
What If the Newspaper Industry Made a Colossal Mistake? - walterbell
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/newspapers-digital-first-214363
======
nkozyra
The conclusion that a drop in readership is proof that moving to the web was a
mistake is extraordinarily shallow.

"Readers continue to leave print newspapers, but they’re not migrating to the
online editions."

Because they have more options.

Print products were often monopolies, especially in the early to mid 90s, a
hey day for newspapers. There was often a single publication per DMA.

What happened then is newspaper readers increasingly became web users
throughout the 90s and 00s and left the print product. In 2000, if you wanted
semi-local or regional news on the web, you went to ... your newspaper web
site! In 2016, you have a plethora of choices, many of them unsaddled by the
constraints of a typical newspaper organizational structure (for better or
worse). So you have web sites and publications producing/sharing/clickbaiting
10x the content than your local newspaper does. This leads to a spreading of
readership.

What's happened is a diaspora. Sticking with the print product over the web
would not have prevented this. It may have slowed the decline of print
circulation, but I have serious doubts about that. The challenge newspapers
have is competing with decidedly non-journalistic approaches to news; ones
that give readers what they want even if it isn't done "right." Competing with
platforms and sites that can churn out "content" at an unfettered rate means
fundamentally changing what a newspaper does.

There's no easy answer - newspapers can accept that people will largely go to
other sites to get less reliable information faster, or that their content
will be repurposed on other platforms without any compensation. That will
likely mean a slow constriction or demise. Alternately, they can compete in
that space, which a lot are doing now. That means sacrificing the ideals of
journalism.

~~~
betenoire
My plumber isn't allowed to call himself a plumber unless he follows the rules
for plumbing. Same for my accountant, doctor, electrician, and lock pick.

I get the "free speech" argument, but I still cannot understand why we don't
have rules about who can and cannot call themselves a journalist.

Coming up with these rules might be tricky, but shouldn't we try? Or have we
and I'm just uninformed?

~~~
jdietrich
Where do you draw the line on what constitutes journalism? Are politics
bloggers journalists? Are bloggers who occasionally talk about politics
journalists? Are people who livetweet a news event that they're involved in
acting as journalists?

How do you safeguard the political independence of the licensing of
journalists? How do you ensure that a future government doesn't abuse the
licensing regulations to suppress political criticism?

In the US, how do you reconcile this with the first amendment? How can you
justify silencing people because they lack the 'correct' qualifications? If
the only restriction is on the title 'journalist', what stops people from
calling themselves a blogger while doing exactly the same things that a
journalist does?

~~~
GuiA
> Are politics bloggers journalists? Are bloggers who occasionally talk about
> politics journalists? Are people who livetweet a news event that they're
> involved in acting as journalists?

No. They are respectively a blogger, a blogger, and a Twitter user.

~~~
nercht12
Then what's a "journalist"? Someone who gets paid to go do the research?
"Journalist" is derived from "journal" (duh, but important) - bloggers are
nothing more than online journalists. The fact that they are called "bloggers"
is only because society has elected to stick with the term "blog" for an
online journal.

------
dasil003
> _if a newspaper company wanted to make a real splash on the Web, it would be
> better off inventing an original website—the next Business Insider or
> BuzzFeed—and not remodel its newspaper copy._

I have to disagree with Chyi here—"create the next BuzzFeed" is not a
strategy; it's extremely hard, competitive and they don't have the skills to
even attempt it.

That said, I think there's a strong argument for having never put anything
online, or at least behind a strong paywall with no trials. That way they
could have maintained an air of premium information instead of going head to
head with a gazillion clickbait factory paying peanuts to underemployed
college grads.

Of course the problem is this is all hypothetical, and if someone had made
this bet they'd be getting hung out to dry based on the declining revenues
_even if they wouldn 't have been as bad as they ended up being in our current
reality_. In other words, it was just too risky a bet to not try to "win the
web" even though it is a race to the bottom newspapers are ill-equipped to
compete in.

~~~
gozur88
The problem with paywalling the news is 1) news can not be copyrighted. You
can keep people from copying your story word-for-word, but you can't keep them
from repeating the news in different words and 2) nobody will ever see your
news because it doesn't show up on Google. You have a chicken and egg problem
- without subscribers you won't get a reputation for a quality product, but if
you paywall everything nobody will know you exist.

~~~
dasil003
But according to the article 82% of revenue still comes from the print
edition, so it's not a chicken or egg problem it's a lose-lose. That's why I'm
suggesting a strategy where you maintain the perceived value of the print
content could be more successful long-term.

~~~
gozur88
But you can't really talk about revenue in the absence of expenses. It costs
money to print and distribute newspapers. If it costs you a dollar to print a
newspaper and you have a million subscribers, you have have a million dollars
in revenue even if they're only paying seventy five cents for a paper.

She's made a compelling argument that news organizations are having a lot of
trouble making money online. But it's not at all clear they can make money off
the print edition either.

Newspapers are in a vicious cycle - they have fewer subscribers so they cut
costs, which makes the paper less compelling, which leads to fewer
subscribers...

News organizations aren't moving to the web because they want to. They're
moving because their old business model was destroyed (by craigslist, mostly).
I haven't read him in awhile, but Jeff Jarvis (buzzmachine.com) used to be a
good read on the subject.

------
rev_null
Having worked for a newspaper and, later, it's larger media conglomerate (late
aughts), I can say that newspapers have intentionally created a terrible web
presence. It's tough to tell whether the company thought it was a fad that
would die off and not worth the investment, or if they believed that a
terrible web site would drive people back to the physical paper. Either way,
the move from print to online was a failure driven by upper management.

As one anecdote, the paper ran an advertising campaign telling people not to
use the website on Sundays. Ironically, the commercial ended with a URL for a
website with a coupon for the Sunday paper.

~~~
gunnihinn
> As one anecdote, the paper ran an advertising campaign telling people not to
> use the website on Sundays.

... but why? What did they hope to achieve by that?

~~~
azemetre
I don't know for sure, but Sunday newspapers are typically filled with ads and
coupons for local businesses. It's probably the day that is most profitable
for newspaper and ad sales together.

Why they choose Sunday to stack in ads and coupons, I don't know. Might be
related to Church services, I wonder if it's the same for newspapers in other
countries?

~~~
breischl
Almost definitely this. Our local paper has actually tried to literally give
away the Sunday edition. ie, a Sunday-only subscription at no cost. Not sure
how many takers they got - I didn't sign up.

------
panglott
"Online editions offer a 'less-than-satisfactory' reading experience, she
writes, cluttered with intrusive ads and hampered by poor design."

Our local newspaper's Web site is terrible. It's not just lack of investment;
they rolled out a new HTML5 Web site that demonstrates to me that bad HTML5 is
the worst-yet flavor of bad HTML.

But this doesn't mean that the strategic error was digital news; it means the
strategic error was making a terrible Web site.

~~~
angry-hacker
So what is bad about it? It sounds strange thing to say htnl5 has anything to
do with it...

~~~
chc
If your website is bad, and you create a new one that keeps the same core
ideas but has new, fancy features from HTML5, you now most likely have a site
that is both bad and baroque. Very few websites are bad because they were
lacking the features HTML5 adds — they're bad because their creators want to
do the wrong thing.

~~~
angry-hacker
I think you don't understand what html5 is. I understand your frustration
about changes the sites do, but it has nothing to do with html5 per se.

~~~
chc
I think you're either being needlessly pedantic or seeing more blame directed
toward HTML5 than there actually is.

------
njharman
The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution.

The internet has destroyed the lock on distribution relied on by; Publishers,
MPAA, RIAA, newspapers, governments and even people who expect hard to access
(look up in county courts files) means effectively "private".

There is vastly more supply of "attention" than there is demand for
"attention". Combined with the ease of distribution/search and picking and
choosing tiny bits from each "supplier" means it's extremely hard to monetize
or even convince your consumers that you provide any value at all. i.e. I can
pay/endure ads from you or I can go to the fify other sources/aggregators of
same information.

~~~
jhayward
> The crisis is not one of content. But one of distribution.

This is undoubtedly the key aspect of the networked world. Papers have, in the
past, tried to do various forms of syndication and distribution bundling deals
to establish a viable business model but to my knowledge these have all been
abject failures. Compound this with the loss of monopoly income from local
classified ads and we have implosion.

My suggestion to the industry is to not syndicate content, rather syndicate
subscription. I only want to have a single "news" subscription - and it's not
going to be on "your" site. So the industry should find a way for me to pay
for content wherever I may find it with a single subscription, and without
anyone "owning" my account. There may be a business model that works there.

~~~
tcbawo
Better (yet scarier) would be curated content. I would love for someone to
filter the firehose of information, but I don't want to live in an echo
chamber. I don't want a feed that tries to hide opinions or facts I disagree
with. Provide me the basic arguments and rationale from multiple sides, not
strawman arguments. Provide fact checking (with context). Today, this function
would best be performed by people.

------
eggoa
This article appears to neglect the impact of craigslist and similar services
on classified ad revenue. With that revenue gone newspapers are in trouble,
mistake or not.

~~~
losteverything
Ever have to place a obituary lately? Nearly $1k! For a medium size market!

~~~
happyslobro
I think I see a way to save print news, but it won't be pretty...

------
yourapostasy
Some of the more dynamic content from the NYT is coming the closest to what I
would want to pay a subscription for, but still far from my threshold to pay.
Static word content that we once paid handsomely for (in terms of ad space and
subscription fees) is regurgitated at far lower cost everywhere now.

But I've yet to see widespread adoption of content with active models to work
with, even download and run for yourself, for example. Connected to databases
holding the raw data that the story is about. With side-commentary, Torah-like
(the Torah has a tradition of recording significant interpretations and
amplifications made by past rabbis), possibly by multiple competing editors,
summarizing swathes of comments into concise, cogent chunks that add to/update
the original piece. Organized not just by time, but through/over time: so not
presented only as a "this is what happened this hour/day/week" narrative, but
in a Wikipedia-related fashion describing "this event that happened is placed
in this context in our overall knowledge".

~~~
matt4077
Well they're doing quite a lot in data-journalism. The Upshot (NYT) and 538
have git organizations. Others are trying the "timeless" content you're
describing – I'd say Vox's "cards" come close (but are horribly boring tbh)

Problem is – besides politics not always being easy to capture numerically –
that the economics of such a model probably wouldn't work. It'd probably
increase costs by factor of at least 5, and I strongly doubt that the market
could support it.

It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation. I currently don't pay for any
subscriptions, even though I've avoided the cynicism and the conspiracy
theories frequently invoked against journalists. I think they're excellent –
so much so in fact that can't imagine getting tied to any single publication.

But, if nobody buys them anymore, we'll get to see what it's like without
newspapers. I fear many people don't realize how much of what's going on
originates with a handful of organizations. Unfortunately, just as power isn't
created in the plug, no news are created on twitter (well, nowadays some are,
but you get my point).

~~~
yourapostasy
If the publishing market is destined to stay bifurcated, then it is a sad
commentary on the descent of the Net down the same well-trodden path that
television took to mediocrity and unfulfilled promise.

There is a market for such data- and analytically-heavy publishing at the very
high end. Actionable-oriented industry-specific analysis selling for $10K USD
per year and magnitudes higher are purchased in very small quantities by
trading firms, for example. Back in the BBS days, I was hopeful that the then-
nascent Net would make it easier and less expensive to share, collate and test
ideas and data on a larger scale, and evolve publishing to a more live- and
continuously-curated ideas marketplace, so to speak. But I suspect you might
be correct, and the ad-driven, entertainment-oriented content will crowd out
what I had hoped for in a re-proving of Gresham's law for mass consumption
content.

------
brudgers
For the typical newspaper, the online experience is horrible. The LA Times
heats up my laptop. SF Gate is a heap of latency. My local paper is one Media
General sold to Buffett: it's slow, buries the lead, wants me to sign in when
I want to read the news and the front page is historically enthusiastic about
Classmates.com.

The web has made newspapers so bad that even the New York Times lies to me
about ten articles a month without batting an eye if I haven't recently
deleted cookies. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times tell me I _must_
subscribe...except when I click on a link from a Google search.

------
vonnik
Newspapers are in a no win situation, so every move they have made since the
late 90s has been a mistake, because there is no way out. Digital is free. We
can all read free journalism until doomsday. A couple business publications
(WSJ, FT) can erect a paywall and succeed -- most can't. Print readership is
aging and shrinking as it dies. It is not the future. Print will become a
luxury good, and newspapers will produce rare objects for a higher price to be
enjoyed by a smaller audience of connoisseurs. The days of massive print
readership are dwindling rapidly, even if print remains (decreasingly)
profitable.

------
carlmungz
As an-ex journalist who recently left the industry to become a programmer, I'd
say one of the issues is the short-sightedness of senior management. When I
started teaching myself to code last year, I told my editor as well as a
couple of other senior staff members (including the chief exec) about my
ambitions to combine coding and journalism.

My editor was all for it but there was little she could do besides telling her
boss about what I was doing and hoping that would lead to meetings for me with
our in-house dev team based in London (I was at a regional paper owned by one
of the biggest regional newspaper owners in the UK).

In the end I left because nothing happened. I appreciate senior staff members
are busy with other stuff but I'd have thought somebody would have taken more
of an active interest in what I was trying to do. One of the issues is that
developers working for news firms are creating tools based on briefs from
people who do not use those systems on a daily basis, so you end up with
products with a poor UX for both readers and journalists.

I was a journalist for only 4 years (I was fortunate to get a job straight out
of uni) but my sense is that we are spending too much time thinking about the
content and not thinking deeply enough about the platforms serving that
content. By that I don't mean building the next Facebook etc but starting
creating platforms which will be one of the places we serve our content and
possibly bring other sources of revenue. I imagine this would work better on a
local/regional level because you could be more specific with your audience.

It's probably too late to do that now but I think the journalists who will be
more successful in the future will be those building media firms which serve
niche audiences but don't rely on content being their #1 source of income.

~~~
tomcam
A fascinating story, and I hope you have a blog somewhere. Please post its URL
if you do. As an aside you mentioned that you hoped a boss would recognize
what you were doing and take an active interest in it. One thing I learned too
late in my professional life is that you must actively sell yourself. People
have so many things to do these days that even a good boss may not notice you.
Have you noticed how there are people in your company who succeeded who are
not as smart as you? It's because they put in the shoe leather selling
themselves. I started my own successful company and no longer have that
problem, but I cringe when I think about the things I could have got done at
places like Microsoft had I been a better self-promoter.

~~~
carlmungz
Funnily enough, I'm not much of a blogger. I enjoy writing but am not the
stage were I want to blog. My coding journey so far definitely taught me a lot
about self-starting and selling yourself. I did not stay and try to sell
myself because I was not enjoying the working conditions. We were expected to
do more with fewer resources and the only reason we produced a good product is
because we went beyond what the job description stipulated. What kind of
company do you run? I'd like to start something in the future so I'm learning
as much as I can about everything now.

------
JKCalhoun
Advertising left the newspapers.

Look for example at used car ads. Sellers had a choice between paying the
newspaper to run your two-line car ad for a few days for $20 or post it free
to craigslist where you can attach photos, a lengthy description, etc.

And once sellers started posting there, buyers stopped looking in the paper
for used cars.

I know a used car dealer that continued to run print ads in the newspaper for
a while — but only for "old man cars" like Buick sedans, etc.

------
wnevets
Their biggest mistake was reducing the quality and increasing the price of
their product simultaneously while facing greater competition.

~~~
losteverything
Upon introspection, i totally agree.

I used to get 5 newspapers a week (daily Sunday)

Once email became free my time on AOL decreased but time online increased.
That's where I found news.

Then, the newspapers increased price and also the delivery changes.

I didn't renew all but one. Eventually that was too much.

So I would go to the library and read. But they also stopped some papers too.

I miss the ads the most. Hard to believe, but true. There is no one place now
that I can read an ad for a newly opened store or restaurant.

------
matt4077
It appears unlikely that, as the general consensus seems to be, a group as
diverse as all journalists world-wide would collectively be any more stupid
than any other profession. So it may be unjust to call what happened to them
"mistakes". There's no indication that an offline-only or paywalled
distribution would have had better chances (the few that did were without
exception rather special publications focusing on high-value niches).

They were simply mauled by the same market forces that killed travel agencies
or fax repairmen.

Unfortunately, while we're all quite happy to book our own flights, journalism
is still vital. Sure, news is cheap, you can get the same stuff everywhere.
But if you trace it back to it's origin, you'll end up at the NYT or WP or the
Guardian more often than not.

There's simply no way that hobbyists could ever fill the void that would
remain if any of the few high-quality publications were to fail.

------
EGreg
Basically, just like booksellers and other vendors, the move to online caused
Newspapers to compete in a global marketplace, where the unit is the story.
And the more outlets, the bigger the competition.

This is the result of all that. They are now all chasing a fixed advertising
pie, but the barrier to publishing has been greatly lowered

I suppose the same could be said of the printing press getting more available
with time. But it was hard to obtain the mass distribution network that the
internet gives nearly for free.

~~~
pixl97
>They are now all chasing a fixed advertising pie, but the barrier to
publishing has been greatly lowered

Possibly shrinking advertising pie.

Before papers made lots of money selling classified ads locally. Ads for cars,
houses, and random junk may have sold for $20 each, but they had hundreds of
them. And each market was different leading people to pay double or triple
market boundaries (say places with more than one large paper).

Then comes Craigslist and a few other services (even Ebay is a good example
for junk not getting posted to the paper). These places allowed lots of people
that used to pay, to post for free. Others profit after the sale is completed,
leading to little risk to the poster.

Let's say that between these hundreds of papers the combined amount of money
coming in was $10,000,000 (this is completely made up, I'm sure I could get
realistic numbers if I put a lot of time into it). Each one was making enough
money to stay alive. Now, with the new online selling services charging very
little, the combined online services made only $1,000,000 a week. But because
of their low cost distribution model they still profited hansom. There was a
theoretical contraction of $9 million a week in advertising revenues among all
the papers, which means a huge number of them had to consolidate or go under.
With people not reading the paper for those ads (which I still remember being
highly popular in the 80s and 90s) distributions fell even further.

Simply put, nothing could save the papers as they were. It had nothing to do
with the contents inside of them, but how they were funded.

------
moultano
It seems like we've seen a shift away from people caring about local news in
favor of national news. That seems bad for the country.

~~~
pixl97
Many local news papers were bought up and started carrying mostly syndicated
AP content with little local content.

Another problem was the rise of the 24 hour national news network that pushed
everything as a 'breaking alert' or 'emergency right now'. In general your
local news is going to be slow, most places don't have a lot going on. The
national news is instead a 24 hour stream of 'news drugs'.

------
wcummings
I'm a young guy, and I get multiple newspapers, and a few news magazines
delivered. I don't like new media like reddit and "social news aggregators",
because you're replacing professional editors w/ unpaid volunteers and
"votes".

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Instead of crowd-sourcing what gets published/visible, trust some anonymous
individuals at a newspaper? Who has only one agenda instead of a mixture of
many voices and ideals? That's got its downside too. The bubble is created
there by what tiny number of voices are included in the subscription list.

~~~
lisa_q
"some anonymous individuals at a newspaper" ...you mean professional
journalists who actually report on subjects of their expertise?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No I mean editors who determine what makes it on to the printed page.

~~~
goatlover
Editors aren't also professionals who work with the journalists? What you're
advocating for is a lot of amateur voices with limited resources in comparison
and a plethora of personal agendas. It's more democratic than having a few
professional curators. But is that better?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its varied. That's the point.

------
grillvogel
i read another article mentioning that one of the main consequences of this is
the lack of quality local news and political coverage, which is still
something only local newspapers can provide. there is plenty of online
coverage about the latest stupid thing trump said or far off world events, not
so much coverage of local politicians and things in your community that
actually could affect you.

~~~
happyslobro
Local news isn't going to be pushed at you front and center, at least not
until Google knows most people's home town (or most relevant town). However,
when I google $hometown+news, I get a pretty decent listing.

Not sure if this works well for cities that are large enough to cause world
news themselves. And, if you did this for San Francisco, I imagine that you
would simply be directed back to HN ;)

------
the_watcher
> the tech-heavy Web strategy pursued by most papers has been a bust

This can be true, without implying that continuing to focus on print over
digital was the correct strategy.

------
apsec112
This article confuses the strategy for the newspaper industry as a whole with
the strategy for any particular newspaper. If zero newspapers were online,
then the _first_ paper to go online would have a huge advantage. Every
newspaper staying offline is not a Nash equilibrium, unless there's some
compact to enforce it (which might violate antitrust laws).

------
imgabe
Um, news aggregators need something to aggregate. That content comes from
newspapers. The links still send readers to the newspaper's website. The
aggregators are not replacing the function of the newspapers, they're just
making it easier for readers to find the stories.

------
huherto
Netflix for newspapers.

If you could pay a small monthly fee and be able to read from a collection of
newspapers.

~~~
clydethefrog
Blendle comes to mind, although it's pay per article.

------
brazzledazzle
I'm starting to think distraction is the root of many problems. There's little
hope for most people trying to read an in-depth article on their mobile
devices. The article about deep work on the front page has made me realize
just how long it takes me to take care of the stuff that is severely hampered
by distraction.

I think a big hurdle will be removing distractions like chat or
noise/interruptions from coworkers without creating problems. It would be nice
to just sign off/hide away for extended periods but that's bound to go overly
poorly in our collaboration enthusiastic world.

~~~
danieldk
_I 'm starting to think distraction is the root of many problems._

This is one of the two reasons that I subscribed to a dead-trees paper again.
It is much easier to read in-depth articles in a newspaper in a format where
there are no other distractions.

The other reason is that blue light is bad for sleep patterns and reading the
newspaper at night has the opposite effect of reading from a smartphone or
tablet: it makes me tired (in a good way). Of course, it helps that I am
reading a newspaper which is not in my native or second language :).

------
formula1
Theres enough sources here to warrent a deeper look into the subject but here
are my first thoughts

1) online is more convienient than paper. If paper is on a daily route, its
convienient.

2) online is often cheaper than paper. There is probably some uncanny valley
but paper distribution costs much more than electronic. And paper production
is at best analogous to server scalability.

3) online has more tools available in regards to presentation and linking to
bibliography/other stories.

4) online has more advertisement opportunity

What paper really represents is brand pressence. Would you trust a no name
blog or a locally distributed paper + an online pressence

------
programminggeek
I think the problem is a simple assumption - people will leave the print
version of My Local Journal and go to mylocaljournal.com when in fact they go
from My Local Journal to Buzzfeed or the Yahoo! homepage or Google News or
Twitter or Facebook or RSS of their 10 favorite blogs etc...

For example, I don't have a newspaper. I also don't check the local newspaper
website. My wife, friends, relatives don't seem to either. The entirety of
local news is mostly ignored.

And yet, we are fine. So, is all of that news necessary or important to our
lives? As it turns out, no.

~~~
matt4077
The problem with that is that well-informed citizen are necessary for the
functioning of a democracy. You can't make decisions without information.

------
kazinator
The only problem with printed news is the vast amount of garbage that it
generates: I mean the paper itself. It's not very environmentally friendly.

~~~
taejo
Growing trees to cut them down and bury them in landfills is carbon
sequestration. /s (but only partly)

------
losteverything
In many ways the "newspaper" is its own ecosystem. Editors/reporters,
printers/delivery, academia,pollsters, others rely on this ecosystem to earn
and prosper.

Except readers.

This ecosystem is morphing under their feet. But the large number of humans
living off this ecosystem means it just won't go away quickly. Holding on to
the fifth estate oversight gives newspaper people strength.

For the sake of all earning a living, I hope mid career changes are not forced
on those that entered their ecosystem.

------
pif
A colossal mistake... from which point of view? Never had we available such a
huge source of fresh news. Maybe that's not the best for newspaper industry,
but as far at it lasts (and no serious signs of disruptions have shown up),
let's enjoy it!

It looks a bit like software development: Microsoft educated users to ship
crap (people think that _having to reboot_ is fine!) and we ended up having to
maintain crap.

~~~
jacquesm
It's fresh news, but it is _shallow_. Quality reporting requires dedication
and resources, something some news organizations had under one roof. It's hard
to see how that very necessary element in our society will be kept around in
the longer term. The 5th estate has a very important function and without it
our societies will no doubt be poorer.

~~~
tdb7893
You might be interested to know that Buzzfeed seems to be doing investigative
reporting now

~~~
jacquesm
I just checked out their homepage, let's just say that isn't exactly evident
from the content there.

I'm going to assume your comment was sarcastic unless there is some proof to
the contrary.

Some samples:

Oh, boy.

34 of the best products from shark tank.

23 texts that will make you laugh way harder than they should.

How much do you actually know about drugs?

Find awesome gifts for friends and family.

27 Ingenious Hacks Every College Student Needs To Know (food, laundry and
pooping).

Any of those links qualify as investigative reporting?

~~~
dredmorbius
Buzzfeed, who are _way_ up my shit list for clickbait crap, have nonetheless
done some phenomenally good reporting on the TPP and ISDS issue, including
multi-part deep coverage.

You've got to dig for the good stuff, but it actually is there.

~~~
Bellthorpe
That report was alarmist, factually wrong in some places, and draw some
ridiculous conclusions.

~~~
dredmorbius
How, specifically?

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hoodoof
Newspapers should sell subscriptions to the latest news, and provide slightly
old news for free, like 8 to 12 hours behind.

~~~
webreac
and sell subscriptions to old news ?

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flopsey
Strikes me the key is to control more of the news supply chain and become
their own aggregators. I think it's similar to the way Hulu is owned by some
networks and some studios.

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davidgerard
The trouble is then competing with the ones who do stay online.

The BBC gets a lot more Wikipedia refs these days than the completely-
paywalled Times.

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dredmorbius
A few thoughts and references.

Hamilton Holt: A 1909 account, "Commercialism and Journalism", describes
something of the inverse of our current dilemma: how the press would establish
its independence given the tremendous boom in advertising, and advertisers who
Had Money and Had an Interest in What Was or Wasn't Published. Holt's account
starts with a statistical overview of the previous half-century of the
industry and the growing role of advertising (a new phenomenon, at least at
that scale, in 1909). It's quite revealing.

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

I.F. "Izzy" Stone, speaking in 1974, is commenting at the zenith of the power
of major city and national dailies. The _Washington Post_ and _The New York
Times_ had just toppled a President of the United States. Stone credits the
broad scope (a point Holt had made) of major city papers as giving them a
great deal of independence -- local and small-city papers had no such
advantages. Advertising remained a huge influence on the press.

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

Chomsky, Mander, and Postman: Three among many critics of the modern press,
both print and broadcast. If you're not familiar with them, read.

Tronc: I've been spending time in the Chicago area, and have had the
experience of reading what's left of the _Chicago Tribune_. John Oliver's
criticisms were very well deserved. We're currently in Sportsball Season,
which means that the front page, front section, editorial page, business
section (mostly obituaries, with the added bonus of a list of recently dead
people on the back pages), real estate, and entertainment sections, as well as
the sports section, are covering the Cubs, Bears, Bulls, and/or Blackhawks.

Actual news is limited to a one page "Nation & World" and "News Briefing"
page. Columnists largely discuss their gardens.

Every month or two there's a piece of accidental good journalism. Often a
historical review (one in particular was the obit of a former Trib reporter).

The Monday paper is little more than a paste-up of solicited filler.

The simple truth is that the _Trib_ doesn't cover news of significanc, covers
its own backyard poorly, expresses the schizoid remnants of its Republic Party
Paper tradition (though the paper's been notably less straight-ticket of
late), and has taken unpardonable positions as regards free speech and the
press, most notably its editorial against a pardon for Edward Snowden.

I find far more informative, useful, and relevant content online. Mostly I
simply ignore the current news -- I'm poking around the Internet Archive's
early 20th century, or 19th or 18th century collections. Or I'm digging into
primary sources, largely academic and journal articles or books (and those
often via Sci-Hub or LibGen).

I'm also coming to believe strongly that the "news is bad for you" view has
strong merits. I'm not completely shut out (and am much less so than the
typical person), but I absolutely refuse to let my information sources be
ruled by commercial interests, shock and awe, outrage, or irrelevance.

Where the news media have misstepped most severely is in trying to serve
_entertainment_ rather than _information_. This affects not only what's left
of newspapers, or magazines (I saw _Time Magazine_ for the first time in years
and felt like I'd just run into a friend in the end stages of cancer: gaunt,
dull, no substance, and all signs pointing to a rapidly fading life-force):
they've gutted themselves of any meaningful content. There are exceptions,
including upstart and principled media: _The Guardian_ does well. _The
Economist_ and _Financial Times_ are generally strong. _The Wall Street
Journal_ , though cheap and slanted, remains a strikingly better paper than
Tronc, er, the Trib. I've been impressed by online ventures, including _The
Intercept_ , _Pro Publica_ , and a few others, though the outrage engines,
even those nominally from viewpoints I agree with, are tiresome.

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-
ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli)

