
Bloomberg chief editor: We publish too many mediocre and long enterprise stories - hhs
https://talkingbiznews.com/they-talk-biz-news/bloomberg-eic-micklethwait-we-publish-too-many-mediocre-and-long-enterprise-stories/
======
greatgib
The point of the chief editor is so true that I'm surprised to read that from
them.

I have noticed that a lot of times with this kind of web media.

\- You have a clickbait title like this: "How a normal guy managed to hack
WallStreet with a simple pen"

\- Then, you have one page of interesting introduction on the topic but
without the reply to the title question.

"In november 2018, WallStreet was busy with the introduction of xxxx, and
suddenly a problem happened, everything went black. To understand, wallstreet
works with computers that are connected with a modern system... 300 words ...
and on that cold night of the 23 nov 2020, one man John Crowford destroyed all
of that."

\- Then you have 10 pages of useless crap and fake intervews about the
childhood of the guy and a lot of things that are not interesting, and not
related to the subject.

"His mother was blond, she liked to eat fries. But despite that, John Crowford
liked to eat popcorn. So much that his friend reported that, one time, he
stayed at a movie theater for a whole day just to eat popcorns ... Studies at
the yyy school were ok, but he followed them without passion until he met
Carolinas Brocolis a hot night of summer 1992. Together they got 3 kids ... he
was not supposed to live in New York as he was born in California, but he
found a job there, ..."

\- And then, you finally have the explanation that is, most of the time, short
and straightforward.

"So, he was hired as a Janitor in Wall Street, and accidentally put his pen
inside the holes of a power plug, resulting in a major power failure. THE END"

After reading such a story, either you did skip to the end directly, or you
are very angry to have lost so much time reading useless things.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
This is merely a consequence of SEO. Have you tried searching for recipes?
It's absolutely miserable. I don't need irrelevant life stories-- show me the
ingredient list and instructions.

~~~
derefr
I've always wondered why someone isn't going around taking other people's SEO-
fluffed recipes and just re-formatting them onto standalone fluff-less pages,
with _good, standardized_ formatting:

• an ingredients _table_ rather than an ingredients _list_ (i.e. where
quantity, unit, and ingredient name are columns; and quantity is right-
aligned, like any other numeric column in Excel); with sensible units that
don't assume their regional growing conditions or food-product design carry
over world-wide — so no "sticks" of butter, no "glugs" of oil (from what spout
diameter?), no "drops" of flavorings, no "inches" of ginger, etc. Give me
volumes! Weights! _Molar concentrations_! (Half-kidding on the last one.)

• put all references to an ingredient in the steps in bold, and always use the
same name for an ingredient that the ingredients table itself uses.

• no implicit ingredients (yes, put the salt and water that the pasta gets
boiled in, into the ingredients! Let me _mise en place_ without reading the
steps!) Also, don't say "200g sugar" if you mean "100g sugar for the cake sub-
recipe; 100g sugar for the frosting sub-recipe." Break those out, so that the
fact that those separate quantities should be _kept_ separate is _explicit_ ,
rather than something you must implicitly gather from the steps.

• or go further and make the ingredients table into its own kind of "pre-
recipe" — a sequence of _preparation steps_. Not only "measuring things into
bowls", but also steps such as: explicitly buying things day-of if they're
best fresh; or defrosting, if the ingredient is often kept frozen (with
defrosting times added to the total amount of time the recipe takes!); etc.
Write down exactly what a chef would train their prep cooks to do for them in
the preparation phase of this recipe.

• a print stylesheet that makes the webpage come out as a single compact
printed page, with a big title, large text, a small picture of the finished
product, and no dead space or colored backgrounds (or alternately, a link to a
single-page pre-generated PDF with even-more exacting formatting.) I don't
want my iPad (that keeps going to sleep and must be woken up with dirty
fingers, and can get splattered by oil) in the kitchen; I want to print
recipes and put them in transparent binder sleeves. Give me recipe pages I can
both easily flip through, and easily find. Let me build a _quality_ printed
cookbook, one page at a time, out of my favourite selected recipes from your
site.

• a universal "set serving size" client-side Javascript adjuster, which not
only manipulates the ingredients but also the correct timings for steps that
depend on weights (e.g. defrosting, searing.) None of this "until 165C
internally" nonsense; I always buy the same cuts of meat, so calculate the
time required for _my_ food to come to temperature, and then tell it to me.
Maybe also insert the adjusted amount of the ingredient being used into the
text of the steps, so it actually says "add the milk (1tbsp)" rather than just
"add the milk." (The ingredients list is for shopping/prep-phase; I should be
able to _cook_ without referring to it!)

• each ingredient name in the ingredients table should have a side-link to a
page that talks about substitutes for that ingredient, and how to adjust
recipes for that substitution. Ingredients with common substitutes should
offer an adjustor select-box right there in the ingredients table, where
tweaking it changes the recipe appropriately. (Which means the recipe can now
include things that are highly-dependent, e.g. it can ask you what pasta
you're using, and then _embed in the steps the correct cooking time for that
type of pasta_ ; and since the recipe knows what kind of recipe it is, it can
specify the al-dente time target if it's baked pasta, or the fully-cooked time
target if it's a pasta salad.)

• When a recipe is actually just an arbitrary linearization of a few
_concurrent_ sub-recipes (e.g. a dish to cook, and a sauce you prepare and
then pour over it right before serving), make this clear. Draw boxes around
the sub-recipes' steps, and number those boxes. Then put a little boxes-and-
arrows workflow diagram for how the numbered sub-recipes relate to each-other
at the top of the steps. Represent each sub-recipe in the diagram as a box
with a height proportional to how long its steps take—such that you can
eyeball which sub-recipe you'll be done with first. Label the boxes with
timers that should be set at the beginning of them (because almost always the
end of a box is "take off heat" or "take out of oven.")

I'd bookmark a site like that directly, and use it religiously in preference
to any other recipe provider.

~~~
cosmie
> I've always wondered why someone isn't going around taking other people's
> SEO-fluffed recipes and just re-formatting them onto standalone fluff-less
> pages, with good, standardized formatting:

Because they'd likely run afoul of copyright laws. A recipe in and of itself
doesn't generally qualify for copyright protection, but a recipe cushioned in
prose can be a copyrighted literary work. So anyone ripping the recipe out of
it would infringe on the copyright of the literary work itself. See "How do I
protect my recipe?" on [1].

[1] [https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-
protect.html](https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html)

~~~
derefr
Copyright applies to the prose itself, though—the word choice and ordering.

A site like the one I'm describing doesn't have to use the same _words_ the
original site uses. In fact, I'd really hope it wouldn't, since these sites
almost never use a standardized vocabulary, and in fact try as hard as they
can to make their recipes into _interesting prose_ (i.e. using a different
word in reference to something each time they reference it) at the expense of
clarity.

The "boiled-down form" of these recipes, would look less like prose text, and
more like an RDF graph linking ingredient-noun vertices together using action-
verb edges.

In fact, now that I think about it, it could probably be stored in a format
machine-readable enough to function equally well as machinima choreography for
a "cooking simulator", i.e. an HTML5 canvas app with an engine approximating a
cooking game (e.g. Cooking Mama) but without the "game" part.

Such a "timeline view" of the recipe could actually keep track of the
collection of pots/pans/bowls/etc. required in the recipe, and then visually
display the current state of what's in each of them at each step, as you
scroll through each step in the recipe's timeline. Like a visual debugger, for
food.

The textual representation of the recipe would just be generated from that
same non-textual data format, via a simple structured NLP rule-set. (Yes, you
could instead throw the sort of algorithms they're using to generate baseball
news coverage[1] at the problem, but we want _standardized_ text, not
_stylized_ text.) Bonus: i18n for free. The normalized recipe data isn't "in"
any language, so it's equally easy to write a ruleset for generating recipe-
step prose that _is_ in any language.

The resultant text of such a generative process shouldn't be copyright-
infringing, even if it matched some other recipe word-for-word by coincidence.
When you "extract" only the bare facts from a work and discard the rest,
you're not making a derivative work; a work of yours that employs those
"extracted" facts is _not_ a derivative of the source of those facts. (If it
were, then every summary or review of a work, would be in violation of the
copyright of the work it's summarizing or reviewing, since the bare facts
referenced were gleaned from the original work.)

[1] [https://venturebeat.com/2016/07/01/associated-press-
expands-...](https://venturebeat.com/2016/07/01/associated-press-expands-
sports-coverage-with-stories-written-by-machines/)

~~~
cosmie
Copyright applies to the literary work as a whole, and protects derivative
works based on it[1].

In this case it's true the derivative work (the recipe) wouldn't be
copyrightable, but that doesn't absolve it from being considered a copyright
violation of the original work.

If you can show you independently created that recipe, then you're protected
from the above assertion that it was a derivative of that copyrighted work.
But if you're compiling a database of normalized recipes via scraping recipe
content online, it'd be pretty easy for a copyright holder to establish this
argument doesn't hold water.

[1] [https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-
copyr...](https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-
copyrightable-works/copyright-for-literary-work/)

~~~
derefr
Aren't prose recipes a kind of program source-code; and aren't the underlying
ideas of their steps, algorithms? The law says you can copyright source code,
but not a program's underlying algorithmic semantics[1].

What I'm talking about here, is effectively "extracting the semantics of
someone else's source code/recipe, in a way where humans are "firewalled off"
from the particulars of the original prose of the code/recipe; and then using
the described semantics to write your own code/recipe that has those same
semantics."

This is explicitly something that's been decided as _not_ copyright-
infringing; which is why IP lawyers have to go after cases where there was
literal plagiarism of source code, however small.

The big example of this is _Google v. Oracle_ , where API header files used in
Android were literally plagiarized from OpenJDK. Google argued that this was
fair use, as there was essentially no other form these files could take while
retaining Java compatibility. But this argument was shut down/never resolved
in their favor.

All Google had to do, in the end, to avoid infringement, was to do a ground-up
rewrite of those Android API header files (which ended up almost exactly the
same as they were before the rewrite.) Note that they still rewrote them using
_an understanding of the bare facts that those header files contain, that
could only have been gained by reading the original header files themselves_.
And yet the new derivative work, being "not literally plagiarism", was no
longer considered an infringing derivative work.

[1] You can _patent_ algorithms (sort of, as business processes), but that's a
different thing. Nobody's ever going to sue a recipe website for patent
infringement, even if they described Nestle's patented chocolate-enrobing
technique, because a _description_ of a patented process is not a _use_ of
that patent. Patents are inherently public information, and people can share
and reprint the information in them around all they like. Instead, a patent
owner would only sue other companies who _used_ the patented technique for
commercial gain, for not first acquiring a license for the patented technique.
(Google never sued bloggers for describing the PageRank algorithm; but up
until last year, Google _did_ sue other search-engine companies for
_implementing_ PageRank without a license.)

~~~
cosmie
True. But in this case, you'd have to ensure you went through the process of
truly re-implementing the algorithm of the recipe, and stripping out all non-
algorithmic components of the instructions. For example, a step in an icing
recipe[1] may say something like:

 _Gradually beat in just enough milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable.
If frosting is too thick, beat in more milk, a few drops at a time. If
frosting becomes too thin, beat in a small amount of powdered sugar. Frosts
13x9-inch cake generously, or fills and frosts an 8- or 9-inch two-layer
cake._

The only "algorithmic" component to that step is that you add milk. The fact
that you do so gradually, use a beater during the process, how you identify
when you've added enough, how to correct for deviations in viscosity of the
mixture, etc are all part of the "source code" rather than the algorithm and
wouldn't be something you could republish without being considered a
derivative work.

The recipe without those contextual components may still be useful for those
sufficiently familiar with baking, but for many people following a recipe,
they'd likely need such contextual components to follow the recipe
successfully.

[1] [https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/vanilla-buttercream-
fro...](https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/vanilla-buttercream-
frosting/39107a19-be94-4571-9031-f1fc5bd1d606)

~~~
derefr
> The only "algorithmic" component to that step is that you add milk. The fact
> that you do so gradually, use a beater during the process, how you identify
> when you've added enough, how to correct for deviations in viscosity of the
> mixture, etc are all part of the "source code" rather than the algorithm and
> wouldn't be something you could republish without being considered a
> derivative work.

I would disagree. Here's what I learned from your quoted paragraph, expressed
in pseudo-Prolog:

\- beatInto(FrostingMixInBowl, Milk, $BeaterSpeed) =>
increaseQty(FrostingMixInBowl, Milk).

\- beatInto(FrostingMixInBowl, IcingSugar, $BeaterSpeed) =>
increaseQty(FrostingMixInBowl, IcingSugar).

\- invProportional(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl),
absorbancyPerUnitTime(FrostingMixInBowl)).

\- nonNewtownianViscosity(FrostingMixInBowl).

:. invProportional(absorbancy(FrostingMixInBowl), $BeaterSpeed). //
implication from standard library

:. require(maxThreshold($BeaterSpeed)). // implication from standard library

\- invProportional(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl), AmbientHumidity).

\- invProportional(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl), AmbientTemperature).

\- proportional(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl), currentQty(FrostingMixInBowl,
Milk)).

\- invProportional(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl), currentQty(FrostingMixInBowl,
IcingSugar)).

\- target(viscosity(FrostingMixInBowl), centiPoise(10000)). //see
[https://www.globalpumps.com.au/list-of-typical-
viscosities](https://www.globalpumps.com.au/list-of-typical-viscosities)

...and then some stuff about how much frosting we're making here, but without
the context required to translate those figures into absolute extruded surface
area.

Anyway, do you see what I'm getting at with this? We're describing a _system
of dynamic constraints_. What you generate from this "knowledge base" is an
_action plan_ that routes you through the system of dynamic constraints to
achieve the target (in this case, icing of a specified absolute viscosity.)
The constraints are _generative_ , where constraints asserted together produce
further constraints, and those constraints can be translated into structured-
text warnings like:

• "the icing is too thick to absorb milk at faster than N mL per second; if
you introduce it faster than that, the milk will bounce off the surface of the
icing rather than absorbing, and probably splatter you in the face."

• "beating the icing too fast shears/aerates it, increasing its viscosity,
making it unable to absorb anything, meaning that _anything_ introduced to the
icing will bounce off the surface of the icing and splatter you in the face."

Such a system also allows the resolution of ambiguities, where instead of
saying " _if_ the icing is too thick", it can know the variables that affect
viscosity, and so just ask you to set those variables (i.e. the ambient
temperature and rH value for your kitchen) either in your user preferences or
at the recipe header; and take that into account to compute initial quantities
for ingredients that should produce a viscosity in no need of further
adjustment. (But it could also generate the structured text explaining what
actions it knows about for this step that increase and/or decrease viscosity —
you know, just in case you messed up and didn't follow its perfect robot
plan.)

Note that this isn't super out-there tech. People build models that do these
computations all the time. Which people? The operational engineers in charge
of the day-to-day operations of baked-good and candy factories.

I'm just suggesting, in essence, a generalized domain-specific abstract
machine for modelling _all_ such problems in an easy way (rather than
rebuilding it half from scratch in spreadsheets each time), such that you
could just as easily describe the dynamic-constraint system underlying a steak
as one underlying a Mars bar.

...and then using all that just to emit recipe prose. :P

(But you could _also_ use it as the "mental model" a multi-purpose robotic
kitchen could use to generate action plans, of course.)

------
save_ferris
This memo highlights a problem that I’ve noticed recently as the public
debates the legitimacy and effectiveness of the media.

This chief editor is basically telling his people to write what readers want
to read. But there’s a difference between what readers always want to read and
what may be necessary to read.

For example, if people only read what they wanted to read, how many people
would really take interest in a possibly boring but important scandal? The
Catholic Church sex abuse scandal comes to mind. It’s impact was global, but
it’s not really related to domestic political battles or terrorism or whatever
else really sells in the media these days.

The problem is worse now because news isn’t sold as a broadsheet anymore,
where subscribers might not read everything in an issue, but eyes are on all
of the stories. Is that the case when everyone gets to pick a la carte from a
website, especially when management like this is telling reporters to focus on
what gets the most clicks?

~~~
dragonwriter
> how many people would really take interest in a possibly boring but
> important scandal? The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal comes to mind.

There's very little that is more attention grabbing than sex scandal. Except
sex scandal involving children. Or one involving an large powerful institution
around which political and culture war controversy (both internal and external
to the institution) is constant, especially on sexual issues.

> It’s impact was global, but it’s not really related to domestic political
> battles

Yes, it was, especially because the Catholic Church is perpetually engaged in
those battles on sexual issues, and because the scandal immediately
intersected with the debate on those issues, as well as ongoing internal
organizational debates in the institution such as the role of celibacy and
homosexuals in the clergy that directly overlapped with the political and
culture war issues the Church is regularly engaged in.

So, yeah, worst possible example, even if one grants that you might have a
generally valid point.

------
dade_
Articles in The Economist are usually a better investment of my time. I was
originally introduced to the magazine by a teacher in high school, but I've
come to learn that many other people weren't as fortunate.

[https://www.economist.com/](https://www.economist.com/)

~~~
_jal
I find that Economist articles about things I don't know much about are great.
But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article.

It isn't just the spin; sometimes you can guess whom they were talking to and
whom they weren't by how wrong and they way they get something wrong.

~~~
razakel
>But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article.

Gell-Mann Amnesia, as Michael Crichton put it:

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of
them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a
story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read
as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

~~~
the-pigeon
And IMO it's gotta much worse since Crichton said that do to online style
publishing encouraging newspapers to be even looser with fact checkers and
always trying to publish things ASAP over trying to publish something that is
interesting, informative and/or factually corrective.

~~~
ghaff
Some of it is rush to publish. But it's also that most readers here and
elsewhere won't pay for subscriptions and will also do their best to avoid
even the mediocre monetization provided by digital advertising. It's hard to
support investigative reporting and fact checkers.

~~~
CamperBob2
_It 's hard to support investigative reporting and fact checkers._

When the bad drives out the good, it's no surprise that no one wants to pay
for the bad.

~~~
ghaff
I think you have cause and effect reversed.

~~~
CamperBob2
And I think you do. Where does that leave us?

The fact is, nobody has offered me access to a news source that covers all
topics of possible interest in a manner that's free from overt biases (or
poorly-hidden ones) and intelligence-insulting "both sides" fallacies.
Bloomberg certainly doesn't qualify.

If such a service is ever offered, I don't expect it to be cheap, much less
free... but rest assured I'll listen to their pitch. I'm sure I'm not the only
potential customer for a high-end premium news product that I can actually
trust.

------
whoisjuan
Like when they made up a story about China infiltrating servers of US
companies with a nano chip that is not even technically feasible to produce
and they simply ignore everyone when they were called out on their bs?

~~~
smolder
Why do you say it's technically unfeasible? The articles I saw "debunking"
Bloomberg are pretty weak on their arguments. Even if Bloomberg got some
things wrong, a tiny chip that subverts motherboard firmware to phone home for
instructions is possible in something rice sized, for a sophisticated state
actor. Network stacks already exist in firmware. You'd need to inject maybe
4KB of instructions somewhere, but I can't imagine it'd be many orders of
magnitude more than that to bootstrap such a process.

The suspicious silent non-retraction raises a red flag for me, that there may
have been some kind of intervention to stop their reporting on the topic.

~~~
whoisjuan
[https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-
bloom...](https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloomberg-
supermicro-stories/)

This is a good explanation. This article is weird because it's paginated. Make
sure to use the paginator below the body to read it fully.

There are many good arguments in that article but the simplest one is that
there's simply no modern lithography methods to produce a chip of that size
with processing power, signaling interfaces and networking, which are all
required to create a trojan ship like the one described by Bloomberg.
Additionally you need to provide power to this hypothetical nano-chip so you
need more components like capacitors which of course is never mentioned in the
Bloomberg article.

~~~
smolder
The chip doesn't need networking, it needs to infect existing firmware with
networking. The motherboard/nic firmwares already have that. Nor would it
necessarily be limited to the IPMI side nic as they imply. Steganography could
be used to get through firewalls on net facing NICs. The part about "most
sensitive code" wrongly assumes that means on storage devices and not
motherboard firmware.

As for the size, there are no commercial lithography methods with that
capability, perhaps. It'd be possible to put significant capacitance and logic
in a very tiny package with advanced lithographic techniques, say like gates
printed into layers of a small cap? Yeah I'm getting really out there, but to
say there's nothing so interesting in the highly compartmentalized world of
spy tech is to make a claim in ignorance, naturally. Unless you're in a
position to say precisely what technology they have, in which case, please
contact me privately, since I'm curious. ;)

------
pdog
A lot of good writing advice in this memo:

The key person to think about is the reader.

People generally read only one screen and SELDOM read more than two screens.
(A screen typically is around 300 words.)

A long story on a complicated topic can save readers time if it replaces the
need to read a lot of short ones.

Readers either want to have a quick piece of information or something that
justifies the longer read.

A good rule of thumb is that stories should either be shorter than 400 words
or longer than 900.

Taking 700 words or 800 words to make a single point will just annoy readers.

Keep it short. Think of the reader.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
And, if it's going to be 900 words, then in the first 400, you'd better make
it clear that you've got 900 words that are actually worth my time to read.
You make it clear, not by _telling_ me that you've got something relevant to
say, but by _demonstrating_ it.

------
spikels
This is more evidence the news media is self destructing.

“Enterprise stories” are where reporters take the time to learn something
rather than just rewrite a press release or someone else’s reporting. This
type of reporting has been under pressure for years because it’s expensive and
media budgets are very tight. This editor-in-chief is saying the clicks don’t
justify the expense.

The story of the destruction of the media is well known but some of the
details are underappreciated:

* Individual articles are now the fundamental unit. They are promoted on social media then carefully tracked and evaluated. A hot story get orders of magnitude more clicks/revenue so they focus on trying to produce that an ignore everything else. This narrows the scope tremendously.

* Reporting is no longer a profession but more like a calling similar to the arts. The demands are too high and the pay is too low. It takes sustained outside support (rich family, spouse, sponsor) for most reporters to make it today. Many reporters have strong ideological motivations which substitute for pay but can compromise reporting.

For the reader the bottom line is the news media is no longer the neutral
source of information we used to think it was. First it is now highly biased
to provoke a response, usually emotional and often just to the headline
(clickbait), at this point the job is done, the ad is sold. Second the people
writing and editing the stories have strong beliefs coloring their selection
and content.

The result is the article contains biased, incomplete and inaccurate
information. And once you let that bad information into your head it is very
hard to unlearn it. You often know less after reading a news article these
days!

...

Fascinating developments. Matt Taibbi has done some good reporting on this but
it is typically covered very superficially by media critics. There are a few
books I have yet to read but pointers to thoughtful analysis would be
appreciated. This is a complex and still evolving issue.

------
dzink
Part of the problem is Google - their algorithms reward longer keyword-laden
content.

~~~
justaman
How many people hit up google search for news? Doesn't most news come from
social media feeds these days?

~~~
dont__panic
There are a lot of people who don't use social media for news. Besides,
sometimes folks want to educate themselves about a recent news subject that
their social media feed hasn't surfaced for them so they'll search for
additional information... often via Google.

------
duxup
>enterprise stories

What is an enterprise story?

~~~
lemmsjid
I didn't know either so looked it up: 'Enterprise journalism is reporting that
is not generated by news or a press release, but rather generated by a
reporter or news organization based on developed sources.'

That makes sense because he was in the memo balancing the development of
sources (which can lead to enterprise stories) against the investment of
writing ones that don't seem to be panning out well.

------
cm2187
Which is why publishing a misleading headline followed by a misleading first
paragraph, and burying the facts in the middle or bottom of the article is
such a common practice. Journalists know only a small fraction of the readers
will read the whole thing and it is one of the many ways to lie without lying.

------
doonesbury
"'Strictly speaking ... readers aren't what they used to be ... so being a
writer isn't what it used to be.' J.F. Powers" [1] pg100

"We are all suckers for statements about culture - which is not surprising
when culture at first glance seems so balefully homogenous, but upon closer
inspection, is so unappealingly atomized. A new angle is invariably more
charismatic, more assimilable, handier in every way than the work which
presumably springs from it." [1] pg20

I can't lay my hands on the exact quote but in [1] the author makes an point
in the context of inflation (of ideas, and everything American): when no idea
is worth a anything the only thing to do in this environment is come up with
an even more seriously hyped idea I presume to sooth that gnawing sense of
emptiness. This feedback loop ensures each idea is inflated keeping the
inflation of ideas going and thus cheapening each idea. One unintended result
in my view is paranoia, alienation, conspiracy that comes from atomization
which we see in spades nowadays. This also has strong connections to another
HN post in the top 50 stories on creative management.

Way underneath the original article is something far deeper than I think [1]
sunk his teeth into way back in 1984. The BBG editor is struggling with how to
deal with the reader who deals with zillions of possible stories and how BBG
will add value for time the reader will spend. The editor's stance is but only
the highest ceiling on a much deeper problem. Gents, the reader has changed.
And too much of today's culture coddles him (us, me) as an anxiety ridden
middle-class person trying to fight the good fight. Well, I am not so
generous. A lot of readers are lazy. A lot of readers want meaning handed to
them because getting experience and ideas are becoming separate islands. In
Reddit Pro Life Tips format: 99.9% of what you need to know you're gonna have
to learn yourself.

I close with a quote from the forward in [1]:

"'No longer is it, 'When I hear the word Culture, I reach for my revolver.' We
are permitted instead, 'Culture sits so well in my pock that whenever I hear
the world "thought" I smile' Phillip Sollers" [1]

[1] Salmagundi "The Post-Modern Aura" Charles Newman No.63-64 Spring-Summer
1984

------
cocoa19
I applaud this note.

I wouldn't be surprised if regular newspapers have bullshit metrics that lower
the quality:

\- Words per article

\- Number of clicks

\- Articles posted

It's the equivalent of measuring lines of code and transforming agile points
to man-days.

------
nillium
This has been our working hypothesis; we're building tools for newsrooms to
syndicate the piecemeal updates of breaking stories throughout the day, for
people who dont want to commit to long articles or videos.

[https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-
news/](https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/)

------
jpalomaki
Good and concrete advice from the chief editor:

"A good rule of thumb is that stories should either be shorter than 400 words
or longer than 900. You either have a simple news story or a single
observation (in which case go short) or a yarn or a chance to explain
something very complicated (in which case go long"

------
Simulacra
In my opinion, all of journalism has become too mediocre as it seeks clicks,
not readers.

------
motohagiography
His comment about respecting and saving readers' time, that was one of the
smartest things I've read about journalism. If it doesn't do that, it's not
worth writing or reading.

------
fizixer
Ulysses journalism,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780937)

------
CrankyBear
Short, sweet, and to the point has always been Bloomberg's editorial policy.
I'm surprised he had to underline it to the staffers this way.

------
jbob2000
Part of Bloomberg's business model is news-as-advertising; "This company
developed this new therapy, find out more". I _think_ that's what the editor
is referring to as "enterprise stories".

He's basically saying - listen, when a company is paying for a news article,
don't let them stuff the piece or bury the lede. Get their key message down
and move on, our readers skim the article for the beef anyways so you're just
wasting their time by adding filler.

~~~
antoncohen
I think it is the other way around. The stories you are implying are paid are
from press releases, though they aren't paid to run them. "Enterprise" are
stories that _don 't_ come from PR, they are stories where enterprising
journalists have researched and developed a story.

That is why he says:

> Before you embark on a piece of _enterprise_ , ask yourself whether it’s
> really going to be worth the investment, And if an idea doesn’t turn out as
> envisaged, be prepared to spike it and move on. A week or two spend on
> source-building, without any story published, is often a much more valuable
> use of our reporters’ time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_journalism)

------
chad_strategic
This is not good for my ASD, not good at all.

ASD = Attention Surplus Disorder

I seem to be the only one here that likes Bloomberg, but then again I work in
finance.

------
bitxbit
I am still pissed about their story on Elemental Technologies.

------
callamdelaney
I unsubscribed from Bloomberg. Their articles are only relevant for finance
professionals. The FT has things like personal finance and general news too -
although both are of questionable political neutrality.

------
MBCook
Oh, are they finally apologizing (or providing proof for) their story The Big
Hack about chips the size of a grain of rice China puts in computers made by
Dell and Apple and others?

No? Not a word about it?

It’s almost like they’re continuing to pretend that their giant journalistic
screwup doesn’t exist.

Don’t care. ‘Are articles are too long’. How about yours articles are
untrustworthy?

~~~
bredren
Some bloggers (well gruber at least) still bring this up any time they newly
cite Bloomberg. It does defy explanation that the publication has not been
able to offer proof of the claims from that article or simply rescind it.

~~~
lowmemcpu
They should continue to bring it up, every time, until the story is rescinded.

~~~
MR4D
Bizarre thought just hit me.

What if they are correct, and stumbled onto the same trail the FBI has, and
the FBI gave them an order to not discuss it anymore due to a pending
investigation with national security repercussions?

Given how BB has just walked away from this article - no rescinding, no
nothing, I think it's a possibility.

~~~
paul-alkhimov
sorry, but it sounds like a conspiracy theory

~~~
bredren
Because it is. It has been proposed though. I think the only way this could be
true is if Tim Cook and many security folks at Apple either failed to detect
the exploit, or they did and are all "in on it" and essentially lying about
adherence to a core company value.

The requirement of perfect secrecy and vast involvement in a lie is what
typically weakens conspiracy theories as not realistic.

~~~
MR4D
Who says they are all in on it?

And media has held back articles several times due to govt request - maybe
this one just got through.

Not saying I'm right - only saying it's _possible_.

~~~
bredren
Because it would require hardware, network and general security engineers to
perform the investigation. And along with that would be a dozen aides or
delegates to these professionals that would be very familiar with the
investigation.

It would be obvious if the results were opposite what Cook said publicly, or
if the investigation was suddenly stopped and made inconclusive.

Apple would also be counting on the US government and Bloomberg to not leak
"the truth" so that Tim Cook's statement would not be revealed as a lie.

The idea offers intrigue but doesn't pass any kind of reasonable pass of
consideration.

~~~
MR4D
You are assuming that Apple would know. Am I missing something?

~~~
bredren
I think in your idea, the exploit is real and known by LE and Bloomberg.
However, Apple was not able to find this out, even though it was real. Is that
the case? If so, it would suggest the FBI is allowing Apple to unknowingly use
compromised systems?

------
vimy
The memo is 341 words.

~~~
bjt
Well within the short bucket that he describes.

