The state of journalism

[Phoenix84]

Let me just get this out of the way, I'm not a professional journalist, just a member of the public. 

Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed a decline in the quality of news reporting over the years.  It seems stories are more about getting them out fast than doing thorough research.  Furthermore, it appears most news is written for a grade schooler, not a educated adult.  For example, the U.S has been involved in the middle east for years, but the news stories don't go into very much detail about the politics or anything over there.  I have to go to the library to find actual history books to get historical context for the way things are.

Another thing I've noticed as of late is the focus on individuals, and who said who about what.  Shouldn't the focus be on the story, not "so and so blasts Obama for Syria decision." 

Maybe I'm just rambling, and I aplogize for not giving more specific examples. 

I'd like to leave you with a quote that sums up what I think about the current state of Journalism.

"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people."  - Socrates

[midjd]

I have noticed a few disappointing trends, too...

First, reporters seem to be trolling the comment sections of their own articles for leads. E.g. someone comments on an article about healthcare reform saying that they spent 10 days at St. Francis and almost died, and gets a response of "Hey, this is reporter Tom Jones. I'd like to speak with you about your experience. Could you please contact me at 555-1234?" It's not unethical or anything, but just seems lazy.

The number of spelling/grammar errors also seems to be on the rise. If it's a local paper, that's one thing, but I have a whole desktop folder of screenshots from CNN and other national sources that include pretty blatant mistakes (yes, I'm a nerd).

[Phoenix84]

Yeah, lazy journalism is a trend I was referring to.  One thing I've noticed is some articles will use stuff like facebook, or google search data as "sources."  For example, I was reading a story about Bradley Manning and how he's seeking a presidential pardon.  The journalist spent a paragraph talking about how many likes the Bradley Manning support page has on facebook.  I've seen other articles give data on how many people googled something.  Why the hell is that relevent?

I've also noticed a lot of "stories" that just summarize government reports that you can find online for free.  Seriously, some of the stuff I read I could probably put out in 20 minutes with minimal research.  And these people are supposedly "professionals."  I could easily go online and find a recently published government study or report and skim it then summarize it in a page and post it online, hell, that's pretty much what I do on these very message boards.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

News isn't news anymore, it's "entertainment".  Gotta do something to keep people tuned in for 24 freaking hours.

It's not about accurately reporting anything anymore, it's all about your ratings or how many "likes" you can get on facebook.

It drives me crazy when science related stories crop up.  The title often has zilch to do with what was actually done but it's exciting/alarming so it gets you to tune in/read.  Then they spend all their time putting their spin on the facts because the actual facts are boring and would fly over most people's heads.

I'll often go looking for the actual study being commented on and the two are totally different.

I blasted a blogger, a medical professional no less, for spinning a study to suit her personal agenda/views.  She made the mistake of linking to the actual study and I guess didn't count on someone actually reading it and understanding it. 

[movingforward]

I don't believe there are any professional journalist left.  It used to be (or at least appeared) like journalism had some credibility.  It used to be about reporting the facts.  Now it is about putting a spin on something to make look favorable or unfavorable depending on what the journalist wants/needs.  Also, like mid said I am sick and tired of seeing all kinds of grammatical errors.  I am not saying I never make any grammatical mistakes but this is their profession for goodness sakes. 

[midjd]

It drives me crazy when science related stories crop up. The title often has zilch to do with what was actually done but it's exciting/alarming so it gets you to tune in/read. Then they spend all their time putting their spin on the facts because the actual facts are boring and would fly over most people's heads.

I'll often go looking for the actual study being commented on and the two are totally different.

It's not much different in the legal field. Whenever our agency issues an opinion, files a case, etc., we issue a press release (carefully crafted and reviewed by our attorneys and public information officer) that attempts to distill the issues down to something easily digestible - and most of the time the media STILL gets at least one major fact wrong. Others will just regurgitate the press release without adding anything (which is better than reporting misinformation, but not really what I'd call journalism).

I get that medical/legal issues are often complicated, but IMO part of a journalist's job is to ask these questions of someone who does understand the study/case/whatever, not say "Oh, I think they're saying _____" when they really have no idea.

And don't get me started on the "legal analysts" employed by Fox News and the like...

[Phoenix84]

One really annoying thing I don't like is many will simply create a provocative headline to try to get you to read their article, rather than tell you what the article is about.

And yeah, I've seen articles that are scientifically inaccurate.  Such as articles claiming babies born in the U.S a year after fukashima are getting cancer from the incident, when radioactive iodine has a half life of 8 days....

It just seems there aren't any standards or ethics in the field anymore.  To me, the term journalist should imply a strict set of standards and ethics.

[NancysSummerSip]

I don't think any of you are imagining things when it comes to the lack of professional journalism. I worked in print journalism for 12 years, and still freelance. I know we have someone on the board who is a newspaper reporter (the poster's name escapes me at the moment). Part of the problem is technology. You would think it would help, but sometimes, it doesn't. Copy editors let the computer do the spellcheck for them, forgetting that it takes a human to get it right.

Money is another problem. Good journalists are experienced journalists, and they cost money to get and keep. It's cheaper to get new college grads with little experience and less street sense to do the work. The lack of money has also meant shutting down printing presses in favor of digital versions of your local paper. It's still work to put together a digital newspaper, but the deadlines are often shorter, because of the 24/7 news cycle. People want their information NOW, not tomorrow morning with their coffee. When a copy editor makes haste, they make mistakes. Sure, you can fix them more easily on the digital paper, but why bother, when that's old news?

And as was mentioned, it's also about entertainment. Far more people want to know about what the Kardashians are doing than what Congress is doing.

I'm not against digital technology; I think it's a game-changer that brings news to a whole different level. But it also breeds a certain carelessness that I don't recall seeing back in the day.

[Peace Of Mind]

It's not just you. What I really hate is the provocative headline, waiting forever for the stupid link to come up and the article is assinine or gives absolutely no info. what-so-ever. Don't even get me started on all the stupid videos playing while I try to read it if it is worth reading or all the ads flashing and jiggling.

[Phoenix84]

I think kilroy might be a newspaper reporter, or some other person who works in the field.

[Peace Of Mind]

Sept 5, 2013 16:05:20 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

I think kilroy might be a newspaper reporter, or some other person who works in the field.

Kgb is a newspaper reporter and she knows what she is doing.  I've read her articles and have seen her clips (she is a good friend) and she is excellent!  She's also pretty and very smart and can construct a perfect sentence unlike the ones we are talking about.  Or me. 

[buystoys]

I've said for years that there is no such animal as a real journalist any longer.  (No insult to anyone with that career intended.)  If you do the right thing, such as all the research and understand the topic you are reporting on, you won't be published unless there is a "hook" to the story.  Many things we should be interested won't have a "hook" unless you introduce bias.  Once you introduce bias, you've now taken the journalistic integrity away from the story.

That's why we are only given sound bites on the TV news casts, articles have screaming headlines, and op/ed articles are treated like they are gospel.  I always thought the whole purpose of op/ed was that it was someone's opinion and not necessarily the straight facts? 

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

This has been going on for as long as I remember.  It's just that the true facts are a lot easier to find these days due to the internet.

Growing up, we ALWAYS had at least one newspaper delivered, sometimes two.  My dad read them cover to cover.  I can't begin to count the number of mornings he would be reading an article and saying that something was missing from the article, that it was not as it was written.  Thinking back, he was usually correct.  This was waaay before computers and internet.

The things that annoy me the most is always the newest breaking science news.  Whatever is reported is NEVER what the journal article said.  However, most people cannot get to the original journal article to see what was actually written.

[hoops902]

I won't say this is my idea, because I heard a lengthy discussion of it somewhere.  The crux of the idea though is that there are 2 forms of "journalism" really.  There were papers (speed) and magazines (information) and while papers came out daily there was still time to get a researched story put in, and even if the story went in a day late, no big deal.  Papers were time sensitive, less research and more hurry to get them out.

Those 2 types have changed, papers have been replaced by digital media.  One is time sensitive, the other is not.  Time sensitive "journalism" matters only at how quickly you get out hte information.  It matters little if some of the informaiton is wrong, or poorly researched, it only matters that it gets out as quickly as possible after it happens because that's what people want.  This is the journalism of the masses.  The other form focuses not on time, but on detail, getting everything right, researching it, creating your own spin on the information.  In order to do this, and to have people really care, you have to dive in with both feet into the story.  These stories tend to come out primarily in magazines or increasingly in book form.

The time sensitive information has moved from daily papers to almost instant digital distribution.  The journalism hasn't really changed, only the time involved.  Journalists 50 years ago would have done the exact same thing if they had the opportunity.  It isn't that journalism has died, it's that journalism has changed.  People who don't like the change will say it has died, but it's really just that people don't like the change that's occurred.

[movingforward]

I actually miss the days when we didn't receive news 24/7 and for some reason (no real basis for it other than it annoys me) I hate that we now have even more news running across the bottom of the screen. 

[Phoenix84]

Sept 5, 2013 16:36:33 GMT -5 movingforward said:

I actually miss the days when we didn't receive news 24/7 and for some reason (no real basis for it other than it annoys me) I hate that we now have even more news running across the bottom of the screen. 

It's a news-pocalypse!

[whoami]

News today:

Editing is nearly non-existent.  Misspelled words, atrocious sentence structure and having to read a paragraph several times to sort out exactly WTH the writer is trying to say is commonplace.

I saw on USA today or CNN I forget which, a news "flash" that one of the Kardashian girls is now blond.  It wasn't even under the entertainment section.  NEWS?

Every comment section no matter what the article is about, degenerates into politics.  I can almost guarantee at some point the words Iraq, WMD and Bush will feature in someones comment.  Doesn't matter if the article is about war, flowers in Holland or the mating rituals of polar bears, it will turn into someone whining about how its Bush's fault.   

I also hate the crawls.

[bean29]

Personally, I think newpapers are in decline becsuse people don't want to pay for something they can get on the internet for free, but they forget that if they don't pay for it the publisher dosn't have the $$ to pay a real reporter to research a story.  Therefore you have reporters who are paid by the article that is published, and they don't want to put too much work into the story in case it does not get published.  High Quality individuals will find other work that pays better.

I pay for the subscription to the local newpaper for just this reason.  I feel that they are especially important to keeping an eye on the local politicians.  There would be much more fraud an abuse if the paper wasn't looking into what was going on with taxpayer $$.


Much of the national news is AP stuff so it keeps cost to a minimum, but very little new information.

[hoops902]

::Personally, I think newpapers are in decline becsuse people don't want to pay for something they can get on the internet for free::

I think I disagree, if only because I think free newspapers would still not get anyone to actually read them.  My opinion is that it's more about speed of disseminating the information than it is paying for it.  Also ease of access.  I can carry around a newspaper all day reading outdated information, or I can use my computer, phone, or tablet to get access to information instantly from a variety of sources.  To get all that information in paper form I'd need to carry around a U-Haul full of papers/magazines which changed daily.

[Regis]

I get all my news 140 characters at a time.

[Deleted]

DH and I are in the golden Oldie demographic that still subscribes to a daily paper. It's got a highly liberal bias, which drives DH crazy, but they do good local reporting and even a thorough investigative piece on occasion. I like to support that.

I ignore TV news completely and don't click on many headers in the "News" Internet sites; I have no patience for waiting for ads to load and having to click through 12 pages of an article.

But podcasts... I love podcasts. I get a couple from the BBC, one in French (france3.fr), and one in German (tagesschau.de). I get a much broader view of what's going on around the world and keep up my language skills at the same time.

[formerroomate99]

Honestly, I have to wonder if journalism was always crap, but only appeared more legitimate because there weren't many other sources for news.  For example, I don't bother to watch the local news because all they talk about is the latest violent crimes and not much else.  But the term 'If it bleeds it leads' was coined long before people started talking about the state of journalism. 

[Deleted]

journalism was my first major in college oh so many years ago

and today, the number of actual reporters in the field is growing smaller everyday

newspapers are no longer a profitable endeavor (with a few exceptions)

it is all on the internet....which means speed is needed to scoop the next guy

problem is some other guy already tweeted the crux of the story....

when the world's headlines are tweets, reporters are a doomed lot

but blogging is the new reporting.....just no fact checking, and no editing, and therefore it is piss poor writing for the majority of it....

imo of course

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2013 15:27:33 GMT -5 @gdgyva said:

but blogging is the new reporting.....just no fact checking, and no editing, and therefore it is piss poor writing for the majority of it....

I once heard an interview with a young woman whose degree was in fashion journalism- definitely not YM-approved. Mostly she found " jobs" where she was supposed to blog for free.

[mmhmm]

Heck no, you're not alone, Phoenix!  I don't watch television, and that includes the news.  I scan headlines from the major news media, then go looking for more in-depth information according to subject.  I'm not interested in sensationalism, and I'm not interested in spin.  I guess I'm the modern reincarnation of Dick Tracy.  I want "the facts, ma'am.  Just the facts."  I'd really like to see those facts offered with proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  In fact, I'm turned completely off by the lack of same.  The press, as a whole, gets no respect from me.

[kilroy]

I'm a news researcher, which means it's my job to make sure that what my network puts on the air is accurate; I also speak up if I think we're being unbalanced and need to include "the other side of the story".

Cable was one of the worst things that happened to news; how do you fill 24 hours a day without resorting to a fair amount of fluff and junk? Then the Web gave us even more space to fill. And the sad thing is, as much as people coomplain about the fluff and junk, those are the stories that get ratings. If you look at the most read or most discussed stories on any news site, I guarantee you'll find the latest celebrity story farther up the list than the latest developments in Syria.

Yes, news is run by big business, but it's reported (and researched) by people who care about telling important, interesting stories.