American journalism getting worse

[Setton]

1 hour ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

And turned the entire population of the world into murderers. 

I don't have to explain my methods! I have succeeded!

© Joc 2020

[+joc]

On 9/17/2020 at 6:13 PM, Autochthon1990 said:

Right, the media has to always get everything right all the time or they're all lying scumbags. But the leader of the free world can say **** that's easily disproved, has been discredited, or is outright just a lie, along with **** like Covefe, and you line up for second helpings. 

Baaa.baaa baaaa

[Tatetopa]

I have not done the research.  Does anybody know how much editing is currently done by software?  How much journalism is now composed of gig economy amateurs writing from their home office instead of a news room?  Cost cutting  is either desirable or necessary to make budgets and profits.  With free news of any flavor you desire on the internet, who would voluntarily pay the salary of a writer or researcher?  How much of this have we done to ourselves?

[Aroundthecorner]

Newspapers died a few years ago now, not because of tree huggers wishes but the decline of sales because of the internet boom. Sad thing is with that boom comes the end of proper journalism and the rise of the keyboard warriors. Paid assassins of the best story fits with a twist.

[+Desertrat56]

10 hours ago, Aroundthecorner said:

Newspapers died a few years ago now, not because of tree huggers wishes but the decline of sales because of the internet boom. Sad thing is with that boom comes the end of proper journalism and the rise of the keyboard warriors. Paid assassins of the best story fits with a twist.

Our city has one of the few independent newspapers left in the U.S.  I have a subscription just because I want them to survive.  We need independent newspapers with good journalism. 

[Vorg]

I was going to post another horrible example I found yesterday. But before I could post it, they must have saw how horrible the article was too, and it disappeared. I actually thought I posted it though, yet it isn't here. Maybe a mod found a deadlink and deleted the post.

Edited September 21, 2020 by South Alabam

[Vorg]

8 hours ago, South Alabam said:

I was going to post another horrible example I found yesterday. But before I could post it, they must have saw how horrible the article was too, and it disappeared. I actually thought I posted it though, yet it isn't here. Maybe a mod found a deadlink and deleted the post.

I found the article today. It was corrected, so I won't say who it was, but if I see another, it is fair game. And btw, they are a large business. 

[Peter B]

On 9/18/2020 at 9:08 PM, joc said:

That is so ridiculous Peter.  Why do you make excuses for incompetent journalism?

You MAKE the time.  You TAKE the time.  I don't have the time to proofread... is complete BS.   It doesn't have anything to do with 'time'.  It has to do with the work ethic or lack there of with regard to the 'journalist'.

Can you do journalism without errors?  Yes I can!   How are you going to do it?  I am going to proofread my work before I send it to print.  I am going to MAKE the time.  

Can you do journalism without errors?  No, I can't.  Why not?  Because I just don't have the time to proofread.  Because my dog ate my homework.  Because I am so tired.  Because my Aunt Melba's dog was sick and kept me up all night crying  and throwing up.

Success requires no explanation.

Failure permits no alibis.  

"You MAKE the time."

Okay.

How much time can an individual make? Is there a limit?

If you think there's no limit, then presumably you're saying media outlets only need a single journalist because that person can make all the time they need.

But if, as I suspect, you accept there's a limit to how much time an individual can make, then the obvious next question is whether media outlets today have reached that limit. My opinion is that they have, and that the quality of journalism is suffering as a result. Obviously your opinion is different. But it's still an opinion, not an objective fact.

The thing with journalism is that every task is new: new calls to make or receive, new leads to follow, new pieces of evidence to uncover. It's not a production line job where you're assembling the same widgets the same way. That makes a journalism job less efficient than a production line job.

But regardless, it's a simple fact that if you reduce the amount of time a person has to do a job because you're constantly asking them to do more tasks in the same amount of time, then either the quality will suffer or the tasks will back up.

I've had this exact work experience: the tasks backed up because they were coming in at a faster rate than we could complete them. Work faster, said the manager. So we hurried our work and got the backlog down, but in the process made more mistakes because of the rushing. Work more carefully, said the manager. So we had to slow down, whereupon the backlog began to grow again. (And yes, we did once have the team meeting where the manager told us at one point that we had to work faster, and at another point told us we needed to slow down and take more care with accuracy.)

And yes, my work is like journalism in that every task is new and has the potential to be different from seemingly identical tasks you've done before. As a result when we start a task it's impossible to know how long it might take. "Audit an employee's work history" will take 15 minutes if their service is all full-time with no service breaks, but 4 hours if they've worked all sorts of part-time rosters, had breaks in service, and their service history file is incomplete. And make a mistake with someone's work history and the cost to the employee can run to thousands of dollars, so doing it properly is going to take time, which takes time away from all the other jobs which need to be done.

[Peter B]

22 hours ago, Aroundthecorner said:

Newspapers died a few years ago now, not because of tree huggers wishes but the decline of sales because of the internet boom. Sad thing is with that boom comes the end of proper journalism and the rise of the keyboard warriors. Paid assassins of the best story fits with a twist.

I agree with the bolded bits, though what you say is at odds with the article linked by Eldorado.

Not sure about the tree hugger bit. I don't think anyone's arguing in favour of that in this thread...

[+joc]

7 minutes ago, Peter B said:

"You MAKE the time."

Okay.

How much time can an individual make? Is there a limit?

If you think there's no limit, then presumably you're saying media outlets only need a single journalist because that person can make all the time they need.

But if, as I suspect, you accept there's a limit to how much time an individual can make, then the obvious next question is whether media outlets today have reached that limit. My opinion is that they have, and that the quality of journalism is suffering as a result. Obviously your opinion is different. But it's still an opinion, not an objective fact.

The thing with journalism is that every task is new: new calls to make or receive, new leads to follow, new pieces of evidence to uncover. It's not a production line job where you're assembling the same widgets the same way. That makes a journalism job less efficient than a production line job.

But regardless, it's a simple fact that if you reduce the amount of time a person has to do a job because you're constantly asking them to do more tasks in the same amount of time, then either the quality will suffer or the tasks will back up.

I've had this exact work experience: the tasks backed up because they were coming in at a faster rate than we could complete them. Work faster, said the manager. So we hurried our work and got the backlog down, but in the process made more mistakes because of the rushing. Work more carefully, said the manager. So we had to slow down, whereupon the backlog began to grow again. (And yes, we did once have the team meeting where the manager told us at one point that we had to work faster, and at another point told us we needed to slow down and take more care with accuracy.)

And yes, my work is like journalism in that every task is new and has the potential to be different from seemingly identical tasks you've done before. As a result when we start a task it's impossible to know how long it might take. "Audit an employee's work history" will take 15 minutes if their service is all full-time with no service breaks, but 4 hours if they've worked all sorts of part-time rosters, had breaks in service, and their service history file is incomplete. And make a mistake with someone's work history and the cost to the employee can run to thousands of dollars, so doing it properly is going to take time, which takes time away from all the other jobs which need to be done.

I'm not really interested in any of your excuses Peter.

[Peter B]

14 minutes ago, joc said:

I'm not really interested in any of your excuses Peter.

Okay, have a nice day.

[Free99]

I started noticing this a few years back it’s like they are hiring high school drop outs to write news articles and no one proof reads it. And what’s funny is the area it’s from now and then. Hood rat language spills over into the news. “Thems people just stood there watching as they neighbors meth lab blowed up and burnd down them house.” 
I’ve had to read that type of garbage to my wife and kids before thanks Fox 5 for the comedy now and then.

And you question people calling out fake news. There was a time when the tabloids was the only place trash was published.

[Vorg]

2 hours ago, Free99 said:

I started noticing this a few years back it’s like they are hiring high school drop outs to write news articles and no one proof reads it. And what’s funny is the area it’s from now and then. Hood rat language spills over into the news. “Thems people just stood there watching as they neighbors meth lab blowed up and burnd down them house.” 
I’ve had to read that type of garbage to my wife and kids before thanks Fox 5 for the comedy now and then.

And you question people calling out fake news. There was a time when the tabloids was the only place trash was published.

I've actually seen typos in magazines. I think I rarely saw typos in newspapers or magazines my entire life, until recently. But maybe it is as Peter B posted above. The journalist are being rushed to perform at the cost of journalistic excellence. 

[itsnotoutthere]

There is no such thing as investigative journalism anymore. It's all just opinion. There are no Woodwards or Bernsteins anymore. The Internet has seen to that.

[Duke Wellington]

8 minutes ago, itsnotoutthere said:

There is no such thing as investigative journalism anymore. It's all just opinion. There are no Woodwards or Bernsteins anymore. The Internet has seen to that.

Journalism has never been a credible source of information, it is just opinions from people each with their own bias and worldview. But it has gotten way worse in the US over the last 4 years. The thing is there is so much lying that its hard for most people (who arent unbiased) to not notice it. The Democrats have created for themselves a credibility issue where unbiased voters simply wont trust them. The fake impeachment is also still fresh in peoples minds.

Trump wont win the next election, the Democrats have already lost it, and lost it big time. They behave like an angry negative clique in an office badmouthing others, playing negative political games, and trying to bully their way into positions of power. They spread their negativity around to create an `us and them` culture all while the sociopaths portray themselves as moral and good.

The American electorate are going to do to the Democrats what the British voters did to Corbyn. Bye bye!

 

[+joc]

11 hours ago, Peter B said:

Okay, have a nice day.

Thanks...you as well!

[+joc]

7 hours ago, South Alabam said:

I've actually seen typos in magazines. I think I rarely saw typos in newspapers or magazines my entire life, until recently. But maybe it is as Peter B posted above. The journalist are being rushed to perform at the cost of journalistic excellence. 

Not that Peter doesn't have a point...he does...but...the I don't have time excuse...I think is quite often overshadowed by the reality of ...I don't have enough skills.  Not that Peter doesn't have such skills, he obviously does.   It's more like the 'news' organizations don't care how it looks in print as long as the 'narrative' is thrust forward as quickly as possible.

I like the M*A*S*H approach by Major Charles Emerson Winchester III.  'I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.'

10 hours ago, Free99 said:

There was a time when the tabloids was the only place trash was published.

There was a time when the tabloids was  were   the only place trash was published.   

It's so true though...what ever happened to the days of old when journalists questioned everyone about everything...or were those days even mythical?

[Vorg]

Here's another one, not sure if a typo or the word correction like we have on phones changed it, either way, no clear editing was done:

• $47.4m in losses – what he had declared to the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) for tax purposes over the same period.

• https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/70-000-on-hairstyling-donald-trump-s-taxes-in-numbers/ar-BB19uYe6?ocid=msedgdhp

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

On 9/19/2020 at 7:09 PM, Setton said:

I don't have to explain my methods! I have succeeded!

© Joc 2020

Especially not to me, because you’ve murdered me!

[Setton]

42 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

Especially not to me, because you’ve murdered me!

Therefore my methods are perfect. No one's complained so far!

[+Liquid Gardens]

On 9/22/2020 at 10:16 AM, joc said:

Not that Peter doesn't have a point...he does...but...the I don't have time excuse...I think is quite often overshadowed by the reality of ...I don't have enough skills. 

What job do you do where you never make any mistakes by the way? 

As far as the specifics of what you are criticizing, you are inconsistent with your spacing when you are using the ellipses above, you misspelled 'mispelling' earlier, and I see at least one spot where you should have used a colon instead of a period. Don't bother trying to justify it of course, that would just be providing excuses. 

[+joc]

1 hour ago, Liquid Gardens said:

What job do you do where you never make any mistakes by the way? 

As far as the specifics of what you are criticizing, you are inconsistent with your spacing when you are using the ellipses above, you misspelled 'mispelling' earlier, and I see at least one spot where you should have used a colon instead of a period. Don't bother trying to justify it of course, that would just be providing excuses. 

No one is PAYING me to type anything on this website.  When did I ever say I don't make mistakes in my job?  But if I made critical errors over and over, my customers would stop calling me.

[aztek]

American journalism is not getting worse, it just does not exist anymore, 

[+Liquid Gardens]

1 hour ago, joc said:

No one is PAYING me to type anything on this website.  When did I ever say I don't make mistakes in my job?  But if I made critical errors over and over, my customers would stop calling me.

"You MAKE the time.  You TAKE the time.  I don't have the time to proofread... is complete BS.   It doesn't have anything to do with 'time'.  It has to do with the work ethic or lack there of with regard to the 'journalist'.

Can you do journalism without errors?  Yes I can!   How are you going to do it?  I am going to proofread my work before I send it to print.  I am going to MAKE the time.  "

Does this general 'no excuses' criticism apply to you then?  "Can you do your job without errors?  Yes you can!" - yet you apparently still do make mistakes despite that, is that from lack of work ethic too?  I'll bet there are very reasonable and logical explanations for your mistakes, the obvious one being 'everyone makes mistakes sometimes', so why the different bar to clear for others?  Lack of proofreading and typos are very rarely ever a 'critical error'.

[Vorg]

Here is another one. Either everyone in the world is blind, or they have the wrong picture. I'd seriously hate to think that is the right picture.

People Can't Seem to Find the Hidden Cat in This Photo So Let's See If You Have Better Luck

https://sports.yahoo.com/people-cant-seem-hidden-cat-161500725.html