Actually it's a bit more complicated than that. Naval Ravikant had a tweet (sorry couldn't find it in a quick search) that said news became a commodity so reporters became partisans.
If you want a great overview of where the news business is headed check out the first thirty minutes of yesterday's all-in podcast where they explain why they're adopting A16Z's new strategy of creating a channel themselves and freezing out reporters.
Given that one can track the roots of present "movement conservative" partisan media back into the 80s (maybe even as far as Ailes' shortly-after-Nixon claim that he could have avoided impeachment with supportive media), and even that is hardly the first partisan media phenomenon in the history of US or even Western Culture... Ravikant's statement doesn't make sense as an analysis, unless there's a case that commodification we're talking about not only pre-dates the internet it's actually older than electric cities.
(Ravikant's statement does make sense as a certain kind of evocation common to business/tech figures.)
Thanks for posting the link. Getting tired of regular news sources.
I liked how they discussed how much knowledge journalists have about a topic based on how many rewrites they do ending with 5 for 40% knowledge on a topic.
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect was interesting also.
My org subscribes to multiple wires and we have an internal knowledge and intelligence sharing system. For the state dept and alphabet agencies, collecting and processing information, including news, is a serious investment of resources. They don't get the info they need from mass media. Same for traders, etc etc.
Information needed by decision-makers is often lacking in the commodified news, which I would just call mass-consumer-culture news. So news in itself is not commodified. Mass culture news was always there to serve the interests of the channel, made up of content producers and distributors. An "early" internet example would be Arrington and TC. He was doing journalism and news as a means to get power, by dabbling in some delicious insider deals on the way to financial independence.
What is interesting is the ideological clash between those three camps of journalism thought. Journalism should liberate and enlighten the unwashed masses, provide unbiased information, or serve the interest of the journalist and publisher. Somehow many don't see that one can and often is the other.
But I find views such as in above article, with one agenda pushed above all others, behind even 18th century thought.
People I considered real journalists 10 years ago are real journalists today. Corporate hacks and partisan agitators remained themselves as well. Real journalists went to independent platforms and the rest are rat racing on board a sinking ship
Antonio Garcia Marquez’s employment history includes quanting at Goldman Sachs, founding an advertising startup, and working at Facebook. I don’t feel as if I can take the arguments made here at face value, knowing how much money—for the author personally and through his involvement with the aforementioned companies—is at stake in the changes to journalism being described.
Asking where the money goes is always worthwhile, but the thesis that journalism was more partisan 100 years ago is well established. For example, look at Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the Pulitzer Prizes, one of the most prestigious awards any journalist can receive. Pulitzer was also an infamous "yellow journalist", one of the most prominent and influential.
Late-20th-century style "real journalism" seems either to be a historical aberration, or something that is only sustainable in very particular social conditions.
> Late-20th-century style "real journalism" seems either to be a historical aberration, or something that is only sustainable in very particular social conditions.
It's neither, and no less ideologically driven than preceding or subsequent journalism.
The image of the late 20th century journalism as unbiased and non-ideological would be aberrant if it was at all true, but it is an illusion brought about by a combination of the narrowness and ideological alignment of the major media of the time combined with their own incredibly successful self-serving propaganda (which was reinforced by many elites outside of the media, who shared their corporate capitalist ideological alignment.)
He is a marketer and self-promoter to the core. With above, he continues his tradition of pushing his self-interest. No surprise he sees the role of journalism in that direction. If objectivity and a fair point of view is impossible, self-interest and partisanship is all there is, in journalism and elsewhere. Convenient for him and his current agenda, certainly. And if you oppose, you are a sanctimonious poseur.
Some quotes from his book, "Chaos monkeys".
Quote 1. (summary: Take eyeballs wherever you can find them, for his marketing start-up, AdGrok)
"This post would be the first in a series of hyperviral blog posts that would put AdGrok on the startup map (if not quite the customer one). Every three to four weeks, another gaseous emanation from the latrine of human thought (a.k.a. me) would appear and rocket us to the top of Hacker News (the tech geek’s Cosmo), and make another stir in the evanescent tech buzz-o-sphere. [...] But hey—I didn’t see fifty thousand people a day lining up to use the product we had built. We’d take eyeballs wherever we could find them."
Quote 2. (summary: he gets some free PR for his start-up by posting "edgy" articles, and games the ratings)
"I navigated to that venerable if niche corner of the
Internet: Hacker News. A Reddit-like message board hosted by Y Combinator itself, it’s a weird mix of supertechnical geeks, hustling YC founders, and that species of simultaneously frustrated and sanctimonious poseur called a “wantrapreneur.” I posted the piece, while asking a few friends to upvote the article to give it some initial traction."
11 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 36.5 ms ] threadIf you want a great overview of where the news business is headed check out the first thirty minutes of yesterday's all-in podcast where they explain why they're adopting A16Z's new strategy of creating a channel themselves and freezing out reporters.
(Ravikant's statement does make sense as a certain kind of evocation common to business/tech figures.)
I liked how they discussed how much knowledge journalists have about a topic based on how many rewrites they do ending with 5 for 40% knowledge on a topic.
The Gell-Mann amnesia effect was interesting also.
My org subscribes to multiple wires and we have an internal knowledge and intelligence sharing system. For the state dept and alphabet agencies, collecting and processing information, including news, is a serious investment of resources. They don't get the info they need from mass media. Same for traders, etc etc.
Information needed by decision-makers is often lacking in the commodified news, which I would just call mass-consumer-culture news. So news in itself is not commodified. Mass culture news was always there to serve the interests of the channel, made up of content producers and distributors. An "early" internet example would be Arrington and TC. He was doing journalism and news as a means to get power, by dabbling in some delicious insider deals on the way to financial independence.
What is interesting is the ideological clash between those three camps of journalism thought. Journalism should liberate and enlighten the unwashed masses, provide unbiased information, or serve the interest of the journalist and publisher. Somehow many don't see that one can and often is the other.
But I find views such as in above article, with one agenda pushed above all others, behind even 18th century thought.
Late-20th-century style "real journalism" seems either to be a historical aberration, or something that is only sustainable in very particular social conditions.
(And yes, I miss it too.)
It's neither, and no less ideologically driven than preceding or subsequent journalism.
The image of the late 20th century journalism as unbiased and non-ideological would be aberrant if it was at all true, but it is an illusion brought about by a combination of the narrowness and ideological alignment of the major media of the time combined with their own incredibly successful self-serving propaganda (which was reinforced by many elites outside of the media, who shared their corporate capitalist ideological alignment.)
I had never considered that possibility. Horrifying thought.
Some quotes from his book, "Chaos monkeys".
Quote 1. (summary: Take eyeballs wherever you can find them, for his marketing start-up, AdGrok)
"This post would be the first in a series of hyperviral blog posts that would put AdGrok on the startup map (if not quite the customer one). Every three to four weeks, another gaseous emanation from the latrine of human thought (a.k.a. me) would appear and rocket us to the top of Hacker News (the tech geek’s Cosmo), and make another stir in the evanescent tech buzz-o-sphere. [...] But hey—I didn’t see fifty thousand people a day lining up to use the product we had built. We’d take eyeballs wherever we could find them."
Quote 2. (summary: he gets some free PR for his start-up by posting "edgy" articles, and games the ratings)
"I navigated to that venerable if niche corner of the Internet: Hacker News. A Reddit-like message board hosted by Y Combinator itself, it’s a weird mix of supertechnical geeks, hustling YC founders, and that species of simultaneously frustrated and sanctimonious poseur called a “wantrapreneur.” I posted the piece, while asking a few friends to upvote the article to give it some initial traction."