Journalism: critiques, discussion, ideas

Here’s a place to talk about journalism - what’s good about it, what’s wrong with it, and what’s scary, maybe?

Here’s something I’ve been browsing and thinking about lately

Quartz’s color-tagged hierarchy of trustworthiness for reporting is interesting, though I think there’s a fair argument that any unconfirmed rumors should just not be reported.

The Des Moines Register’s virtual reality info-game is pretty awesome, but I wonder who the fuck the audience is for that. It’s Oculus Rift-enabled, which is pretty cool.

BuzzFeed was an ongoing topic of discussion at Columbia, but I don’t know if this entry about it really says much. At Collision Conference, someone pointed out that “BuzzFeed and Vice are advertisers with content on the side,” which I think is very true and probably one of the main ways forward to keep producing journalism within the current system: ads first, reporting second.

I moved a post to a new topic: The Second Death of Tony Hart

Do you it would make it easier if companies were upfront about that? It isn’t like this is new, per se, but technology has certainly caused an identity crisis of what journalism is, exactly. Maybe it is ads first, reporting second.

Sounds crappy, but I suspect that I am going to have all kinds of biases towards some fictional by inspirational idea of reporting, and am open to the idea that it is what it is, and new tech is just highlighting it like never before.

Returning to this, at this point I feel that being a tech reporter is really tough. It’s hard to avoid sounding like a cheerleader: “This great new thing is coming! It’s going to change our lives for the better!”

That also makes you feel like a shill.

But there are only a few places that allow for critical, nuanced takes. And everybody wants to get excited about what’s coming.