Bloomberg is a really targeted news institution on which people rely for not comedy but financial information. It's reflected in the fees you pay to get access to their terminals, it's reflected in their promos, and even the corporations who select to advertise with them know they're trying to hit a target reader. Usually, that reader is not someone looking for a comic laugh.
Imagine pulling up a Linux news site and seeing something that's funny to someone who is in marketing because of some wacky antics. You went there to see what sort of critical patches need to be administered, but instead you saw "What happened when I tried to install Linux on my leather shoes!".
I'm upset because context is important. Especially for news outlets which are called the fourth estate for a reason. When I turn on PBS Newshour I don't want 50 minutes of Paris Hilton. If they re-oriented an entire episode to cover Paris Hilton just to get more viewers (equivalent of click-bait), I'd be equally upset. I'm not calling anyone here stupid, but this clearly is not news.
"This post was entertaining" -- that's my whole problem. Bloomberg is a news outlet. Jon Stewart went on the O'Reilly factor and eloquently articulated the problem with select subsets of media (oversimplified to "to fill 24 hours of content, some outlets have resorted to silly antics to increase/retain viewership rather, rather than do what they're supposed to -- report the news). This article was under "News" not "Op/ed".
RE: parties, again, context. I don't engage in pedantry there, because one can generally categorize that form of interaction as "social" rather than "news/informative". At which point, I politely engage in small talk until I find something they like which I find interesting (whether its model aircrafts or modern farming, I can find something interesting to talk about with anyone generally).
Just a FYI but Bloomberg has significantly changed their editorial direction recently. Think some senior editor left or something. I really don't mind because it does not seem that their standard news coverage has suffered as a result and I can easily avoid things but yeah.
It's a fine line. Newspapers were always partly entertainment; their goal is to get read so they can sell advertisement. You wouldn't have crosswords and comics and the NYT style section otherwise. A bit of infotainment is okay, when done in an ethical manner, as I think is the case here; Voltaire and Karl Kraus were doing something similar.
Now, when it verges on disinformation, like Geraldo or the NYT style section and their silly trend articles...
Imagine pulling up a Linux news site and seeing something that's funny to someone who is in marketing because of some wacky antics. You went there to see what sort of critical patches need to be administered, but instead you saw "What happened when I tried to install Linux on my leather shoes!".
I'm upset because context is important. Especially for news outlets which are called the fourth estate for a reason. When I turn on PBS Newshour I don't want 50 minutes of Paris Hilton. If they re-oriented an entire episode to cover Paris Hilton just to get more viewers (equivalent of click-bait), I'd be equally upset. I'm not calling anyone here stupid, but this clearly is not news.
"This post was entertaining" -- that's my whole problem. Bloomberg is a news outlet. Jon Stewart went on the O'Reilly factor and eloquently articulated the problem with select subsets of media (oversimplified to "to fill 24 hours of content, some outlets have resorted to silly antics to increase/retain viewership rather, rather than do what they're supposed to -- report the news). This article was under "News" not "Op/ed".
RE: parties, again, context. I don't engage in pedantry there, because one can generally categorize that form of interaction as "social" rather than "news/informative". At which point, I politely engage in small talk until I find something they like which I find interesting (whether its model aircrafts or modern farming, I can find something interesting to talk about with anyone generally).