in
Asia/Europe still read newspapers and news is still news, not sensationalist
media garbage like here with barely any mention of the rest of the world.

~~~
indy
I think you're over estimating the media in the rest of the world.

------
venning
> _" news...has always been subsidized by the advertising dollars his company
> now commands"_

Is this true? Have there been times when news was funded by other means than
advertising?

------
XnoiVeX
The Atlantic admitted there is no money in news back in 2014. Interesting
quote in that article: "Don't worry about Facebook"

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/startin...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/03/starting-
a-news-organization-heres-how-youll-make-money/359662/)

------
dingo_bat
Yup, the mainstream media is dying because of facebook. Very fascinating.
Let's see who else they can blame.

------
ww520
MSM are losing the status as the gatekeepers of dispensing news, boohoo. They
have done that to themselves.

~~~
uabstraction
While the traditional media has been asleep at the wheel for a long time now,
I find myself incredibly worried at this juncture. Social media prevails over
traditional media if - and only if - the system is not being abused.
Unfortunately, it appears that social media is being manipulated in massive,
shocking, unprecedented ways, which is why I believe Zuckerburg is going on
his save the world campaign. The idiot opened Pandora's box[1], and now social
media has become the instrument of data-driven electioneering and reactive
targeted propaganda campaigns.

We have hit a paradox in news publication. If we let everyone disseminate the
news, we end up with Lord of the Flies esque cults surrounding every rumor. If
we only allowed figures of authority to disseminate the news, we'll never know
if a story was intentionally buried or misrepresented. There's no easy answer
here. This is human nature.

[1] [https://www.scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-
pro...](https://www.scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-
machine)

------
fatalogic
I just wish it was easier to find unbiased news. Just a list of facts no slant
either way.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Even a list of facts can include bias, by which facts it includes and which it
omits. There exists no unbiased source of news. Better to have information,
along with documentation of any potential sources of bias, evaluate that for
yourself with the caveats included, and give it appropriately discounted
weight.

~~~
zo1
If we take that further, perhaps we need to fix the discoverability and
verifiability of facts and statistics.

There needs to be a single store, or repository of it _all_. Until that
happens, news is just a "peek" at something, which will inevitably include
bias.

------
cerved
"One analyst told The New York Times last year that 85 percent of all online
advertising revenue is funneled to either Facebook or Google—leaving a paltry
15 percent for news organizations to fight over."

I stopped reading here since the author obviously doesn't know what he/she is
talking about and didn't bother looking it up.

~~~
RileyKyeden
The article in question: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/business/media-
websites-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/business/media-websites-
battle-falteringad-revenue-and-traffic.html?_r=0)

> _Advertisers adjusted spending accordingly. In the first quarter of 2016, 85
> cents of every new dollar spent in online advertising will go to Google or
> Facebook, said Brian Nowak, a Morgan Stanley analyst._

I don't know if it's accurate, but New York Times citing an analyst at a major
financial services firm seems more credible than user "cerved" on Hacker News.
Do you have better information?

~~~
cerved
Okay so look at the two quotes "85 percent of _all online advertising revenue_
is funneled to either Facebook or Google" and "85 cents of _every new dollar_
spent in online advertising"

One proclaims that two companies take 85% of all online ad revenue, the other
85% of the growth in one quarter. So the first problem is the reference to the
source is incorrect.

The other is the assumption that only news orgs and Google and Facebook are
the ones taking a part of the pie. Disregarding the other hundreds of
companies that are a part of the online advertising ecosystem as well as other
types of publishers.

I would assert that the Atlantic misquoting a quote from the New York Times,
which is a quote from a note a Morgan Stanley analyst wrote to clients the 7th
of April 2016 is in and of itself not credible.

I don't know the real figures but one could calculate this by estimating
global ad spend in 2016, take Google and Facebooks ad revenue minus the cost
of revenue, ie money spend on buying ads from publishers (ie. news
organisations etc), and compare that to other actors.

Bottom line, I refer to my previous point that the author doesn't know what
he/she is talking about.

------
arca_vorago
If you aren't discussing operation mockingbird and the consolidation and
monopolization of the parent corps along with the editorial influence that
comes with you are nowhere close to understanding the real problem.

Without understanding the real problem, any proposed solution will be lacking.

------
techmohib
Mark does make a lot of sense. Fake News is destroying out community. Instead
of only generating catchy headlines to increase viewership why not do somework
and discover amazing content to publish.

------
dredmorbius
Since much of the discussion here is revolving around what journalism is or
isn't or when its heyday was, or what its economic foundations were, I thought
I'd share some of the research I've been making into the history and
background.

The term "journalism" itself dates from 1821.
[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=journalism](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=journalism)

The US mass newspaper industry dates from the mid-1800s. Yes, there were
earlier instances of things called "newspapers", and some advertisements, and
some magazines, and other means of distributing news. But none of these really
jive with our current use of the terms.

Specific advances in economics and technology in particular drove the change.
From the absolutely fascinating (and, warning: massive time-sink) History of
Information:

Economic & Technological Advances Spur the Development of Newspapers in the
U.S. (Circa 1800 – 1840)

[http://historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4792](http://historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4792)

Dates and qualifications are numerous and various, and there's plenty of room
for argument. But if the discussion is of a daily publication distributed on
the events of the day, widely read through the general population, and
supported through commercial means, then you require 1) high-speed
communications (telegraph, phone, or better), 2) high-speed presses (steam,
diesel, or electric drive), 3) iron or steel framed presses (for speed and
durability), 4) distribution (intra- or inter-city, meaning posts or better),
5) manufacturing and distribution capable of supporting advertising-promoted
wares, and the real biggie, 6) general literacy within the population.

None of these existed prior to 1800. Generally, full flourishing didn't occur
until roughly 1880, though the pieces were falling in place before then.

For much of the 19th century, newspapers were largely party-run, not-for-
profit. Prior to 1800, newspapers as we know them really didn't exist.
Pamphlets were the typical mechanism through about 1500. Before that, "mass
media" usually meant "the Church", in Europe.

Hamilton Holt, a magazine publisher himself, gave a view of the commercial
periodicals business in a 1909 lecture at the University of California,
"Commercialism and Journalism". He leads with a statistical account of the
growth of the publishing industry from 1850 to 1905, in revenues, circulation,
publications, and more. Much of the piece looks at the influence of
advertising-driven interests on what is covered in publications.

[https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft](https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft)

From Robert J. Gordon's _The Rise and Fall of American Growth_ , an
interesting statistic: the fall in newspaper subscriptions, measured in terms
of subscriptions per household, has fallen at a nearly constant rate _since
the 1950s_. The decline in newspaper journalism is a _very_ long-term secular
trend.

I'd also strongly recommend David Simon's "The Audacity of Despair", a 70
minute lecture at UC Berkeley. Warning: Simon is _not_ a great speaker, and
yes, this is long, but he makes some exceptionally good and cogent points.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw)

Another useful resource is "Introduction to Communication Science" by MOOC
ICS, a fast-paced but solid introduction to the field of communication
science. The segments are brief but well-produced and relevant.

Elizabeth Eisenstein, _The Printing Press as an Agent of Change_ is very
strongly recommended on this topic. [http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-
press-as-an-agent-of-...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-
agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-trans/oclc/240246401)

Her paper, "Some Conjectures about the Impace of Printing on Western Society
and Thought: A Preliminary Report" (1968) covers much of the ground though in
far less detail, it's a good overview to her subsequent life's work.
[http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/240164?jour...](http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/240164?journalCode=jmh)
(Full text available via [http://sci-hub.cc](http://sci-hub.cc))

The History of Information has a topic covering journalism including to
earlier dates. The premise Lauren makes of a commercial practice of journalism
prior to 1800 is very poorly supported. There's some argument which can be
tenuously made to claims of "newspapers" in the 1700s or 1600s, but they're a
long cry from what we see today, and were not generally read.

[http://historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?category=News+M...](http://historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?category=News+Media+/+Journalism)

------
narrator
There wouldn't be all this running around trying to fix everything if the
person that was supposed to win had won the election.

------
mberning
The death throes of this loathesome industry are glorious to behold. The idea
that this is fact vs viction, real vs fake news, etc. shows how much these
people have lost the plot.

------
rampage101
The media is not needed anymore to tell us what to think. We are able to
research anything now with the internet, so it's much harder for the media to
spread falsehoods now.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
If there's one "fake news" story that tops the list, in my opinion, it's the
killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. When the ACTUAL facts came to light, via
autopsy, it was clear he had not been an innocent victim of a racist cop with
a grudge. He had just robbed a store, and then fought with the cop, and tried
to take his gun. He was shot while CHARGING the officer, head down, hands at
his sides. NONE of that was immediately available on the internet, yet
millions and millions of people seized on that opportunity to fill in the
blanks. The actual report took weeks to generate, as it should, and by the
time it came out, there was an entire national movement ("hands up; don't
shoot") that was based on a fantastical lie.

How do "we," as a society, function and thrive when there are people like
those leading the BLM movement, who are willing to seize on fake news, and
create entire polemical fictions, well aware of their specious basis, trying
to extract what personal benefit they can from the situation until the truth
comes to light?

