<story><title>Anatomy of a Moral Panic</title><url>http://idlewords.com/2017/09/anatomy_of_a_moral_panic.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vonnik</author><text>Ironically, the premise of this critique of journalism is as false as the Amazon story it cites. Algorithms and the Internet didn&amp;#x27;t ruin journalism, and this is not the end of the world. Journalism was corrupted by sensationalism as soon as it moved from subscriptions to ads, which in the US was in the 19th century. Remember when we discovered a colony of aliens on the moon? Yeah, that was the New York Sun way before we had electricity... Remember when Hearst started the Spanish-American war? No Internet then. Bad signals via the media is a very old problem. We should think about it, but we shouldn&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s the Internet&amp;#x27;s fault.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notzorbo3</author><text>Your entire comment is a straw man. The article doesn&amp;#x27;t claim the internet ruined journalism, and I don&amp;#x27;t even know where your &amp;quot;end of the world&amp;quot; comment is coming from. You&amp;#x27;re also comparing papers like the New York Sun and other tabloids, while this article is talking about respectable papers such as the New York Times.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll quote the relevant part of the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The real story in this mess is not the threat that algorithms pose to Amazon shoppers, but the threat that algorithms pose to journalism. By forcing reporters to optimize every story for clicks, not giving them time to check or contextualize their reporting, and requiring them to race to publish follow-on articles on every topic, the clickbait economics of online media encourage carelessness and drama. This is particularly true for technical topics outside the reporter’s area of expertise.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; And reporters have no choice but to chase clicks. Because Google and Facebook have a duopoly on online advertising, the only measure of success in publishing is whether a story goes viral on social media. Authors are evaluated by how individual stories perform online, and face constant pressure to make them more arresting.</text></comment>
<story><title>Anatomy of a Moral Panic</title><url>http://idlewords.com/2017/09/anatomy_of_a_moral_panic.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vonnik</author><text>Ironically, the premise of this critique of journalism is as false as the Amazon story it cites. Algorithms and the Internet didn&amp;#x27;t ruin journalism, and this is not the end of the world. Journalism was corrupted by sensationalism as soon as it moved from subscriptions to ads, which in the US was in the 19th century. Remember when we discovered a colony of aliens on the moon? Yeah, that was the New York Sun way before we had electricity... Remember when Hearst started the Spanish-American war? No Internet then. Bad signals via the media is a very old problem. We should think about it, but we shouldn&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s the Internet&amp;#x27;s fault.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tpeo</author><text>Contemporary journalism indeed doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly on terribleness, as you&amp;#x27;ve mentioned. But this is actually the point. Because if I&amp;#x27;m really going after the heart of this criticism, it really doesn&amp;#x27;t matter if I understand the selection function over all stories in the newsroom as an actual algorithm meant to maximize clicks or as some hazy set or rules of thumb and prejudices meant to maximize advertisement revenue. The point is that neither maximizes either the informativeness of a story nor the likelihood of it being true.&lt;p&gt;Also, I don&amp;#x27;t actually &amp;quot;remember&amp;quot; the Spanish-American war. I understand what you mean, but this is an awkward way to put it.</text></comment>