News reports are frozen in time and quickly forgotten.
Even a well read person will find it difficult, if not impossible, to know the full context for important news items.
Few journalists have the time or inclination to learn and write about that context.
The context for a news item is generally not examined, debated, improved and on record for the future.
When the context is examined it is often a polarised debate about the implications rather than a factual analysis from which reliable conclusions can be drawn.
The consequences have been disastrous in politics where even if someone did try to think a policy through they do not have the information to do so.
UnHerd tries with better researched articles with some interesting comments but they are not organised over time to provide a useful, evolving and corrected context for reference.
I have a higher opinion than you do of UnHerd’s ability and track record in the provision of contextualised news and opinion.
That said, have an upvote, because I appreciate the soundness & completeness of your enumeration of the problems with news coverage..
I think you’re onto something.
Whilst articles have links to similar pieces, they do not refer back to similar articles and pieces on the same subjects (unless the author explicitly or deliberately refers back)
On more general and wider repeat topics – perhaps articles should have an editorial refresher section – ‘What we have said; what we got right, what we didn’t’ almost. Perhaps not that crude but you get the point.
It would tie the story back to the main theme
Oh I’d really value that part about referencing what we got right, especially at the present time when Putin has turned out to be such an idiot.
Prior to the Ukraine war writers and and commenters would praise him endlessly, with just a few brave souls calling out his emperor’s nakedness – it would be lovely to see such poor assessments highlighted.
What a good analysis! So few articles even mention the broader context of events, opting to hit the most immediate (or most click-baitable) high points. Perhaps journalists are necessarily catering to readers’ short attention spans, but it would help in understanding events if their contexts could at least be summarized in news articles.
The two linked developments…once content became digitised in the late 1990s, was the unstoppable rise of the move to video, and overwhelming importance of citizen journalists..ie not really journalists, just people with smartphones who happen to be the on the spot.
The 9/11 events were the last hurrah of mainly professional journalists filming an event in real time, the plane crash into the Hudson River the first real social media news event. By the time of the Bataclan the news organisations were following social media not leading it.
The trends are continuing today.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for professional journalists, just that it is not the central place at the heart of events.
The real winners in this, so far, haven’t been any legacy media organisations but, I would say, are the Apples, Samsungs , Googles and Microsofts, and all the various iterations of content aggregation platforms..especially for video.
I remember, as an interested party, then running a news and photo agency, having to try and construct a commercial survival strategy as the owner founder of a company whose entire addressable market was shrinking faster than a polythene bag on a bonfire.
At one point I noted the market cap of Google exceeded the entire market cap of the entire quoted media sector of the UK..Papers, magazines, TV, Radio…everything.
Pretty soon after it exceeded the combined market cap of the sector in the UK and the USA.
Buzzfeed to me was, like the Huffington Post, a content stealer and free rider paying £00 for content , and like many of the previous first wave of Internet cash bonfires was, as the article acknowledges, a product of too many bigger fools with too much venture capital that worked… until one day it just didn’t any more.
But it had moments of fun, and some nice long-form, thinky-piece, cuttings jobs..while it lasted.
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
My hunch: under 40s don’t do in depth news. The Guardian, which now only tries to appeal to the multicultural urban young, will collapse as its older readers die off and there’s a decline in readers with an attention span longer than a gnat. Some would find it hard to deal with the penultimate multi-clause sentence in this comment.
You’re not by any means wrong.
There. That’s my late afternoon litotes done and dusted.
Greg Simoncini
2 years ago
Ben Smith who was hoovered up to the NYT was the talent, of course, who published the Steele Dossier — one of the most egregious breaches of journalistic standards in recent memory. And given the breathtaking pace of such breaches, that is saying a lot.
J Bryant
2 years ago
I still can’t figure out if anyone knows how to run a profitable news site on the internet without pandering to the Left or the Right. Is there a significant market for an objective, high-quality on-line news and commentary site? And by “significant market” I mean a substantial number of people willing to buy subscriptions.
It is a little soon to tell, but it looks like the thing to do is ‘fund the reporter, not a magazine/paper’ where the reporters now have blogs, youtube channels and substacks. This implies that the rot in contemporary journalism has more to do with the editorial stance(s) and not that the art of investigative reporting has been completely lost.
Last edited 2 years ago by Laura Creighton
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
I still believe that news is changing… witness the rise of YouTube (and other) channels and the lacklustre performance of many corporate media outlets. I am over 60 and consume very little corporate media.
I’m sorry, but I find much of YouTube “news” to be appallingly one-sided and shallow, additionally most of these “journalists” do not have the resources to do any in-depth research, and are probably not concerned about it anyway as it’s mostly polemical. Jon Hawksley (above) sets out beautifully the pitfalls of most news outlets, and it is at its worst on-line.
I’m in my late 50’s and still read the Telegraph. Sometimes I hold my nose and squint at the Guardian, or one of the pathetic woke papers in the USA. I also speak French, and occasionally have a read of Le Monde or Le Figaro.
Jerry Carroll
2 years ago
How could a generation as self-referential and badly educated at this one even know what creativity or brilliance are?
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
I don’t actually know what Buzzfeed is, and have never heard of any of the people or organisations mentioned in this article except Disney and Axel Springer, obviously, and also Vice.
The problems with news coverage are:
The consequences have been disastrous in politics where even if someone did try to think a policy through they do not have the information to do so.
UnHerd tries with better researched articles with some interesting comments but they are not organised over time to provide a useful, evolving and corrected context for reference.
I have a higher opinion than you do of UnHerd’s ability and track record in the provision of contextualised news and opinion.
That said, have an upvote, because I appreciate the soundness & completeness of your enumeration of the problems with news coverage..
I think you’re onto something.
Whilst articles have links to similar pieces, they do not refer back to similar articles and pieces on the same subjects (unless the author explicitly or deliberately refers back)
On more general and wider repeat topics – perhaps articles should have an editorial refresher section – ‘What we have said; what we got right, what we didn’t’ almost. Perhaps not that crude but you get the point.
It would tie the story back to the main theme
Oh I’d really value that part about referencing what we got right, especially at the present time when Putin has turned out to be such an idiot.
Prior to the Ukraine war writers and and commenters would praise him endlessly, with just a few brave souls calling out his emperor’s nakedness – it would be lovely to see such poor assessments highlighted.
Does anyone remember journalists? I do. There are no longer many left.
What a good analysis! So few articles even mention the broader context of events, opting to hit the most immediate (or most click-baitable) high points. Perhaps journalists are necessarily catering to readers’ short attention spans, but it would help in understanding events if their contexts could at least be summarized in news articles.
The two linked developments…once content became digitised in the late 1990s, was the unstoppable rise of the move to video, and overwhelming importance of citizen journalists..ie not really journalists, just people with smartphones who happen to be the on the spot.
The 9/11 events were the last hurrah of mainly professional journalists filming an event in real time, the plane crash into the Hudson River the first real social media news event. By the time of the Bataclan the news organisations were following social media not leading it.
The trends are continuing today.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a place for professional journalists, just that it is not the central place at the heart of events.
The real winners in this, so far, haven’t been any legacy media organisations but, I would say, are the Apples, Samsungs , Googles and Microsofts, and all the various iterations of content aggregation platforms..especially for video.
I remember, as an interested party, then running a news and photo agency, having to try and construct a commercial survival strategy as the owner founder of a company whose entire addressable market was shrinking faster than a polythene bag on a bonfire.
At one point I noted the market cap of Google exceeded the entire market cap of the entire quoted media sector of the UK..Papers, magazines, TV, Radio…everything.
Pretty soon after it exceeded the combined market cap of the sector in the UK and the USA.
Buzzfeed to me was, like the Huffington Post, a content stealer and free rider paying £00 for content , and like many of the previous first wave of Internet cash bonfires was, as the article acknowledges, a product of too many bigger fools with too much venture capital that worked… until one day it just didn’t any more.
But it had moments of fun, and some nice long-form, thinky-piece, cuttings jobs..while it lasted.
My hunch: under 40s don’t do in depth news. The Guardian, which now only tries to appeal to the multicultural urban young, will collapse as its older readers die off and there’s a decline in readers with an attention span longer than a gnat. Some would find it hard to deal with the penultimate multi-clause sentence in this comment.
You’re not by any means wrong.
There. That’s my late afternoon litotes done and dusted.
Ben Smith who was hoovered up to the NYT was the talent, of course, who published the Steele Dossier — one of the most egregious breaches of journalistic standards in recent memory. And given the breathtaking pace of such breaches, that is saying a lot.
I still can’t figure out if anyone knows how to run a profitable news site on the internet without pandering to the Left or the Right. Is there a significant market for an objective, high-quality on-line news and commentary site? And by “significant market” I mean a substantial number of people willing to buy subscriptions.
It is a little soon to tell, but it looks like the thing to do is ‘fund the reporter, not a magazine/paper’ where the reporters now have blogs, youtube channels and substacks. This implies that the rot in contemporary journalism has more to do with the editorial stance(s) and not that the art of investigative reporting has been completely lost.
I still believe that news is changing… witness the rise of YouTube (and other) channels and the lacklustre performance of many corporate media outlets. I am over 60 and consume very little corporate media.
True but baby and bathwater- quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
I’m sorry, but I find much of YouTube “news” to be appallingly one-sided and shallow, additionally most of these “journalists” do not have the resources to do any in-depth research, and are probably not concerned about it anyway as it’s mostly polemical. Jon Hawksley (above) sets out beautifully the pitfalls of most news outlets, and it is at its worst on-line.
Yes, I was impressed with J.Hawksley’s accuracy and thoroughness.
I’m in my late 50’s and still read the Telegraph. Sometimes I hold my nose and squint at the Guardian, or one of the pathetic woke papers in the USA. I also speak French, and occasionally have a read of Le Monde or Le Figaro.
How could a generation as self-referential and badly educated at this one even know what creativity or brilliance are?
I don’t actually know what Buzzfeed is, and have never heard of any of the people or organisations mentioned in this article except Disney and Axel Springer, obviously, and also Vice.
Yeah me neither. Maybe it was our combined disinterest that brought it down!
Great article. Also, doy.