Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
To clarify a bit, I think that journalism is falling apart because of
institutional, regulatory, and other reasons beyond the responsibility of
any individual or group of individuals. (Although I'm certainly willing to 
put some blame on individuals at, say, the NY Times over, say, emails. 
But that is a failure of both individual and institutional decisions.)
  

    
Lisa, I don't look at the statistics of the conference. I reposed
the same question to the same (potential) panel because the overall
response to the original post was to dismiss a question asked of the
panel. 


I joined an ongoing conversation. I'm not a journalist. I'd like to
consume journalism, yet the medium is problematic at this time. I'm
here trying to learn.

I didn't think the question was problematic or accusatory. It's
meant to enlighten understanding of what went down from a personal
point of view as journalists at the time. How that went down from
one journalist to the next adds depth to the discussion. 

The reaction to mag comparing one belief system to another derailed
an otherwise fair question. I'd like to return to it. 
  

    
Evidence based epistemology is not a "belief system". Proof by test
is not a wisdom tradition. It's a methodology for determining the
validity of claims. I have no confidence in journalism that doesn't
practice it, and that may well point to why confidence in journalism
is flagging generally. 

To the extent that media properties indulge in ideological
conformity contrary to verifiable evidence they are complicit in the
erosion of trust in the Fourth Estate as a defender of democracy.
Reporting facts and evidence that favor liberal priorities and
ambitions does not constitute ideological conformity.
  

    
I don't see much evidence that the media implosion we're all worried
about stems from the "average person" despising or disbelieving the
mainstream news media -- if that's even true.  Remember, the
financial erosion began well before the kind of current tribalism
that magdalen is describing.  

I think it has more to do with people finding other forms of
communication and news -- cable TV, politicized talk radio, the net,
social media.  

You didn't need to subscribe to or buy a paper to find out when
movies were playing, who was hiring, who had an apartment to rent.
Craigslist and then other sites sucked all that away. 
 
You didn't need to watch the major television networks to hear
political debate. You could see that happen online or listen to Rush
or Howard.

You didn't need any kind of traditional media to learn something as
valuable and simple as the weather forecast. That was on your phone.

The news media's response to this evolution was slow and ragged and
there's lots of blame to go around for that. And the fact that
300,000 WashPost subscribers cancelled because of the Bezos-backed
decision not to endorse a candidate shows that sure, plenty of
people by now do despise some media outlets. (Which ones depends on
your own political stance, your level of education, your
socioeconomic status, etc.)

But I don't think disagreement with coverage or opinions is where it
started or really what's driven it. As Lisa said, it has more to do
with economics, regulations or lack thereof, technological change,
the relentless drive for higher profits on every front, the
unwillingness of owners to see journalism as a public good. 
  

    
Our belief system tells us that evidence counts. That's not a
religion.
  

    
I agree with Paula, especially but not only the public good part. We
will always have news, weather, and sports. Plenty of opinion and
analysis, too. The question is, will we have journalism? 

If journalism is a public good, that means the market won't provide
it at scale without some form of subsidy. What the market is good at
right now is creating and propagating bogus information and
conspiracy theories. As Kara Swisher said, X and its ilk advantage
the liars and can't be sued. That's a bad combination.
  

    <scribbled by sunbear Wed 15 Jan 25 17:48>
  

    
Lisa, I read " So none of you are willing to look at your own complicity (as
 journalists) because mag used a word you take issue with?" as accusatory,
and it appeared directed at the panel members, most of whom hadn't seen the
question Tiffany asked. I'm glad to hear that you didn't intend it as an
accusation.
  

    

as so often happens, <pspan> types for me.
  

    
Too often we come at this discussion as if nothing’s happened and no
one’s done anything in the past 15-20 years to solve these problems,
or succeeded in some ways, or failed and learned from the failures.

Dan, what’s led you to focus on grassroots and nonprofit news over
national and for-profit? What are some of the projects or
publications that are changing the practice of reporting for the
better, particularly when it comes to serving their communities?
  

    
I want to note that one reason trust in traditional media outlets
has been the blatant lies promulgated largely on the far right. This
isn't symmetrical, with equal responsibility on the left, which is
one reason I have difficulty with the premise that   individual
non-right journalists need to take responsibility. I just saw a link
to this study of millions of tweets:

<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19401612241311886>
  

    
In my experience, the most dogmatic atheists are the ones who fail
to embrace metaphor and empathy. 

 They cling to a measurement or a proof like they are immovable and
not temporary marks on page that we use to move towards
understanding.  They lack poetry and sometimes forget that when you
dissect a frog, you might get a little closer to how it works but
you also have a dead frog.

It's how you get to the crypto nutcases who think the internet would
be better if it were on tracked in a ledger.  Not everything in the
world must be measured quantitatively or unraveled.   Humans are
often delusional (it's an important component of how memory works to
keep us mentally healthy) and we tell ourselves comforting lies and
stories to make sense of an insensate world that often delivers
random violence and senseless death.  We create patterns and
folklore to sooth our brains and that doesnt make us weak or stupid.
It makes us human.   


To appropriate Oscar Wilde, smug and rigid empiricists know the
price of everything and the value of nothing. 
  

    
And to steer away from religion or dogma and back to journalism, I'd
say there has been a real leftist knee-jerk reaction to Zuckerberg's
decision to change how fact-checking works at Meta.  Here's some
interesting data on why what they were doing wasn't working and some
analysis on why.  

https://www.betterconflictbulletin.org/p/meta-drops-fact-checking-because

tl; dr:  It lost the trust of those using it.  It never really
scaled right.  Community-flagging might actually be more effective,
with the right tools.

i'm not arguing that what Zuck did wasn't nasty, politically
expedient and brutal (I find the lowering of hate speech barriers
and community standards more problematic) but the data begs a closer
look.
  

    
I doubt if fact checking has much practical utility.  People who
live in a world of "alternative facts" will perceive it as biased
propaganda and those who don't do not need it.
  

    
I've found fact-checking useful, because even people used to
scrutinizing and investigating claims have difficulty sifting
through the sheer number of lies in circulation these days.

And of course, Meta and other social media platforms aren't the only
ones engaged in it. PolitiFact (the one with the Truth-O-Meter) and
the WashPost and Snopes and others serve that function and I hope
they continue. 

But yes, do such efforts ultimately have the power to move the
conversation in a truthier direction? Maybe not. 

But as to Emily's question, though not directed to me, the rise of
nonprofit newsrooms in communities large and small has been one
small point of optimism.  Few have the scale and breadth to inform
the national agenda -- ProPublica is an exception on the
investigative side, and The Guardian of course is nonprofit too --
but I think that locally, they may have real impact. 
  

    
>the data begs a closer look

Even though it doesn't rhyme?
  

    
Fact-checking suffers from inccompatibility of scale - it's slow and
laborious while promulgating lies is fast and furious.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt has a good analysis of why fact-checking wasn't
working at Facebook. And then a day later a rant about the kind of content
Zuckerberg has now said he'll allow.

I don't think we have yet mentioned media consolidation as a factor in both
degrading journalism and diminishing trust, but it's a big one.

wg
  

    
Fact-checking is a Good Thing, in-platform fact-checking
post-by-post on a social media platform like Facebook (with over 3
billion users) is wildly impractical. Any kind of moderation is
extremely difficult at that scale; finding posts with bad facts and
correcting them with any consistency is impossible.

Maybe the better approach is inspired by fact-checking news
operations like the ones Paula mentions.  It would be easy enough
for Facebook to spot trending lies and have a place to publish fact
checks refuting those, rather than doing it post-by-post. But that's
not an approach they've tried. And no approach they could take would
necessarily make a difference. People who want the truth will find
it, but many don't.

(Wendy slipped.)
  

    
I mentioned consolidation of radio earlier and should have included
newspapers as well.
  

    
Paula, what are some of the local publications you have in mind? 

I'd like to think that the national agenda forms in part out of
local community agendas and statewide agendas — think about how the
affordable housing shortage has gradually expanded from a city and
state issue into a topic that regularly appears in national-level
media. 

Heck: John Oliver has covered affordable housing! "...the thing that
16-year-old TikTok millionaires can afford, and you can't." 

https://youtu.be/L4qmDnYli2E?si=woTp21V8uoXFvWmZ
  

    
On my side of the Bay Bridge, we have nonprofit newsrooms at
Berkeleyside and The Oaklandside:

<https://www.berkeleyside.org/>

<https://oaklandside.org/>
  

    

the only alt-weekly in my region, Central Oregon, has started up a
nonprofit to support its investigative journalism, which is sometimes
useful but often not super-great journalism and/or writing, and often
visibly biased. i'm still glad it's happening!

the biggest newspaper in the area, The Bend Bulletin, was purchased by an
Oregon media company called EO Media five years ago. they've just sold it
to a "faceless out-of-state media conglomerate" after a steady decline in
reporting, number of days published, real opinions and endorsements." 

that's according to the alt-weekly, The Source. which, weirdly, may be
turning into our main actual news producer? 

https://www.bendsource.com/opinion/a-dirge-for-a-big-part-of-the-local-journal
ism-ecosystem-22105547

here in my small town, we do have a thriving newspaper, weekly and free,
but it's had to scramble for different revenue models recently.
subcriptions are selling!

just a little regional note from someone who's not living in a big city or
blue college town.
  

    
Denver used to have two full-service papers, the Rocky Mountain News
and the Denver Post. The News went bankrupt and the Alden hedge fund
bought the Post and started stripping it for parts so it's kind of a
shadow of itself.

These days I follow a non-profit, the Colorado Sun. They do good
work but are still small and probably underfunded. The population in
Colorado isn't huge but we are a large, spread-out state and hard to
cover without a lot of staff.
  

    
Fact checking is critical thinking done out loud. I do it
continually while I read. It's essential to my understanding,
whether or not I can use it immediately to convince someone else.
  

    
NYC is no news desert, but in terms of local citywide news, gaps
have developed. The New York Times still does some great local
reporting, but a lot less than it used to - am not sure there’s even
a metro desk anymore. I believe this is was a deliberate business
choice, part of the digital strategy to build bigger national and
international audiences.

The citywide tabloids -The NY Post and the Daily News - anyone know
anything about their hard news? I never got into the habit of
reading either (particularly avoiding The Post, which Murdoch bought
in the mid-70s) but I know they are huge on local sports coverage
and celebrity gossip (the Post’s Page Six is legendary).

Most local TV news tends to be the same mix of fires, murders,
weather and heartwarming local entrepreneurs and community leaders
it has been my entire life. NY1 is the obvious exception, and
getting it is the only reason I may someday resubscribe to cable TV.

For steady (and not paywalled) quality reporting of local matters
that affect daily lives, I tend to go to Epicenter and The City.
Both are non-profits geared at serving average locals. The City is
more of a familiar newspaper type of publication, while Epicenter is
more of a newsletter or weekly. 

Of course there’s WNYC, which includes Gothamist and produces the
Brian Lehrer Show, which arguably is the city’s most essential
listen for both local and national news analysis. When Chris
Christie was about to shutter New Jersey’s public radio stations
many years ago, WNYC took them over. It has dedicated city hall and
New Jersey reporters.

Of the public TV flagship stations, NJ PBS has a nightly state news
show. Thirteen PBS in NYC does not.