
Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (2009) - wallflower
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
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snowwrestler
Love the references to Craig Newmark and Caterina Fake. How many people in
2018 could say what they're known for without looking it up? It just shows how
perishable the contemporary wisdom is... which is of course Clay's main point.

It looks right now like the thing that might save journalism is the revolution
itself. A stable society actually doesn't need much journalism, but people
didn't object to it because the cost was invisible to them; it was buried in
the decimal places of the price of everything.

Now, in a society in which social upheaval has become obvious, people are
seeking out journalism and paying for it. We're in the process of finding out
how much journalism people actually want--i.e. how much they are willing to
directly pay for.

It might not be very much, in terms of jobs. A person who just wants to know
what is going on does not necessarily need 15 news organizations competing to
be 1 sec faster to tell them.

And as national upheaval attracts attention, there's not as much left to spend
locally. For many folks, corruption on the school board pales before
corruption at the highest ranks of the federal government. More attention and
money for the NY Times, less for the local paper.

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sparkzilla
Very interesting article. I believe the next major change in the news industry
is the change from news articles -- which were designed for paper -- to
structured news data, designed for interactivity.

My project, NewsBlocks [1], puts this idea into practice by aiming to convert
all the world's news articles -- past and present -- into unbiased, verified
data and storing it on a censor-resistant blockchain. Anyone will then be able
to use the data - which will be the first global, permanent news archive -- to
create new kinds of trusted news applications, such as unbiased news feeds,
fake news checkers, voice and chat apps and more, creating a global
marketplace for news. We just launched and would love to hear your feedback.

[1][https://newsblocks.io](https://newsblocks.io)

~~~
yesenadam
_convert all the world 's news articles -- past and present -- into unbiased,
verified data_

What is 'unbiased' news?

~~~
jay_kyburz
It's a list of things that actually happened, without interpretation of those
events.

~~~
yesenadam
There are all kinds of problems with wanting 'unbiased' anything. As if values
can be cleanly separated from facts in the world. (There's a lot of philosophy
written on these subjects.. e.g. Hilary Putnam has a lot of interesting essays
exploring these topics, collected in his books)

Ok, there are facts like "X is the president of the USA", I think
uncontroversial. But most 'things that happened' don't fit in that category,
'news' especially. And the dividing line between which things and which don't
is itself a matter of interpretation...

What appears on tv/print/internet news has to be selected from 'all the things
that actually happened' according to some view of what's significant, which
depends on someone's values, or impression of other peoples' values etc etc.
What gets to be included already is interpretation, value-laden, not to
mention how its described. A list of bare uncontroversial facts would be
trivia - that's what trivia is.

Like in the writing of history, where the facts must be selected, interpreted
etc, only a tiny fraction can be included in the writing. This element of
personal values, sense of what is important, is what is called 'bias'. I don't
believe it's possible or desirable to be rid of it.

~~~
jay_kyburz
An interesting experiment would be to separate the trivia from the
interpretation. The world is so noisy, so crowded, it would be refreshing to
be able to take a step back and look at the trivia.

It would be nice if there were good tools we could use sift through the data
and paint our own picture.

We would need some tools to evaluate how controversial, or how established a
fact is. Are there experts that have testified to something? Are there
multiple eye witnesses with sworn statements to an event.

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jay_kyburz
I can see an answer, but is very unpopular, and conflicts with what many of
consider the very principles of the internet.

People need to be held accountable for what they post publicly online.

Aggregators such as Facebook and Google should be sued, fined, or otherwise
punished for publishing incorrect facts, and copyrighted material. They should
not be extended special exemptions.

Aggregators will need to verify the identity of anybody they are allowing to
post, so they can in-turn sue, fine, or punish users.

Might be the death of the internet as we know it today, but I'm not sure I
will miss it.

~~~
CptFribble
Here is a corollary: public debate will have to be accompanied by real,
verified identities.

Maybe not the whole internet, but there will have to be a de-anonymized,
trusted place.

~~~
dexen
This idea has been tested extensively over several years, on many popular
platforms, and failed all the way, every time it's been tried. Two prominent
examples being Facebook and Twitter; the former requires real names and photos
(fakery is grounds for ban), while the later provides "Verified" checkmark to
verified users. In spite of that, FB carries a lot of mis-information and
objectionable opinions, while the verified Twitter users engage in the same
underhanded, despicable tactics and name-calling we got to expect from the
anonymous accounts.

Contrast that with HN, which accommodates the full spectrum from anonymous,
through pseudonymous, to fully-linked to offline identity. The quality of
discourse here is high, and yet the costs and burdens to both users, and
moderators, are reasonably low.

The idea of enforcing identities has been proven unhelpful. Plus, there are
strong voices among unpopular and persecuted minorities that it puts them at
elevated risk, both on- and offline.

Just say no to this PII gathering scheme masquerading as "accountability".

~~~
jay_kyburz
Nobody has done it seriously, and as far as I'm aware, there are no laws
currently that prevent you from just lying thought your teeth. Lets try a
system where its effectively perjury to tell a lie on the internet

:)

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dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515749)

~~~
dmfdmf
My 9 year old comment from that thread;

> _I used to think that the problem with newspapers and journalism was a
> revenue problem. (e.g. CL took their classified ad revenue). Like a lot of
> people, I thought that eventually someone would figure out a new source of
> stable revenues and all would be fine. I now see that the problem is much
> bigger than that._

> _I think the important point that is easy to miss is that we are in the very
> early stages of a major social revolution, probably the biggest in human
> history. Institutions like the Catholic Church or the NYT and the MSM
> (today) are what communicate and sustain the culture (whether you agreed
> with them or not). This is what the internet has broken. It takes time for
> new institutions to form but that is the process that is underway right now
> and that process will probably take decades._

This article is not really about newspapers and is a must-read if you want to
understand the current crazy social and political milieu we live in. My
comment is still true; we are still in an historical social revolution and
knowing this helps me cope. It is hard to see the big picture sometimes and
this article helps me understand.

NB: Fun fact, I emailed Clay Shirky with my comment at the time and thanked
him for writing it. He emailed me back and wrote (paraphrased) "Yep!" and
thank me for reading it.

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bkohlmann
I just tried to order the book he mentioned on my kindle - The Printing Press
as an Agent of Change - and it doesn’t exist! (Well, it’s in
paperback...published in 1980).

