June 13, 2024
Thursday Open Comments
This week’s Dispatch Interview presented an interesting character. Host Jamie Weinstein talked about news and podcasts with, as the website says, “Andy Mills—host of Reflector and a co-creator of the New York Times’ ‘The Daily’ podcast”.
The discussion about how the NYT hires journalists was probably the most interesting for its most striking tidbit: that they aren’t hired to start reporting on local government, but rather to scan social media sites for whatever is most inflammatory.
It wasn’t completely surprising, other than in the recognition that today’s journalism relies entirely on clickbait, while no longer promising to deliver news of local relevance to local readers. If true, it actually serves as a robust case against keeping the newspaper industry alive. Who needs newspapers if they just summarize the worst of Facebook and Twitter/X. If true, they don’t have the intention of providing what used to be considered local news at all. Where’s the value in that?
"It's hard to overstate the role Twitter played in the development of 'journalism' in the current environment," says Mr. Mills. Funny, one of Mr. David French's personalities wrote a whole article on that for some niche news/commentary website.
Good morning. Back from Bird Time. I saw only one cat today.