Thread by @Cajsa

There is a lot that is wrong with the media. Some problems are structural. Some are economic. Some are our own damn fault. There are some things we can do.

Structurally, the media remains very much in the hands of white men. Even though we see more diversity in the public face, there is little progress where the decisions are made.

This study looks at more than the US, but then the structural problems are broader than the US.

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/race-and-leade…

Who owns the media and who makes the editorial decisions on what to cover are critical questions in improving the quality of the media. Doesn't it seem likely that if the newspapers had a Labor beat that was even a 10th of the Business section, wages might not be stagnant?

Perhaps if editors wanted more reporting on justice and less on crime we might not be jailing more of our people than any other country. We need to demand better than window dressing diversity so more people of color are making the decisions

The economics of the media have been upended by the internet.

To be continued...

OK, we know that the old advertiser-underwritten newspapers delivered to your door have more or less become unsustainable. Now their revenue has to come with click-based advertising and subscriptions. This causes two problems.

Click-based advertising rewards sensationalism and disincentivizes investigative reporting. The parasites who take a story from legacy media and rewrite it with a more sensational frame and a clickbait headline make more off a story than the newspaper who paid for the reporting

Of course, they do not put up paywalls that keep people from reading their parasitic rewrites of legacy media so in a way, they serve a purpose. Who can afford to subscribe to everything? Most people don't know to use their local library's online portal and rely on free sites

News consumption is no longer just one paper read from front to back. Now someone might read a NYT article, 2 from WP, another from The Atlantic, and a couple from AP. But unlike a buffet, there's a fee for every dish. So people look for it elsewhere, rehashed.

But the parasitic republishers usually have an agenda so their rewriting may inject bias as well as sensationalism. Legacy media, imperfect as it is, has a public mission. Parasitic media exist to make money off other people's work.

So, why don't the major media outlets form a consortium that allows you to subscribe to all of them for one fee divided among them. Or maybe form a couple of competing ones. The NY Special with the Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, & NYMag or the DC Special with WP, National Memo,

and a few others. Or the 6 major dailies. It's not like this is too hard for a database to manage.

But this still does not address the sad fact that news media that adhere to traditional standards cost a lot while propaganda is free.

I am no fan of Nathan Robinson and think his ethics (coaching Reade's brother) scrape the bottom of the barrel, but when he's right, he is right.
currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-tr…

The internet is full of free bullshit and expensive facts. And not just for politics. Serious research publications are costly, but letmesellyouquackery (dot)com is freefreefree.

We need foundations to get into the business of funding fact-based reporting. We need unions to endow a labor reporter at the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post, full disclosure, but fully funded. We need the @FordFoundation and other civic-minded foundations

to fund news reporting or to fund scholarship subscriptions for those at or below 130% of poverty. We need newspapers to begin hiring again, not the constantly shrinking newsrooms.

Then lastly, we need to be better news consumers and much, much better at sharing news. When we see a clickbait headline, look for a legacy version of it (remember your library likely has a portal allowing you to read the major dailies with your library card.)

The town I went to school at cannot aggregate 100 students per year drawing from 15 neighboring communities and yet its library gives online reading access to NewsBank (all states major papers) and all the major national press.

We should try to share the original story. This also will increase our own credibility. If I see a story from one of the places that rewrite legacy media, I go look at the original (they usually have a link) and that is what I share.

If a headline says Democrat A destroyed Republican B in the Senate today, realize before clicking that this did not happen and move on. If a headline sounds incredible, it is, and move on.

Let's focus on sharing original fact-finding sites and not sharing repurposing sites. Let's recognize that the right is not the only place with BS propaganda sites. I like Ad Fortes though Wonkette is a humor site.
adfontesmedia.com

I think it's funny Wonkette gets rated since I read it for the snark, not the news.

Anyway, we are part of the problem and insofar as that is true, we can act to change it for the better.