Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Norgy]

It certainly has been a trend in American TV series.

[Syt]

[garbon]

How pathetic.

[Norgy]

:facepalm:

[Valmy]

I can understand not entirely trusting these big media companies but I am not sure the answer is always "just find somebody else to blindly trust" that right wing commentators always seem to go with.

[Norgy]

Since this is a forum that has a very low reach in general, I can tell you a few things about how we in the media work.

Our parent company, which owns the majority of local newspapers in Norway, is not really getting into business of how we report anything, but how to get more clicks.

So we can sell more ads, right?

Which means we do journalism like an angry dad's Facebook rant in many cases.
We have strict rules for how to do journalism, but seem to break them in 8 of 10 cases. When I finish an article, the desk usually changes the title so it is more "sellable".

And I get the flak from those people I took the time to sit down and have an hour or two talk with.

The idea of a free and independent media certainly has its appeal. But we grunts know that you are fucked if you try and pitch something that is not "sellable", while it is important news anyway.

For someone with a fair portion of self-loathing, this is hard work. I do not walk back home feeling proud of what I have done most days.

But we are not yet at Fox News level.

I really hope, and believe, that journalism that is actually fair and balanced can be achieved, but then we also need those moronic pieces of "Man bites dog" and "Margaret lost 200 pounds and survived cancer" that basically steal the attention but sell ads. It is a trade-off, and one I am rarely comfortable with.

Man, how I wish I went into teaching.
No. Wait. All the kids are on coke these days.
Maybe I should pick up that idea for a novel again.

[crazy canuck]

Having editorial staff write the headline is not new.  It has always had to be eye catching.  The change is that now every single article needs to attract clicks.  Back in the day the whole paper just needed to be sold.

That could still work if enough people subscribed to newspapers in digital form.  But people like getting their "news" from social media.

[Norgy]

We're just two middle-aged men who "do not understand how the world works" anymore.

I actually look forward to X being the main news platform and Tiktok and some AI robot putting me out of a job.

[Sheilbh]

Having editorial staff write the headline is not new.  It has always had to be eye catching.  The change is that now every single article needs to attract clicks.  Back in the day the whole paper just needed to be sold.

Yeah - but also digital is different than print and I think we've only just started to scratch the surface of that. I've heard a guy who's been at the Guardian and led their digital innovation and experiments over the last 20 years talk about this.

Because he started (and the way they look at "clicks" started) because they wanted to understand headlines - in particular the previous, traditional model had been to just cut and paste the print headline onto the website. I think within a month of measuring it and experimenting they were able to make the case for why they needed specific digital subs because it's not the same. Similarly I think the data and visualisation stuff that's started in digital editions in the last 5-10 years is incredible, but also only the beginning of what digital news will be/look like. Sadly very few news organisations have the spare cash to actually invest and play around with it.

The ones that do are massive with successful paywalls like the NYT and/or massive corporate subscription bases like the FT (plus, in the case of the FT, an admirable pitch to advertisers: "literally all our readers are high earners" ).

I think it's leading to a divergence of local news getting worse and worse because it's driven by clicks for the worst, most intrusive, most disruptive online advertising rather than a paywall, while the best journalism is being read by fewer people because the only business model that works (so far) is a paywall.

That could still work if enough people subscribed to newspapers in digital form.  But people like getting their "news" from social media.

Also not everyone can afford a paywall - especially if you're interested in multiple perspectives. And the winners are winning very big in a way that's not healthy - I saw that 10% of journalists employed in America are employed by the NYT. Separately I think CNN is now planning to go behind a paywall. Especially because subscribing was always a niche interest many people would just pick up a paper on the day and it's why headlines mattered. Now with paywalls there's not even necessarily a digital version of the rack in the newsagents so you can't necessarily see what all the papers are covering and how before buying because they're (often - not always) behind a paywall). I think experiments on different commercial models is needed.

I think this is the biggest impact of the platforms (social media but also Apple and Google) is that they destroyed the business model of the free online press (with a few exceptions). People talk about social media's role and the rise of disinformation - and I think there is something to that - but it also coincides with the rise of paywalls. I get the business reasoning for paywalls, but I basically think good drives out the bad and the fact that much good information (and certainly multiple perspectives) is behind monthly subscription costs is not a good thing socially.

Also (again often powered by the platforms), advertising agencies absolutely hate anything remotely worrying from a "brand safety" perspective. And in the old days you sell advertising in the newspaper and basically all that you can control is whether you're in the first half (more expensive) or back half (cheap) - but you absolutely could be next to a story about a catastrophic flood in Spain or terrorist attack in Moscow. From an advertiser and reader perspective that was kind of okay. Now agencies want far more control over what content their clients are near (and I think reader views on this are different too - though I'm not sure) - and the bit of online media they are least interested in appearing near is hard news. They don't want their Christmas food campaign next to a photo of Trump or rebels in Syria (it's why most of the platforms are trying to backout of news ad focus on lifestyle stuff more). So even that advertiser model is increasingly structurally challenged.

Obviously the other big challenge will be AI, where you ask the generative search engine or chat about an issue to get it explained to you. It's why the platforms absolutely love news content to train their models (broadly speaking it's accurate, legalled and edited) but so far are still trying to avoid paying for it, even if they're then producing a tool that will further displace it.

[Zanza]

Surprised that Welt publishes this. Ulf Poschardt seems to be a Trumpist.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I can understand not entirely trusting these big media companies but I am not sure the answer is always "just find somebody else to blindly trust" that right wing commentators always seem to go with.

That sounds like Marxist talk to me Valms.  You Do Your Own Research and will almost always find that the truth is the one that you already suspected and happens to align precicley with your political views.

[Barrister]

So... late 90s.  My father was the sports editor of the local newspaper.  He got me a job (I was qualified, but total nepotism for why I'd get it) doing "streeter" interviews for the paper (where I'd interview "man/woman on the street" of various issues of the day).  It was a fantastic job for a university student as it had a lot of flexibility on when I'd actually do it, and I earned $50 per issue.

But anyways - this was the 90s, the internet was starting to be a thing.  I wondered why this newspaper wasn't doing anything online.  I wasn't a huge tech guy, but I got a tech friend of mine, we met with the publisher, and put together a proposal for doing an "online" version of the paper.  Viewed from 2024 it was incredibly cowardly - just put 2-3 stories of the day online.

The publisher, probably correctly, was like "well what do I need you guys for".  So it never went anywhere at the time.

25+ years later of course I can go online and see the entire newspaper online.

Just a quick memory that came back.

[Barrister]

IS this the generic "X/Twitter" thread now?

A few days ago this woman posted an incredibly generic post on Twitter about being proud to get her PhD from Cambridge in English literature.

https://x.com/DrAllyLouks/status/1861872149373297078

In the incredibly stupid way that only Twitter can be she became hugely viral with right wing idiots dunking on her for being too old, her PhD thesis being too stupid, that PhDs in the humanities are just stupid, to you name it.

All for a woman just being proud to get her PhD.  The post literally only says:

Thrilled to say I passed my viva with no corrections and am officially PhDone.

Together with a picture of her holding her degree.

Sometimes the internet is so, so stupid.

[Grey Fox]

Bluesky is right there.

[Barrister]

Bluesky is right there.

Twitter is incredibly toxic - but it still (mostly) has a diversity of opinions - even if incredibly toxic opinions are allowed to be shared.

From what I have heard Bluesky is nothing more than a left-wing echo chamber.