[HN Gopher] The local news crisis is deepening America's divides ___________________________________________________________________ The local news crisis is deepening America's divides Author : samizdis Score : 235 points Date : 2022-07-04 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.axios.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com) | Linda703 wrote: | bilsbie wrote: | I think a local news publication could be done as a non profit | with mostly volunteers. Kind of like an open source project. | | There are enough people that enjoy sharing what's going on and | writing that it could be workable. | | Maybe someone here could set up a sort of franchise that makes it | easier for local communities to get set up. | | (Idea for a ycombinator startup?) | drorco wrote: | To me it seems like this is the symptom of a dying industry, the | newspaper industry. I can't think of many people who are willing | to pay for newspapers or news websites, let alone watch their | ads(!). Eventually these papers are for-profit businesses so it's | either go bankrupt, or find a way to make money no matter what. | It seems that those who survived so far, are picking the latter, | each to its own extent. | | Hopefully, there'd be a new, sensible way of earning money for | decent free press, and this is just a limbo stage. | bumblebritches5 wrote: | elzbardico wrote: | I always admire the self-importance journalists assign to | themselves. Most local news was and would ever be utter trash. | Small town journalism could only survive by peddling to some | powerful local group or a political enterprise. With all its | problems, social media has proven over and over to be a far more | useful tool for communities. | teddyh wrote: | Social media, _maybe_. Social (and other) _ad-driven_ media? | Certainly not. | skeeter2020 wrote: | >> With all its problems, social media has proven over and over | to be a far more useful tool for communities. | | I just LOVE how you proclaim this, without first seeing (a) the | cosequences of social media (good or bad) 30+ years from now, | and (b) whatever disrupts current social media next. | betwixthewires wrote: | I don't buy it. | | When you live in a small community, you get local news from your | neighbors and friends, and Facebook if you have it (Facebook is | essentially replacing the local news outlet in small towns, and | that's worse than the problem stated in the article, but that's a | different discussion). If it's important you'll hear about it. If | it's unimportant you'll probably hear about it too. | | The same applies to national news. 90% of it is unimportant. If | it is actually important, like the fact that your bread prices | will go up due to a war in Ukraine, you'll hear about it. | jarjoura wrote: | Sure, but what about medium sized communities? | | The Bay Area has lots of local news outlets and even more local | "boots on the ground" community blogs run by volunteers. I | don't know if that's true around the rest of the country | though. | bilsbie wrote: | A big issue is major corporations buying up lots of local news | stations too. | | I found this video extremely eye opening. Worth a watch if you | haven't seen it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q_hGKT5FI78 | ReactiveJelly wrote: | I assume they do that because local news isn't profitable and | is always on the risk of failing? | xyst wrote: | Nobody else to blame but the newspaper industry themselves. | Failure to begin modernizing/digitizing their systems in the | 1990s caused them to make very hasty decisions in the mid 2000s | and 2010s (such as relying on advertising models created by | Google/Facebook). | mrkurt wrote: | The local newspapers failed, yes. But that's normal. Had there | been a healthy market for local news, they'd have been | replaced. | | What actually happened is that the revenue available to local | news got consolidated. Classifieds and local ads got rolled up | by Craigslist/Google/Facebook. None of these companies have an | interest in local news. | | There's not much of a fix for this. Until we come up with a | better way to pay for local news, there's no choice the | "newspaper industry" could have made to thrive. Fighting | consolidation is a good idea, though, and might help a new | model emerge. | abathur wrote: | Citation needed? How would digitizing their systems have saved | the industry from all three of its primary revenue streams | being hoovered up by free online classifieds, free debundled | online news, and online advertising? | | If you're going to blame the industry, it seems weird to claim | it's because of strategic mistakes made in the 2 decades after | peak circulation and not the moment ad revenue became | indispensable? | jarjoura wrote: | For me, the biggest problem is that news media is allowed to | control the narrative by injecting bias into the coverage. We all | know language choice has a strong power to manipulate and shift | people's perspectives on what needs to be raw facts. | | Everything is a crisis, everything is a Watergate, everything is | leading up to WW3. | | In a journalism course I took at university, the "hello world" | assignment is to write an article without bias. They teach | journalists that writing emotionally was considered amateur and | unprofessional. This is basic stuff that all these hundreds of | thousands of professionals know on day one. | | Yet, here we are, we're now in a world where the more bias you | can inject into the news, the better the ratings, and the deeper | the divide goes. | uniqueuid wrote: | In research on effects of local news, there is one really tricky | part. | | We don't yet know what precisely the "local" benefit is. Many of | the relevant studies investigate the effects of local newspapers | closing (or opening, rarely). But they imply that there is | something special about local reporting that can't be supplied by | national news. | | The best answer comes from a ~10 year old study [1] that suggests | there is a mutual reinforcing effect of local news, community | embedding (i.e. social capital) and social engagement (i.e. | volunteering etc.) | | I wish there was a better model of (1) what it is in particular | in local news that is beneficial and (2) how it affects people | (positively and negatively). | | [1] Rojas, H., Shah, D. V., & Friedland, L. A. (2011). A | communicative approach to social capital. Journal of | Communication, 61(4), 689-712. | claudiulodro wrote: | There are a number of studies showing what is beneficial | specifically about local news: | | - "Academic studies suggest that a lack of local media coverage | is associated with less informed voters, lower voter turnouts, | and less engaged local politicians." [0] | | - "We examine how local newspaper closures affect public | finance outcomes for local governments. Following a newspaper | closure, municipal borrowing costs increase by 5 to 11 basis | points, costing the municipality an additional $650 thousand | per issue." [1] | | Without local news people don't vote as much, are less informed | about the issues, and politicians have less oversight. Local | news fills a very important role in society. | | [0] https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/public-finance- | loc... [1] | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555 | gruez wrote: | > There are a number of studies showing what is beneficial | specifically about local news: | | keyword here is "associated". | | Does lack of local media coverage cause "less informed | voters, lower voter turnouts, and less engaged local | politicians", or is it the reverse? It certainly seems | plausible. If you don't care about politics at all, you're | probably happy sitting at home watching daytime national TV | rather than reading the local paper. | | The same applies to newspaper closures being associated with | higher borrowing costs. Towns that are on a downward spiral | would cause higher borrowing costs (who wants to borrow to a | town with a dwindling tax base?) as well as causing local | media establishments to shut down. | pyinstallwoes wrote: | Isn't it simply based on experiencing reality? Local news is | directly experienced, and when all news was within the sphere | of experienced events, it was good. Modernity has stretched the | sphere of news to events that are not directly experienced in | reality and thus lead to here-say and bias to authority vs | conviction of certainty through direct experience. | uniqueuid wrote: | That's one possibility. But you can always construct a | scenario where the opposite holds. | | I.e. your local paper may cater to a part of the community | whose perspective you don't share, or they may be self- | congratulatory snobs, or they may otherwise aggravate local | polarization. | | In other words, access to local news may help some people | realize how little they connection feel towards their | neighbors. | pyinstallwoes wrote: | Said another way, it seems clear that conflict between | people has been becoming more extreme as a consequence of | news shifting to a belief based system due to the lower | probability that any news source heard is something that | can be directly experienced. | RajT88 wrote: | > your local paper may cater to a part of the community | whose perspective you don't share, or they may be self- | congratulatory snobs, or they may otherwise aggravate local | polarization | | It cannot possibly be worse than localized social media | like Nextdoor. | Dan_Sylveste wrote: | >your local paper may cater to a part of the community | whose perspective you don't share | | Local papers are usually both barely profitable and locally | funded. Local businesses, similarly, are usually scraping | by. A local paper that alienates a significant fraction of | the community doesn't usually survive. Local reporting is | usually straightforward and factual, therefore. | | That's the other reason local reporting is important, | because it can't afford biases. It's where journalists | learn to be impartial. | jollybean wrote: | I believe local news tends to be a more 'news' and a bit less | 'narrative'. | | I also believe that the more local the news is, the more | relatable. | | From Canada, I can get PBS/NPR Vermont, and the sheer | quaintness of the local issues from Burlington Vt. I mean it | feels like going back in time but in a good way. 'The New | Playhouse' opened up, the 'Fireworks Display Will Be Here' etc. | - it's the complete opposite of Cable news and Twitter, which | is incendiary and ideological. | | National narrative news satisfied an ostensible intellectual | aspect of our orientation, but I'm not sure it's useful in the | magnitude we consume it. | jarjoura wrote: | There are so many mundane things that happen in local | communities that I'm not sure you need research to show how | invaluable it is to local readers. Yet, is noise to everyone | else. | | I could think of a few, new businesses opening up, or worse, | shutting down, or changes to government policies that affect | residents. Maybe you're in a farming community and there's a | big corporate buyout that's going to make your life more | difficult, or something to celebrate. What about new parks | opening up, or changes to traffic flow, or even, a new stop | light being added at a dangerous intersection. | | These are all things people locally care about, and true, they | probably wouldn't actively seek them out, but having it on the | front page of their news source would definitely be interesting | enough to read. | h2odragon wrote: | Wait, i thought "Nextdoor" etc were filling that niche with | neighborhood vigilance and "my neighbor's sunflower is spying on | me" posts. Also recall lots of words about how "filter bubbles" | are bad and all forums must be acceptable to all society so that | "badthink" doesn't grow. | | There's real, local and or interest focus forums still; I'm sure. | Those enjoying them aren't gonna wanna talk about them much for | fear they get ruined by strangers who "know whats best." | LinuxBender wrote: | _Those enjoying them aren 't gonna wanna talk about them much | for fear they get ruined by strangers who "know whats best."_ | | This is absolutely a thing. I have servers hosted on my local | _tiny_ ISP that only permit my local ISP 's CIDR blocks as | there is really no need for others to access them. It's | literally for the local community. I might set up a VPN | endpoint for people that travel some day. | anewpersonality wrote: | webdoodle wrote: | It's called Operation Mockingbird, which is coordinated at the | yearly Billionaire's Summer Camp, A.K.A. the Sun Valley | Conference, in Ketchum Idaho. This conference is where all the | heads of the media companies come to get there marching orders | and to further consolidate the media industry (See Disney). | Parasites like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Peter | Theil, and many others attend this meeting. | | FYI - Ketchum Idaho is a small Ski resort community that sits in | a very tight box canyon. 8 Bigs rigs could barricade the entire | town, just by blocking a few bridges, or alternatively those | points could be used by peaceful protestors to haze and voice | there discontent to the very parasites that have destroyed this | country and enslaved the minds of the masses. The weapons grade | psychological warfare they conduct on us is being ignored by the | politicians in Washington (both parties) because they also use | those techniques to keep themselves in power. | | Now is the time to rise up against the lies and deceit. Please | come join me in Sun Valley on July 6th, to shine some truth on | the cretins that have buried us in disinformation and war | propaganda. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | Is there a point where Americans will give up on the Union or | will it take a Yugoslavia war? | bee_rider wrote: | If part of the country tried to split off, who'd go fight to | take it back? I'm happy my successful state sends money to some | of the less successful ones, because I think every American | deserves their share of the pot, but I'm not going to go die | for the privilege of sending it. | thenerdhead wrote: | Can't honestly say I know anyone outside of my parents who reads | the newspaper. Sounds like the newspaper is dying, not local news | that has shifted to be digital. | [deleted] | sbf501 wrote: | Still need journalists though, even for digital. | pgrote wrote: | >local news that has shifted to be digital. | | Our local newspaper has a few actual journalists reporting on | what is happening in government at city, county and state | level. Just a few since all the layoffs. Sports is hanging on, | but has been taken over by The Athletic. | | Real journalism concerning business, arts and suburb cities is | gone. The only time it is legitimately covered is if it is | being covered elsewhere by local TV stations. | | The newspaper website is a malignant entity infecting everyone | with trackers and ads. | | They are attempting video, but it lacks the content and | production of even a mildly successful youtube creator. | | I still subscribe to the digital product to help support the | remaining journalists. | Clubber wrote: | >"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said | Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and | primary author of the report, in a statement. | | Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome | and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of | local newspapers. | xkbarkar wrote: | Why is the closure of local news considered spurred by the | pandemic though?? | | I personally stopped reading news outlets after the first Trump | year. Every single news outlet was full of exactly the same Trump | vitriol ( I lean left so, not strange ). And to make it worse, I | am not even american in the US. | | Why read the exact same opEd in the local and the state news?? At | least in my home country, since about 1 year after Trump I pretty | much scaled from maybe 5 outlets to 2. Since covid times I read | one left and one right ( I used to only read left ) and then | subscribe to weekly papers that support investigative journalism. | Honestly I feel local news shot themselves in the foot with Trump | hysteria. | | Or maybe it was already in decline and Trump times just made it | that much more evident. | robonerd wrote: | > _Or maybe it was already in decline and Trump times just made | it that much more evident._ | | I think it's this one. Local news has been in a death spiral | for 20 years at least, I distinctly remember adults in the late | 90s and early 00s bemoaning the demise of all the local papers, | with one left standing but also dying. During Trump times they | latched onto reporting about national news instead of local in | a desperate bid for relevancy, but obviously couldn't compete | with national news. | FerretFred wrote: | It's the same in the UK, by and large. We have a small group of | <strikeout>advertisement sellers</strikeout> news media companies | that absorb local papers and churn out overly-similar content | with different newspaper names on the front page. The online | versions of these are sooooo bad - practically no actual written | content with any depth, interspersed with video "articles" which | incorporate more ads. Then try and find the actual news in among | the clickbait links. Want better access? "Simply register and | answer some suspiciously personal questions"... | | I tried to do some research recently: could I consult their | archives? "Nothing older than a couple of years", so no. | Photographers? "If you have photos or videos please upload them | to us". Timely coverage of local issues? "You won't believe what | British Seniors aged 55-plus are buying today!!" | | As far as I'm concerned they can crash and burn, and maybe groups | of like-minded citizens can resurrect real local newspapers, | albeit online only. | javajosh wrote: | _> groups of like-minded citizens can resurrect real local | newspapers_ | | Social media is the killer, because in a perfect world it would | serve precisely this purpose. But instead of replicating the | means of production for each locality, you share one globally - | which also helps concerned readers from different geographies | pool their resources. A fine vision, and its true, but we see | now how severe the downside is: the dissociation of reader from | event is the wiggle room in which professional rhetoricians can | form new and exciting memetic viruses. And virtually no-one has | the psychic immune system to wade through it on a daily basis | and not get infected with _something_. These viruses are | designed to serve a narrow aim, and the side-effects are | ignored, and this is what leads to the meltdown we have now. | | Of course, a simple behavior change can help: pay attention to | news in proportion to its physical proximity to you! The knee- | jerk reaction to see a national or global trend when anything | bad happens is bad for the soul. We should be open to seeing | trends, of course, but only slightly. At least a little bit of | stubborn resistance to inferring a trend from two anecdotes is | good for the soul, I think. | [deleted] | throwaway8689 wrote: | My local news site has byline titles including 'Multimedia | Reporter' and 'SEO Journalist'. | lvl102 wrote: | Who watches or reads local news? I haven't watched for years. | Close to two decades. My guess is specific demographics. It's | selection bias. | throwaway1777 wrote: | How do you figure out what's going on around you then? Word of | mouth (online or otherwise)? | windowsrookie wrote: | For me word of mouth I suppose. If I don't hear about it from | somebody else, it probably wasn't worth knowing. | | I think all this "news" people read/watch is mostly useless | filler. I don't miss any of it. | shrimp_emoji wrote: | I use local newspaper articles online and Reddit, but I | mostly _don 't_ figure out what's going on around me. :D | seereadhack wrote: | Axios is expanding into local news coverage. This is their PR and | wow the bullet point approach sometimes really just doesn't do it | for me. | | For a more involved take of the underlying topic, consider _News | for the Rich, White, and Blue_ by Nikki Usher. | http://cup.columbia.edu/book/news-for-the-rich-white-and-blu... | | I don't agree with all of Usher's takeaways but there's a lot of | good stuff in there. And as to the headline - yeah, sure, the | "local news crisis" is partly causative in the polarization sure | but lazy and biased coverage can compound all sorts of nasty | dynamics. | | While I'm here, Mark Lamont-Hill and Todd Brewster's _Seen and | Unseen_ would be my pick for a recent media read. Lots of great | history, recent and less so, as well as analysis: | https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Seen-and-Unseen/Marc-... | pqdbr wrote: | If, like me, you read "Axios" as that js library, and PR as | Pull Request, you too, my friend, need to take a break. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | I don't know what the "solution" is, but it was really obvious | when my "local" paper turned into a repeater for CNN. It used to | be pretty poor, but it was never this bad. I don't subscribe it | to him particularly, but this Trump-Era literally broke a lot of | people's brains, it has a downstream effect. | whatever1 wrote: | It unpleasant to watch journalists who were screaming every day | that the guy is tearing apart almost every US institution and | irrecoverably destroys this country, with the ultimate goal of | him staying in power. | | The journalists have seen these stories from other failed | states, and they cannot unsee the similarities. And they were | right. Just take a look at the proceedings of the Jan 6th | committee. If it was not a dozen of people in the correct roles | (mostly Republicans), on Jan 6th, he could had indeed achieved | his goal. | | It is us who were closing our eyes for 4 years, reassuring | ourselves that his presidency was a normal presidency. | | Nothing was normal. | irrational wrote: | I feel like, in some ways, Nextdoor has stepped into this void. | I've even noticed that the local city government uses Nextdoor to | try to get messages out. However, most of the content on Nextdoor | is a dumpster fire: what were those police sirens for? What was | that loud noise? Look at this ring doorbell video of this person | that was trying my doorknob at 3am! Our car was stolen at 5am! | These homeless camps are really driving down our property values! | I saw coyotes walking down the street! These fireworks are | upsetting Snookums! | Mountain_Skies wrote: | >Look at this ring doorbell video of this person that was | trying my doorknob at 3am! Our car was stolen at 5am! | | Both of those seem relevant to me if they're in my neighborhood | or nearby. Crime is low where I live but when it happens, it | tends to happen in sprees when one person or a small group of | people get away with one thing and suddenly decide they can get | away with it repeatedly. If there's a pattern of activity going | on, I'd like to know about. | bcrosby95 wrote: | Yeah, we used nextdoor to get back some stuff taken from our | car. Apparently they walked across our small city and | took/left stuff as they went along. | havblue wrote: | Nextdoor posts about crime almost always contain a reaction | that normalizes it in one horrific way or another. Like if | people complain about their car being broken into, someone | always says that they should just leave their doors unlocked. | | If someone complains about their political signs being stolen | it results in someone condemning the content of their stolen | sign or complaints like, "yeah but signs on (opposite side of | issue) get stolen all the time and you don't see us complaining | about it!" So even on the local level it turns into neighbor | versus neighbor easily despite careful moderation. | parkingrift wrote: | Attempted entry at 3am, grand theft auto, homeless camps, and | coyotes? These are your examples of NextDoor toxicity? | | These are downright useful things to know. I've seen comical | behavior on NextDoor. If it was just people warming me about | coyotes I'd still have the app installed. | the_only_law wrote: | I can't imagine having the level of paranoia as Nextdoor | posters, that shit would break me. | | On the other hand ,I find myself not doing certain things I'd | like to do, like evening walks around the neighborhood because | some shut in might call the cops on me. | throwaway1777 wrote: | I don't understand why whose types of nextdoor posts are a | dumpster fire? Those seem like exactly the kind of things | people actually care about. If I hear a car crash down the | street I'm gonna go take a look. | thewebcount wrote: | Well for one thing, all of the things GP mentioned are fear- | based posts. Furthermore, they attract the worst types of | responses, which then sucks in empathetic posters who | unwittingly respond to trolls and leads pretty directly to | arguments. At least that's what I've witnessed the few times | I've logged in to check on things of local interest. | the_only_law wrote: | I agree those examples are bad. I usually see something like | "weird car I don't recognize is in the neighborhood!!!!", And | ofc the explanation cant be something simple, like visiting | friends or family, someone checking out homes for sale, | someone got a new car, etc. It's obviously a cunning criminal | staking out the place in broad daylight. | b3nji wrote: | rr808 wrote: | Its worth subscribing to (yes Paying!) a local newspaper or two | if you can find any that are decent. Especially local politicians | really need some journalists to investigate and report on what | they're up to. | jollybean wrote: | My bet is that this education ratio issue has existed since the | dawn of time. | dredmorbius wrote: | Among the interesting developments is the growing set of non- | profit newsrooms. | | There are the venerable institutions of PBS and NPR in the US, | broadcasting on television and radio respectively, as well as | increasingly online through video and podcasts. | | ProPublica is probably the best known of the recent arrivals, | providing investigative journalism at a national level. | | I'd submitted a couple of items on Chicago's public radio | station, WBEZ, acquiring one of the city's two remaining daily | print papers, the _Sun Times_. | | https://chicago.suntimes.com/2022/1/18/22890454/chicago-sun-... | | The other, the _Tribune_ , was acquired by the vampire-capital | firm Alden Capital somewhat over a year ago and has been emitting | coronal mass ejections of reporters, columnists, and staff, | since, though many curiously remain on the paper's masthead...). | | WBEZ didn't pay for the acquisition, _it was paid to take over | the paper_. Which might tell you something of the market for | print news media presently. | | Another notable example is the _Baltimore Banner_ , which | officially launched two weeks ago on June 14. It's another non- | profit, is looking to expand to 70 journalists. It is online- | only. | | https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/baltimore-banner-offic... | | But both the _Sun Times_ and the _Banner_ are _big-city papers_. | They 're _not_ papers reaching into small towns and rural areas, | in which the news desert truly exists. | | I see two possible paths forward. One is for news-as-public-good, | in which jouranlism is publicly (and preferably locally) | supported. Another is a return to the partisan press of the past, | notably the 19th and early 20th centuries. Given the dominance of | right-wing talk radio, Fox, OANN, Breitbart, and similar | organisations, it seems at least one political party is already | largely there. | tootie wrote: | I work in non-profit media and it's really tough. Getting funds | from membership is an uphill battle. Executive comp is much | lower than private media, but at the same time it's | relentlessly criticized for being too high because the numbers | are disclosed. The Baltimore Banner exists based on the | personal largesse of one person who tried and failed to buy the | Baltimore Sun so it's going to have a hard time maintaining | impartiality or surviving in a competitive market. | dredmorbius wrote: | Largely agreed, known, and understood. See also my reply | here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31981720 | jeffbee wrote: | We also enjoy a local not-for-profit news organization called | _Cityside_ which covers Oakland and Berkeley, which together is | a city about the same size as Baltimore. "Local reporters" who | are on the staff of the SF Chronicle and Bay Area News Group, | the local legacy newspaper organizations, are always whining on | Twitter about how locals don't support news any more, but the | existence of these successful, award-winning nonprofit news | outlets shows that people will support good reporting, but they | won't support more of the same thing the big newspapers have | been doing for decades. | carapace wrote: | In SF there was briefly something called The Bay Citizen that | was funded by Warren Hellman. | | > The Bay Citizen was a non-profit news organization covering | the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded as the Bay Area | News Project in January 2010 with money provided by Warren | Hellman's Hellman Family Foundation. On May 26, 2010 the | organization launched the website, baycitizen.org. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bay_Citizen | | But he passed away and it merged with the Center for | Investigative Reporting. | | > The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit | news organization based in Emeryville, California.[1] It was | founded in 1977 as the nation's first nonprofit investigative | journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi- | platform newsroom, with investigations published on the | Reveal website, public radio show and podcast, video pieces | and documentaries and social media platforms, reaching over a | million people weekly. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Investigative_Repor. | .. | jeffbee wrote: | I really think that anything started by a bazillionaire as | an instant nonprofit enterprise is bound to fail. It goes | for Warren Hellman and Mitch Kapor and the rest of them. | Those that start with an immediately sustainable business | model, like Cityside, seem to persist. | ilamont wrote: | In my city, the local chamber of commerce put together a plan | for a nonprofit local news website, something that is truly | needed for the reasons cited in TFA. However, while the virtual | masthead proclaims "Independent. Accurate. Unbiased." the board | of directors is made up mostly of wealthy property developers | and people connected with the local real estate industry. | There's no way they won't put their thumbs on the scale when it | comes to vetting the chief editor, providing coverage of | community meetings around development, and endorsing candidates | for mayor and city council. | jeffbee wrote: | You have the same problem with commercial newspapers, though. | The L.A. Times is nothing more than a 100-year-long real | estate pump and dump. Almost every newspaper in America | relies on car dealer ads, and will therefore never say | anything even slightly negative about cars. Cars and real | estate have had their thumbs and the rest of their hand on | the scale for a long time. | dredmorbius wrote: | Look especially to the Harrison Gray Otis and Harry | Chandler eras. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times#Otis_era | | Or other papers / publishers --- William Randolph Hearst ( | _Citizen Kane_ wasn 't just whistling Dixie), or Robert | McCormick and the _Chicago Tribune_. | throwaway6734 wrote: | The Baltimore Banner's first few stories have been absolutely | amazing. | pessimizer wrote: | Non-profits are funded by people (possibly lots of people with | a little money, but far more usually a couple of people with a | lot of money) who have interests, or by foundations that are | funded directly and completely by government. They are not | news-as-public-good. | | Non-profit doesn't mean "benevolent charity." | dredmorbius wrote: | This is true, though the point is more that news organisation | _don 't seem to be possible to run as for-profit entities_ in | the long run. | | I'm well aware of issues with not-for-profit / NGO | organisation and charity: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31493135 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28044444 | | And specifically addressing information / publishing: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27802315 | ezekiel11 wrote: | mpclark wrote: | The explanation is really, really easy though. Nearly all the | advertising has gone away. There's no money in the business | past chum boxes now. And the same is happening to the trade | press and specialist magazines and all the other good media | things we used to have. Not all progress is forward progress. | ezekiel11 wrote: | towaway15463 wrote: | Is hyper-local news necessary anymore? If you think about the | role that newspapers filled it was to distribute information | broadly. We have many more ways of doing that now. Granted they | aren't as fully developed as newspapers eventually became but we | seem to be on track to build these new institutions. I think | we're simply in a transitional phase where the old medium is | dying and being replaced by a new one that is growing into its | role. | ck2 wrote: | Media doesn't make the divide. Ideology makes the divide. | | People don't drive around urban in massive trucks rolling coal | and/or own a dozen guns because of their news source, their news | source is because of what their "world view" is. | padseeker wrote: | I totally agree with this, and I don't know why you are getting | so many downvotes. When Fox news called Arizona for Biden, many | of their viewers were mad and there were anti fox news protests | because their typical audience was mad they weren't being told | what they wanted to hear. | | In a capitalist nation where supply and demand is everything, | some people treat the news and facts and information like a | product, and when people hear things they don't like they'll | find someone else to give them stories they want to hear like | Trump won massively and this election was stolen. | xbar wrote: | Not everyone can be right. Without the media to tell people | that they are right, how else will they know? | | The reinforcement and advertising loops are real and effective | at creating and expanding the divide. | | Perhaps you don't recall a time before there was such a thing | as Fox News. Back when the hardest new choice was: Dan Rather, | Peter Jennings, or Tom Brokaw? | JacobThreeThree wrote: | >Not everyone can be right. Without the media to tell people | that they are right, how else will they know? | | Not every media corporation can be right. | BrainVirus wrote: | anovikov wrote: | Not very relevant to the topic but maybe not all is lost for the | print media. | | I have switched away from online news to the print ones in the | last few months because: | | - this way i can avoid popups, jumping pieces of content | intentionally distracting me so i pay attention to ads | | - ads are not as stupid there (i don't live in the U.S. and i see | US-centric ads which are totally, completely out of relevance to | my demographic - from "senior living homes" to private jet | flights - with every kind of crazy shit in between but nothing i | ever buy or can think of buying) | | - content itself is a lot better edited, not clickbait-y (because | you can't fucking click on paper!) and overall seems to be | written by actually literate people, not some peasants that seem | to write online news pieces recently | | All in all, it dawns at me that at least for now, the Internet | has been a failure. It failed to deliver any positive life | changes we've been promised 25 years ago, and brought about many | negative ones. There are only two online resources relevant to me | that seem to make any positive value: Tinder and Upwork. Even of | them, Upwork seems to be a detriment to developed nations | (including U.S. that created it), serving mostly as a vehicle of | scams for fraudsters from the poor ones. | | Buying tickets online? It killed the airline industry. I can't | fly comfortably anymore unless i get that private jet, which i | can't afford. This is directly because of Internet facilitating | price comparison, and people "optimising" airlines by price alone | down to the drain. | | Trading stocks online? Only brought about day traders - one more | form of gambling. I'd be more than happy to go to the bank and | buy a paper mutual fund certificate, and lock it up in my safe. | | News online brought "targeting" and "optimisation" through search | bubbles and as a result, a society destroyed by political | divisions. | | Taxis online? Only a benefit in poor countries or in terribly | terribly overregulated ones in rich countries (think NYC). They | killed livelihoods of millions of people and killed quality of | service elsewhere. | | The list goes on. Internet seems to be more than just a failure - | it is a pure evil. It confronted us with ourselves (as opposed to | some polished, educated, even if overly rigid, central authority | that served as an interface before), and we turned out to be | monsters we had no idea we were. | | And because this thing has no way out of it, i am terrified at | the realisation that only thing that can save us may be some form | of communism, where the State will simply ban or mandate so many | things it will not be a market economy anymore. | | Including, most probably, a ban on free speech. I can't see a way | for free speech to work in a world of search bubbles and online | anonymity. Craziest conspiracy theories will inevitably replace | reality for a vast majority of people - who vote - this way. | | And democracy without free speech is a joke. | gruez wrote: | >I have switched away from online news to the print ones in the | last few months because: | | >- content itself is a lot better edited, not clickbait-y | (because you can't fucking click on paper!) and overall seems | to be written by actually literate people, not some peasants | that seem to write online news pieces recently | | clickbait might not be a thing, but attention grabbing | headlines to get you to read/buy the paper is still a thing. | Besides, most (all?) major news publications have an online | presence, and they're they're probably sharing | stories/headlines between the print/online formats so I doubt | there would be any difference in quality. | | >There are only two online resources relevant to me that seem | to make any positive value: Tinder and Upwork. | | Not wikipedia, google maps, or e-commerce? It seems like many | of the things that the internet provides have been so integral | to your life that you've forgotten about them. | | >Buying tickets online? It killed the airline industry. I can't | fly comfortably anymore unless i get that private jet, which i | can't afford. This is directly because of Internet facilitating | price comparison, and people "optimising" airlines by price | alone down to the drain. | | 1. Google flights provides legroom in addition to prices. | you're free to compare on price and comfort here. | | 2. I'm not sure how the alternative (not having comparison | shopping) is any better. Are you just hoping that the | benevolent airlines would always put customer comfort above | profits? | | >Trading stocks online? Only brought about day traders - one | more form of gambling. I'd be more than happy to go to the bank | and buy a paper mutual fund certificate, and lock it up in my | safe. | | Disagree. Now I can buy ETFs with management fees in the single | basis points (eg. 0.03% for VTI) with zero trading fees. In the | past I'd either have to contend with mutual funds with | exorbitant management fees (1-2%), or pay $50-$100 per trade. | anovikov wrote: | >Not wikipedia, google maps, or e-commerce? | | Google maps yes. You got me on that. Wikipedia, well, sort | of, yes... it had a good beginning but is losing | trustworthiness as it's being exploited more and more, it's | surely a good source of info, still. e-commerce - i bought | stuff online maybe 3-4x in my life (rare items that are never | stocked in shops). Food delivery apps are a particularly | notorious kind of evil, killing good businesses first. | | Flights - it's not just the legroom. Because people started | picking on the price, airlines had to get rid of business | class or make it very flexible in size (meaning - use crappy | "transformer" seats that can switch back to economy when | needed). Or just simply leave middle seat empty and call it | business. When price wasn't the only variable people chose | tickets by, airlines could be a lot more comfortable with | their costs and tried to sell premium product first - which | is natural for every other normal business, premium product | by definition brings higher margins. It's not just what i | choose, it's what other people choose. Here in EU, we simply | don't have any decent business class anywhere anymore. | | Stocks - ETFs were a thing before internet and they don't | require it. Vanguard exists since 1975 and it's fee structure | didn't change since. | skissane wrote: | > I can't fly comfortably anymore unless i get that private | jet, which i can't afford. | | Huh? Pick a decent airline, and long haul international | business class is pretty comfortable. First, I hear, is even | better. Expensive, but a heckuva lot less so than a private | jet. | acd wrote: | Younger generations need to pay for news. Local news is important | for democracy since local news feeds alerts national news. | | Ad networks by providing news for free is destroying democracy. | shadowgovt wrote: | How does one incentivize this? Because younger generations | ain't gonna do it for charity reasons; they don't have surplus | income to donate to charity. | ironmagma wrote: | Bring back pay per newspaper vending machines? They were | awful and broken all the time before, and now they're just | free. If it's cheap entertainment, I'd rather pay for that | than iTunes movies. | lotsofpulp wrote: | If people were willing to pay for them, why would they have | been made free in the first place? | ironmagma wrote: | Probably because it's cheaper to give them away than to | keep repairing haphazardly designed vending machines. | Maybe they should just make them like the snack vending | machines. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Based on the fact that newspaper businesses had many, | many decades to come up with a better machine, I would | assume the cost of developing this machine is not worth | it. | ironmagma wrote: | That's sort of ex-post-facto reasoning though. By that | logic, there's nothing that could save the newspapers, | because they had decades to do it and they didn't. | lotsofpulp wrote: | That is not the reasoning. | | The reasoning is for decades, newspapers sold many papers | and made a decent amount of money, compared to today. | | Therefore, the incentive to create better machines that | allow them to sell more and prevent theft was higher then | than today, and yet they did not. | | Either the technology did not exist back then, or more | likely, it simply was not worth the cost of better | machines for the additional revenue. | | Therefore, if it was not worth it back when newspapers | were in high demand, why would it be worth developing | today at a fraction of the demand? | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | > How does one incentivize this? | | "Local influencers" needs to become a thing, if it isn't | already. That's the answer to the local news problem. If you | want to know how to become a successful influencer just ask | the popular kids at a school. Yes quality of content matters, | but there's a mystical charisma component at the center of | it. | | Once local influencers have been established in an area then | quality can gradually take on more of a role. Those who | provide sensationalistic news will get their crowd, but some | (hopefully those with citations, less sensationalism, and | less bias) will eventually gain the status of "trustworthy". | And over time some will gain enough popularity to start | looking more like a normal business again, with local | sponsorships and the whole thing. | | This may seem a bit depressing at first but it's completely | normal. As publication relies less and less on expensive | machinery and elaborate organizations it will naturally | gravitate toward individuals. Conglomerates like Sinclair | only exist to pick on the carcasses of dead mediums. | robonerd wrote: | > _" Local influencers" needs to become a thing, if it | isn't already. That's the answer to the local news problem_ | | If that's the answer, then I hope the whole industry curls | up and dies now. If you want me to pay a single cent for | trash like that, you'd have to stick a gun in my face. | MetaWhirledPeas wrote: | I'm just being a realist, and I'm not suggesting people | will pay. I realize "influencer" is a trigger word, but | not all of them are Tik Tok dancers and vapid teens. I | lump people like YouTubers in here. They've learned how | to make money from sponsorships, and maybe that sort of | thing can happen at a local level too. And hopefully with | written media of some sort (written, not printed... so | blogs). | sicp-enjoyer wrote: | Paying for twitter screenshots? | mschuster91 wrote: | The problem is, many of our generation _can 't afford_ to pay | for local news that we barely have the time and the mental | energy to consume after working 10 or more hours and then | commuting. No, cutting our Netflix and switching it to some | local paper won't work either, because we don't need to engage | our brains with some random Netflix stuff. | | In contrast, pensioners have more than enough free time to read | the news and vote - as evidenced by just about every voter | turnout statistic. | | Want to fix politics? Make it possible for young people to | actually engage with democracy again. | [deleted] | tgv wrote: | > In contrast, pensioners have more than enough free time to | read the news and vote | | Not with that attitude. I'm reading a newspaper since I was | 14. If they don't make time to read a newspaper, they're just | not interested. Don't try to sugarcoat it with some pointless | victimization. | rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: | How many hours did you have to work to afford a place to | live, back then? Did that change somehow? | | If so, how can that affect the time left to entertain | oneself and read about the news? Also, how was the news | back then? Was it all about making marketing profile and | click-baiting? | meatsauce wrote: | You think politics is going to change the affordability? | | When have they ever done such a thing? | | Historically, politicians have moved that needle in only | one direction. | | As if some magic politician is going to suddenly give you | other people's money to pay rent? | | Get a good job. | | If you can't get a good job, then get some real | marketable skills. | | If you still can't get a job, then start a business. | meatsauce wrote: | We already have enough youthful political activists that are | 100% disconnected from the real world. | | Why would we want the youngest, least experienced, most | ideological, and frequently petulant to elect leaders? | | More youth voters won't fix a thing. It will, in fact, make | things a lot worse. | the_only_law wrote: | Instead we should elect geriatrics, who can barely speak up | half the time, or look like they're about to collapse from | good old American heart disease any minute. | dgb23 wrote: | Worse for whom? | windowsrookie wrote: | Sometimes I walk by the TV while my mother is watching the | local news. It seems to always just be reporting about | thefts/gunshots downtown, then some new product available, | followed by 15 minutes of weather and sports. I don't find much | value in any of that information. | yieldcrv wrote: | Not local really but I bit the bullet on NY Times, WSJ, | Bloomberg | | I miiight do LA Times (doubt) | | Paywall circumvention doesnt work well/at all on mobile | | I agree that ad bombing eyeball news is very low quality in | comparison to subscription news. Its a night and day | difference. Its distressing that nobody else I know can really | see or access these articles, being pulled by every clickbait | version of an event | throwaway1777 wrote: | Do you live in NY or DC? Otherwise this is pretty much the | opposite of supporting local news. | yieldcrv wrote: | Yes the opposite of local but congruent with paying at all | JacobThreeThree wrote: | >Younger generations need to pay for news. | | Add it to the list of things that younger generations are | somehow required to purchase. | | https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-are-killing-list... | juanani wrote: | djfobbz wrote: | Yet no mention of Operation Mockingbird! | irrational wrote: | The what? | georgia_peach wrote: | Are the towns busted because they no longer have propagandists? | Or, did the propagandists move on after the towns had already | been bled dry, & were no longer worth the effort? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird | | I'm old and from the city. The newspaper has always been a | puppet of hospitals, real estate brokerages, & car dealerships. | Part of how these companies get away with murder is by putting | the entirety of local media, print & broadcast, in their back | pockets. | | Unless you're paying something in the ballpark of Bloomberg | terminal prices, you're the product. | rayiner wrote: | The nationalization of news and politics in a country of 330 | million people is toxic. We're one country but we don't share a | single set of values. Even the notion of "blue America" and "red | America" is misleading. What would be unremarkable in San | Francisco would raise eyebrows in Baltimore. | | I noticed this acutely living in Atlanta for the better part of a | decade. Politics was not a big deal when I lived there. Atlanta | was "blue" and the rest of the state was "red" but politics was | forward looking and productive. The mayor when I was there, | Shirley Franklin, was truly put the city above partisanship. A | Democrat, she endorsed Mary Norwood, an independent, in 2017, | because the Democratic candidate was a protege of a mayor she | believed to have been corrupt: https://www.wabe.org/former- | atlanta-mayor-shirley-franklin-e.... She waved aside criticism | suggesting that she (a Black woman) should have endorsed the | Black Democratic candidate instead of Norwood, a white woman. | | Then in 2018 all hell broke loose when Georgia's governor's race | became the subject of national attention. The state became a | battleground in a proxy war between New York and Mississippi. | Racialist rhetoric reached a fever pitch in the New York Times | and Washington Post (but notably, the Atlanta Journal | Constitution was far more prudent). They made Georgia out to be | an unreformed Confederate backwater, instead of a state that's | the destination for huge numbers of Black residents leaving | California, Illinois, and New York, attracted by plentiful jobs, | low taxes, and an excellent public university system. The | national media completely misrepresented Georgia and the people | in it to the rest of the country. | dopylitty wrote: | > They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate | backwater | | They wouldn't be wrong. For example in April 2021 a black woman | from Md was drummed out of a wealthy town in GA for the crime | of being black and an educator[0]. This is the kind of thing | that happens all the time in the south and west. | | 0. https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-dei-crt- | schools-p... | overboard2 wrote: | >Cecelia Lewis was asked to apply for a Georgia school | district's first-ever administrator job devoted to diversity, | equity and inclusion. | | They disagreed with her politics. | halostatue wrote: | She _had_ no politics that they knew of. They disagreed | with willful misrepresentations of politics that she had | never expressed, and felt that they could get away with it | because of race politics in Georgia. | | And they did. | Ferrotin wrote: | barry-cotter wrote: | Being willing to be part of a DEI office is politics, | just like choosing to be a commissar rather than an | artillery officer is politics. It's deeply unfortunate | that Ms Lewis was unaware of that but it's going to | become clear over the next decade or two of backlash that | DEI is a loser, politically. People are going to either | attack it or dissociate from it. | pessimizer wrote: | Are you saying that being asked to apply for a job is a | political act? | overboard2 wrote: | >At first, the scope of the role gave Lewis pause. In her | current district, these responsibilities were split among | several people, and she'd never held a position dedicated | to anything as specific as that before. But she had | served on the District Equity Leadership Team in her | Maryland county and felt prepared for this new challenge. | She believed the job would allow her, as she put it, to | analyze the district's "systemic and instructional | practices" in order to better support "the whole child." | Ferrotin wrote: | _-david-_ wrote: | She was drummed out of town because she was supporting DEI | and CRT, not because she was black. | | Did you read the article? | | "This is not about the color of her skin. It's what she's | going to bring into our district and what she's going to | teach our children" | hgsgm wrote: | halostatue wrote: | Your statement suggests that you did _not_ actually read | the article. | | She was drummed out of town because white radical | Republicans made up positions that the educator in question | did not hold and had never hold (that you can pretend to | talk about CRT with respect to primary or secondary school | is indicative that you have bought into the propaganda; it | is a post-graduate law school concept, unless you're a | radical republican hell bent on fighting anything that does | anything other than support a white supremacist distortion | of history). | | The reality is that the moment someone in Georgia says | "this is not about the colour of her skin", it's about the | colour of her skin. Everything about what she was going to | "bring into" the district was fabricated out of whole cloth | and had nothing to do with either (a) anything the educator | in question had said or (b) anything the educator in | question had been hired for. | _-david-_ wrote: | >She was drummed out of town because white radical | Republicans made up positions that the educator in | question did not hold and had never hold | | Assuming that is true, that may or may not have to do | with race. Please provide proof race had anything to do | with this. | | >that you can pretend to talk about CRT with respect to | primary or secondary school is indicative that you have | bought into the propaganda; it is a post-graduate law | school concept, unless you're a radical republican hell | bent on fighting anything that does anything other than | support a white supremacist distortion of history). | | CRT is clearly being used as a generic term and not a | college level idea. Maybe we should have two separate | terms, but similar concepts are absolutely being taught. | | >The reality is that the moment someone in Georgia says | "this is not about the colour of her skin", it's about | the colour of her skin. | | You are clearly bias and assume the worst in people you | disagree with. | | You are doing the very thing you accuse these Georgians | of doing. | | >Everything about what she was going to "bring into" the | district was fabricated out of whole cloth and had | nothing to do with either (a) anything the educator in | question had said or (b) anything the educator in | question had been hired for. | | Maybe, but seeing how white people pushing this get | yelled at and kicked out as well, assuming this has | anything to do with race is nothing more than a theory. | | If we ever want to solve racial tension, we need to stop | calling everybody a racist when they disagree on | policies. | halostatue wrote: | If America ever wants to solve racial tension, it needs | to stop pretending that racial problems are fixed. | They're not, and all the data that matters says that very | clearly (compare health outcomes, relative poverty, | educational outcomes, incarceration rates, etc. across | racial groups in America, and Black Americans are | _consistently_ in the worst groups for each of those-- | this is indicative of _systemic_ problems that the | racists in power don't want addressed). | | > CRT is clearly being used as a generic term and not a | college level idea. Maybe we should have two separate | terms, but similar concepts are absolutely being taught. | | This is utter bullshit on every level, and you should be | ashamed of yourself for such intellectual dishonesty. | | There _are_ two different CRTs. There is the real thing | (a graduate level law concept) and then there is whatever | the Fox News Outrage Machine has created to argue | against. What are they arguing against? Pretty much | anything that indicates that America had a dependency on | slave labour ( "involuntary relocation", anyone?). Pretty | much anything that says that the Civil War was about | keeping that slave labour. Pretty much anything that says | that there was and _continues_ to be a white supremacy | problem in America to the detriment of _all_ groups in | America (see the recent decision in Wisconsin to drop a | book about order 9066, Japanese-American internment, and | Korematsu). | | Please, start thinking for yourself and stop repeating | Fox News Outrage. | inglor_cz wrote: | "The reality is that the moment someone in Georgia says | "this is not about the colour of her skin", it's about | the colour of her skin." | | Ironically, what you wrote is a very classical example of | prejudice. | halostatue wrote: | No, what I wrote is experience. Just because I don't give | you a detailed example of the history where I know what I | wrote to be true does not make it less experiential. | | White racism in Georgia is deep and has decades of | experience in cloaking itself in plausible deniability to | confuse the weak-minded. | | Or have you never heard of Lee Atwater | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater)? | inglor_cz wrote: | The same logic of experience drives police officers to | draw their guns on 'suspicious' young black males. They | are, after all, by far the most criminal demographic in | the U.S., and most cops in racially mixed areas will have | some bad prior experiences with them. | | Are they justified doing so, in your opinion? Or if not, | where is the line where experience should stop counting? | halostatue wrote: | They are _not_ the most criminal demographic in the U.S. | | They are the most criminally _profiled_ demographic in | the U.S. | | https://www.britannica.com/topic/police/Police-and- | minoritie... | | There is absolutely no justification for the recent | extrajudicial murder of an unarmed black motorist by cops | who shot him 60 times. | | There is absolutely no justification for the murder of | Tamir Rice. | | Black people in America are overpoliced. When presented | with the same crime, Black people are _routinely_ charged | more often, charged more _intensely_ (the number and | severity of the charges are higher), and convicted more | often. | | Your ignorance on this matter is showing. | inglor_cz wrote: | Young black males are massively overrepresented when it | comes to murder convictions. | | Are you suggesting that murders committed by other racial | groups are routinely going unpunished, or that random | blacks are framed for them instead of the real | perpetrators? | | Because if neither, your thesis about profiling does not | hold water. You cannot "profile" people as murderers. | They either did that or not. | | I don't doubt that there _are_ some false convictions for | murder even today, but either: | | a) blacks are really massively overrepresented among the | murderers (and victims), or, if they are not, | | b) there is a nationwide conspiracy either not to | investigate and punish non-black murderers, or to frame | innocent blacks for them, that reaches the level | necessary for massive manipulation of U.S. crime stats. | | B) would be an extraordinary claim that would need | extraordinary evidence. | 8note wrote: | c) there is another correlation - poor people are more | likely to be murderers and victims of murder, and there | are other systems set up to push black people into | poverty | 88913527 wrote: | It seems doubtful people are leaving California due to jobs, | taxes, and public universities, but I would certainly believe | it was due to cost of living. CA is the world's 5th largest | economy, the universities are world-class, and most people are | unwilling to give up their family, friends and life to | establish something new simply to save a few percent on taxes. | wrycoder wrote: | The university system may still be world-class, but the | public schools are definitely not. CA isn't a great place to | live, if you are blue collar. | nostrademons wrote: | This is a big oversimplification the same way that the | national news is a big oversimplification. | | Many of the nation's best public high schools [1] are in | the Bay Area - Saratoga (#16), Gunn [Palo Alto] (#18), | Lynbrook [San Jose] (#33), Paly [Palo Alto] (#34), Monta | Vista [Cupertino] (#46), Lowell [SF] (#59), Los Altos | (#85), Mission San Jose [San Jose] (#89), San Ramon (#96), | Homestead [Sunnyvale] (#101), Cupertino (#105), Amador | Valley [Pleasanton] (#112), Miramonte [Moraga] (#114), | Mountain View (#121), Piedmont (#127), Foothill | [Pleasanton] (#164), and this is just the top 170 out of | 17,000 (1%). That's a huge portion of the region. SF & | Oakland get a bad rep because a lot of their schools have | legit problems and they're lottery assignment, so there's | no way to avoid them other than going private. But outside | of lower Manhattan, Silicon Valley probably has the | greatest density of top-ranked public schools in the | country, beating out even traditional powerhouses like | suburban Boston and Westchester County NY. | | And yes, the region is a terrible place to live if you are | blue collar, but that's because blue collar people can't | afford to live in the region. | | [1] https://www.niche.com/k12/search/college-prep-public- | high-sc... | wrycoder wrote: | Thank you for putting that together! | | I'm somewhat surprised that the highest rated were only | #16 and #18. | | Virtually all of those are in elite districts. Gunn, I | think, has a household income of $200K. | | Only a couple of miles away is the East Palo Alto high | school (a charter school!), where only 12% are proficient | in math and 52% in reading[0]. That's where the service | workers live. | | Overall, California ranks poorly, around #44 [1], while | the New England states are in the top ten, except for the | ringer Maine at #16 [1] | | Blue collar can't afford to live on the coast, but they | can elsewhere. | | [0] https://www.niche.com/k12/east-palo-alto-academy- | east-palo-a... | | [1] https://scholaroo.com/state-education-rankings/ | nostrademons wrote: | It's nationwide rankings, so #16 & #18 out of 17,000+ is | pretty good. | | It's also worth looking at who's ahead of them. The | listing includes charter & magnet schools which can | select their student body. If you take them out, the only | ones left are #3 (High Tech High School, Lincroft NJ), #4 | (Stuyvesant), and #9 (Bronx High). Those _also_ are | magnet schools, which for some reason are not flagged as | such in Niche 's database. Saratoga and Gunn are the #1 | and #2 general-admission high schools in the U.S, at | least insofar as you can have $2M home prices and still | be "general admission". #3 is Canyon Crest in San Diego. | The next 3 are magnet schools in NYC, then there's | University High in Irvine (#32), Lynbrook (#33), and Paly | (#34). Take out magnet schools and _all_ of the 6 top | general-admission public schools in the U.S. are in | California. | | California uses housing policy as a weapon. It | substitutes for border walls, charter schools, vouchers, | militarized police, and a lot of other policies that the | Right espouses but most of California finds abhorrent. If | most social ills stem from being poor, one simple way to | avoid them is to ensure that poor people cannot afford to | live in your community. | pessimizer wrote: | That famous blue collar of Silicon Valley. If you're blue | collar you couldn't afford to live in a mailbox in any of | those towns. I don't know what you think has been | oversimplified. | lotsofpulp wrote: | I would put taxes in the cost of living column. | pessimizer wrote: | Taxes are only paid to the extent that you're making money. | Cost of living hits you equally no matter how much you | make. If you're making money, when it rises, you consider | whether you'd rather be living in a different place for | that price. If you're not making money, you leave (or the | bailiffs drag you out.) | drewcoo wrote: | COL[1] doesn't really hit anyone directly. It's an | abstraction based on some fictional "standard of living" | and its costs in an area. | | That said, common knowledge is that it's cheaper to be | rich than poor. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_living | lotsofpulp wrote: | Does it not depend on how progressive / regressive the | tax system is, and how much money the government is | spending on things that do not benefit you? | halostatue wrote: | Offset by quality of life represented by the spending of | the tax dollars. | inglor_cz wrote: | Does quality of life, at least among the 50 U.S. states, | really track the state taxation level? | hgsgm wrote: | If you are poor or go to public school, yes. | inglor_cz wrote: | Yes, possibly, but a typical HN commenter will probably | be middle class and his/her decisions won't be based on | the same concerns. | abirch wrote: | I actually have a coworker moving to California for their | university system. Like taking his sophomore daughter and 4th | grader and moving there. | ta32103 wrote: | xyzzyz wrote: | But "most people" aren't leaving California, you need to look | at the margin. A marginal mover might very well be swayed by | high taxes to a significant degree. For example, when I was | moving to the States, one major factor for choice of | Washington over California was exactly state taxes. I also | have friends who are planning their move out of California to | Texas, and for them taxes also play a significant role in | their choice. It's not only taxes that made them decide to | move, but it's rarely only a single factor that makes people | move. | welshwelsh wrote: | But taxes are trivial compared to cost of living. | | For example median rent in Austin is $1360 vs $4150 for San | Francisco. Over 300% higher. | | On the other hand, how much higher are taxes in SF? Like | 10% higher at most. Completely trivial. | | I get your point about marginal costs, but I think in | general SF taxes contribute to making the city a more | developed and attractive place to live and ultimately make | people more, not less likely to move there. If the rent was | the same nearly everyone would choose California over | Texas. | xyzzyz wrote: | If you're a senior software engineer, moving from SF to | Seattle will immediately increase your after tax income | by $30k, even if you ignore difference in cost of living. | This means effectively increasing your after tax income | by 15%. That's a huge raise. | vishnugupta wrote: | > The nationalization of news and politics in a country of 330 | million people is toxic. | | This. I read it somewhere a while ago that prior to information | revolution of late 90s onwards news travelled very slowly. | Which meant people consumed more news of happenings around | 50KM-100KM radius of their living place. And this reduced | exponentially with increased radius. I could totally related to | this as when I was in school (late 80s, early 90s) I read | physical news paper that carried mostly my district and state | news. Once a week I would be exposed to national news and maybe | once a month to international news. | | But now it's exactly reverse. I get minute by minute update on | ongoings of Ukraine war which is half way across the world but | have no clue about local politics. The net result being I get | more enraged/impacted about happenings on which I have close to | zero control but totally oblivious to things that I have | control over such as reasons why there are so many broken roads | in my vicinity. | phpisthebest wrote: | >>I get minute by minute update on ongoings of Ukraine war | | Worse than that, you get multiple often conflicting minute | updates on on-goings <<insert current event of interest>> | often filled with less and less facts and more sensationalism | chasing maximum number of clicks, follows, thumb ups, likes, | etc. | | This is true if it is random person, small organization, a | non-profit, or a "trusted source" main stream media outlet | thr0wawayf00 wrote: | In the race to own digital media, we've effectively | replaced subscription fees and stable advertising revenue | with the crumbs of said clicks, follows, likes, etc. The | internet adage that "if you're not paying for the product, | you are the product" is apt here because outlets benefit | more from being first than being right. This is a | fundamental problem with digital journalism. | drewcoo wrote: | > Worse than that, you get multiple often conflicting | minute updates on on-goings | | And, strangely enough, that multiplier is usually exactly | 2. | | There should be serious scientific studies done as to why | the magic American news constant is always 2. Then again, | I'm sure people would claim those studies are biased and | then complain about their funding. | [deleted] | nine_k wrote: | I wonder if the fact that the local population has a murkier | view of local events also has its beneficiaries. | | I remember stories about local corrupt politicians trying to | silence local outlets of uncomfortable news. Now they likely | don't even have to. | Xeoncross wrote: | Agree. With 330 million people I'm pretty sure you can find | at least a few bad ones every. single. day. | | I'm glad we give them air time. | Tempest1981 wrote: | Exactly. Let's find a few adults behaving badly, and | amplify it. Do we really need to hear about every shooting | or robbery, day after day? Can't be good for our mental | health. But apparently there is a market for it. | jxramos wrote: | Makes me think about those wise statements Elon Musk | shared in the video of him at the Twitter All Hands zoom | meeting. It was there that he contemplated the value of | side stepping news outlets and avoiding their negative | filters. He also questioned the reach of the negative | social impact that receiving such negative news has on | our wider society and the costs these news outlets place | on us with their distorted focus. | mandmandam wrote: | I guarantee that corporate news is one of the top factors | for Americans mental health crisis. | | Unfortunately, there's not many people willing to pay to | advertise that fact. | | > apparently there is a market for it | | There are/were markets for many dangerous and | exploitative things that are illegal and/or regulated. | | Allowing syndicated news-anchors to fuck with Americans | en masse is more dangerous and more harmful than is | properly acknowledged (at least, I haven't heard that | view on the news since they last let Chomsky on). | rmbyrro wrote: | I agree with your remarks. Adding one aspect for thought: | | > We're one country but we don't share a single set of values. | | Problem is: from the perspective of _massification_ efforts, we | 're all equal. | | The same principles that make Facebook addictive to a person in | San Francisco also govern the psychology and neuro-chemistry of | a kid in Miami. | | That holds not just to US citizens. Anywhere in the world it's | like that. | mbostleman wrote: | >>We're one country but we don't share a single set of | values.>> | | This is a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's true - I | think it's manufactured (I assume due to all mass communication | being a large ad server that requires a quick and easy way to | stimulate engagement - but that could be wrong too, I don't | know). I believe, admittedly from anectodical experience, that | we are remarkably together on values. Where we're apart is a) | facts, and b) the tactical approach to getting our society as a | whole to express those values (eg. trusting that if left alone | the society will be "good" vs. trusting that codifying the | "good" in law will genuinely reach the same end). | nonrandomstring wrote: | >>We're one country but we don't share a single set of | values. | | > This is a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's true | | My personal experience is of a diverse USA. In the late 90s I | toured the states, a gig in a different city each night then | back to the tour bus and off to the next one by daybreak. | Okay, not a great sampling of ordinary life because on the | road you mostly meet audiences, people in bars, diner | waitresses etc. But while I recall how the USA _looks_ | superficially similar (giant cars on giant roads and the same | brand logos in every city) it 's not. I saw quite a range of | poverty and wealth, segregation and integration, friendliness | and aloofness, dense cities and wide open country. Much like | travelling around Europe. | mbostleman wrote: | Maybe we're working off of different overloads for the word | "values". While there is no doubt a great diversity of | experience per all the things you mentioned, to me "values" | is a very small set of first principles that maps closely | (or is identical) to ethics. I believe there is little to | no diversity in that regard. | pessimizer wrote: | That's an easy thing to say if you reduce "values" to | lowest common denominator ethical abstractions that are | pretty much shared among all human beings. | | If you include e.g. "not wearing shoes in the house", | "treating animals well", "Buddhist supremacy", or "proper | lawn care" as values, however, things diverge quickly. | m2fkxy wrote: | Half of your examples pertain to habits rather than | values. | drewcoo wrote: | I think the recent SCOTUS changes are all about core | values, whether it's bodily autonomy, separation of | church and state, indigenous rights, right of a suspect | to know their rights, or the double-speak of states' | rights when it comes to states limiting violent crime. | | At least some of that probably touches on your core | values, however you state them. | | The partisan court has shown us how clearly the country | is split along partisan lines. We are not the same. | | And I am neither of those two partisan factions. | nonrandomstring wrote: | I need to think about that. Maybe you're right. Not | wishing to insult Americans with generalisations I'll | just say I didn't get to know their _values_ at a deep | level. | hgsgm wrote: | aeturnum wrote: | One thing that makes this worse is the collapse of local | information economies. Papers can no longer make money by | acting as pay-to-post message boards for the communities they | serve. Instead, the best way to make money is to convince | people from outside your region to use your organization for | their news needs. So now every paper writes news for a national | audience and what determines the financial health of the paper | is how effectively it can attract readers that aren't from its | area. | unclebucknasty wrote: | Your analysis somewhat conspicuously omits the massive | nationwide shift that was the ascendance of Trump and the far | right over the time period you've noted. Is it reasonable to | expect local news and politics to be insulated from such | dramatic national shifts? | | I've lived in Atlanta for over two decades. What's happened in | Atlanta politics tracks with what's happened nationwide. It is | not strictly a function of media or a random, spontaneous | racialization. | | Nor do I know anyone who feels we've been characterized as an | "unreformed Confederate backwater". The idea that we've been so | maligned is itself a media narrative. In fact, I live in an | area that is staunchly conservative, majority white, and upper- | middle class. The people I speak with abhor Trump and the style | of politics he represents (which have been noted as favorable | to your "unreformed Confederates"). This was visible in their | repudiation of him in 2020, even while they voted GOP down | balllot. It was visible again in the recent primary wherein the | candidates Trump endorsed were largely shellacked. | | So, it's somehat ironic that you're bemoaning the media's role | in mischaracterizing Georgia politics, when you seem to be a | victim of the same, and repeating certain narratives. | | Likewise with your comment that black people are leaving blue | states in droves to come to Atlanta, as if this is some recent | phenomenon. That is simply a new right-wing media narrative | that seeks to malign blue states and peel off support. But, | black people have long sought Atlanta as a mecca, which has | featured black political power for decades now and was even | labeled an ascendant "Chocolate City" in a Parliament song of | 1975. | | Perhaps there was some national media painting of Georgia. | After all, narratives do sell. But your analysis here is | somewhat superficial and features its own skewed media-driven | narratives. | pessimizer wrote: | > the massive nationwide shift that was the ascendance of | Trump and the far right over the time period you've noted. | | This never happened. What happened is that Democrats started | to center the far-right in order to scare their constituents | into voting, and Republicans stopped resisting Trump, who | they were only against because he was an outsider to their | patronage networks. The far-right haven't risen, the | Democrats just spend all their time doing PR for them and | trying to associate them with Trump to attract centrist | Republican voters. | unclebucknasty wrote: | > _This never happened. What happened is that Democrats | started to center the far-right_ | | That's a pretty remarkable statement. Trump _is_ the far | right. Are you arguing there _hasn 't_ been a hard right | shift in the GOP since Trump? | | BTW, your statement that Dems falsely centered the far | right is actually true in the reverse. Republicans center | folks they consider "far left", like AOC and "The Gang" as | representative of some sort of scary communist takeover of | Democrats. This is, of course, silly on its face. They have | virtually no power to drive policy in the party. And, of | course, they are not communists in any case. | | Add to that, Dems rejected even Bernie to nominate | grandfatherly ol' Joe...the most moderate Dem around who, | quaintly, still believes in bipartisanship. | | Other than Bernie and The Gang, the only "far left" I've | seen is so-called "Antifa", which has no membership, but | magically self-assembles and appears during election cycles | to scare Republican voters to the polls before mysteriously | dissolving again. | | Still, GOP ads feature ominous threats about the far left | and communism. | | I get that things tend to appear mirrored from the other | side, but there are facts. On 1/6, elements of the far | right, to include actual militia members, did Trump's | bidding. Their ongoing affinity for one another is no | coincidence. He represents their interests and they clearly | know it. | treis wrote: | >Trump is the far right | | The guy was a Democrat for most of his life. | unclebucknasty wrote: | > _The guy was a Democrat for most of his life._ | | Well, he's not now, is he? | reducesuffering wrote: | Like the other commenter said, the current Republican | framing of "it's not us that changed, it's liberals!" is | revisionist nonsense. All of the previous most popular | Republicans in the last 15 years, Bush Jr (president), | Romney, McCain (presidential nominees) all despised Trump, | the current direction of the far right usurping the party, | and are/were basically voting Democrat now because they're | scared of the far right's threat far more than centrist | Obama/Biden positions. FFS, Republican cheerleader #1 | Tucker has been praising Russia: | https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1497035201196617733 | yojo wrote: | As a citizen of Portland, OR, I can verify that national news | outlets heavily distort reality to draw eyeballs. | | I'm not sure local news is a whole lot better, but at least you | can count on readers to call bullshit. | sbf501 wrote: | Yep. I've been in PDX for 22 years. Back during the BLM | protests, my FOX-loving family back east would call me and | see if I was OK whenever FOX ran some bullshit story about | the city burning. | | Once you step outside Portland, it is terrifyingly red. | Jefferson Secessionists are the scariest. I've been harassed | in small towns outside PDX when I go camping and they see the | PSU parking stickers on my car. Heck, I met a guy at a bar in | Plush, Ore., who was telling me how he and his buddies made | sure no black people ever set foot in his town. And this was | in 2018. | | Also, KATU news is owned by Sinclair Media. Even OregonLive | is dubious. Willamette Week, The Mercury, and OPB are | reasonable, IMHO. | tootie wrote: | Maybe the biggest BLM protest in the country rallied almost | daily at the park in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I'd take | my kids to play there in the morning and you'd never know | anything had happened the evening before. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Yep. My elderly parents have listened to Rush religiously | for decades now. Fox news is on constantly. | | They repeatedly contacted me in a panic wanting to arrange | for a change of locks n my house, security cameras, etc. | They honest to god thought BLM protestors were randomly | invading homes in Portland because of these trash news | outlets. | | And then the bigger national media outlets do their "both | sides means we pretend bullshit is worth taking seriously" | nonsense and make the lunatic positions seem less fringe. | | It's maddening that my own family is convinced they | understand what is happening in front of my porch and | downtown at protests I literally attended, better than I | do. And it's all because of these news outlets selling a | cravenly dishonest narrative that BLM protestors demanding | police reform are actually some sort of race war against | white people. | louky wrote: | Leaving the _extremely_ uhhh paisley /tie-died Oregon | Country Fair and returning to WA on the backroads was wild. | Stopped to get gas a says away and got out of the car | wearing tie-dye, etc... Was immediately approached by two | locals who got into the whole thing - hippies killing | people, breaking into people's houses, raping and drugging | kids. (This was before Trump, there was still the satanic | baby abuse thing. Not that one, the one before!) | | As a disguise because I live in rural WA which is Red and | dangerous I had a complete set of typical "rigging/logging" | clothes which I do wear working in the woods. I was talking | to them, changing my clothes to logger jeans, ripped | stained hickory shirt suspenders, the lot. They were very | confused | twic wrote: | If i was talking to a man at a petrol station and he took | his trousers off, i would also be confused. | michaelchisari wrote: | I'm tired of people saying Chicago is like John Wick and Mad | Max had a violence baby. | | Can't count how many times the people saying this live in | rural areas that have, per capita, higher violent crime rates | than Chicago. | | The city has its problems, as all American cities do, but it | is a wonderful place with amazing people and a ton to offer. | Except for the winters. Those are awful. | hi5eyes wrote: | yeah the general impression of chicago must be so | inaccurate after today | michaelchisari wrote: | Once again, not relevant. Reposting: | | _First off, not Chicago. Highland Park is almost 20 | miles outside of the city. With a median household income | of $100k and a violent crime rate 4x lower than the rest | of Illinois and nationwide. Your comment is unnecessary._ | | The only point to be made here is about the US having a | unique problem with mass shooters. Which has nothing to | do with Chicago's general crime rate. | [deleted] | [deleted] | bcrosby95 wrote: | A while back I had some of my relatives ask me if we were | doing OK with all the rapes happening in California. I had | no clue what the hell they were talking about. | drewcoo wrote: | "Oh, that? We just turn the radio up and it doesn't | bother us." | alisonatwork wrote: | This has happened to me numerous times based on | prejudices people have about other countries or regions. | But the funniest thing is that it even happens when you | travel from one small town to the next small town, as has | been parodied in comedies from The Simpsons to Corner | Gas. I think it's a fairly basic fear to see places you | don't visit often as threatening. For some reason it | doesn't seem to be quelled by the easily verifiable fact | that plenty of people live perfectly adequate lives in | the other place. | [deleted] | the_only_law wrote: | I feel like People experience or learn about a place once | and that paints their view of it for years to come. | | Someone else in this thread mentioned the Simpsons and I | can't help think about the episode where Homer was | vehemently against going to New York, because he had been | there in the 70s when it was at its worst. | pessimizer wrote: | The Chicago thing isn't from experience, it's from people | who've never lived in Chicago repeating it over and over | again. | | The victims of violence in Chicago are not the white | people citing it on TV. | robonerd wrote: | The Chicago thing is because every summer the national | media see fit to report on local crime news from Chicago | every time they have an eyepopping number of homicides a | week, which is most weeks. I've never lived in Chicago | and I don't care about their crime, but the national | media won't shut up about it. | sbf501 wrote: | I'm not from Chicago, but all I ever hear about is the | murder rate being higher than most countries. It's like | that is the only thing people do in Chicago: go out and | murder each other. | michaelchisari wrote: | Because the US murder rate is so much higher than most | countries. Chicago isn't in the top 10 for murders per | capita in the US. It's not even top 20. | | Chicago is #28. | | https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u- | s-ci... | | Granted it's way too high, but ask yourself why we don't | take about Little Rock or Chattanooga or Richmond this | way. | treis wrote: | I think it's going to be my life's work to get people to | stop making these comparisons. The difference in the size | of city limits makes them meaningless. Chicago is | geographically huge and includes a large swath of | suburbs. Other city limits are much smaller and include | all of the bad areas without the suburbs to dilute the | per capita numbers. | sbf501 wrote: | I'm asking myself, but I don't know why. Only have a | theory Koch brothers something something fairness in | reporting act something something... | djbusby wrote: | Oakland, CA has more violent crime than Chicago - and never | gets national news coverage. Why? | res0nat0r wrote: | "Crime in Chicago" is a rightwing racist dog-whistle now, | and so common that is a reliable standby they use now | when wanting to fearmonger. | newaccount2021 wrote: | swader999 wrote: | Unfortunately this didn't age well. | michaelchisari wrote: | I sincerely hope you're not referring to the Highland | Park active shooter. | | First off, not Chicago. Highland Park is almost 20 miles | outside of the city. | | With a median household income of $100k and a violent | crime rate 4x lower than the rest of Illinois and | nationwide. | | Your comment is unnecessary. | KerrAvon wrote: | I've visited Chicago a few times (not in winter, though), | and I loved it. Maybe my favorite American big city. Great | people, fascinating architecture, middle finger to TFG | tower along the river. Also, I never got crimed. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | Abolish the electoral college and people in NY will stop giving | a shit about what happens in Georgia immediately. | inglor_cz wrote: | This sounds like a great recipe for disintegration, | Yugoslavia- or at best Spanish American empire - style. | | If a distant metropolis does not have to care what people in | the flyover land think, why not declare independence? | | It is a small wonder that the US had, so far, only _one_ | secession and civil war crisis, and a testament to your | resilient constitutional order. | drewcoo wrote: | Yeah, that right to bear arms against the tyranny of the | state sure is working well . . . | inglor_cz wrote: | I am not an American, but it is my impression that most | American gun owners, if they carry their gun at all, have | mostly defense against common crime in mind, and that the | loud minority screaming slogans about the tree of liberty | watered by blood of patriots and scoundrels is pretty | tiny, much like most loud minorities online. | barry-cotter wrote: | > If a distant metropolis does not have to care what people | in the flyover land think, why not declare independence? | | The distant metropolis is rich enough to pay a lot of taxes | to support a long war. Flyoverland is definitionally low | density meaning it has relatively few people. All they have | to fight the war is some extremely stubborn people. That | can be enough but an awful lot of people are going to die. | There's a great deal of good on avoiding civil war. | hgsgm wrote: | wrycoder wrote: | And that's why the founders set up the electoral college. We | are a federal republic of states. | | The federal government was supposed to be small, because the | founders understood the downside of a large federal | government. | [deleted] | hgsgm wrote: | kiba wrote: | The founders think they understood the downside of a large | federal government. | ReactiveJelly wrote: | But I don't like being a federation. Having 50 states each | infighting, competing to race to the bottom and attract | business from each other, like 50 tiny nations, it's not | what I want. | wrycoder wrote: | Then set up a Constitutional Convention. People in NH | view life differently than those in CA, and don't | appreciate the idea of one way for everyone, as | determined by the folk in the large blue cities. | hgsgm wrote: | inglor_cz wrote: | "competing to race to the bottom" | | Looking at the US in the last 200 years, it has grown | enormously rich, while many ossified systems in the world | around it have collapsed. It seems that the competition | you dislike does not turn individual Americans into | paupers. An average American's living standard is so high | that it is actually ecologically unsustainable. | sangnoir wrote: | This reeks of recency bias: 100 years ago, a british | gentleman likely said the same about the superiority of | the British Empire as proved by its lasting power - now | it's a pale shadow of itself, with Brexit sealing its | fate. | inglor_cz wrote: | 200 years is a fairly long "recency". | | Also, the UK is still a nice place to live, probably | nicer than it used to be at the height of the empire - | just witness how many people are trying to move there, | even ilegally. Large parts of the empire were money | sinks, as was the huge navy needed to protect it. | 8note wrote: | That of course applies to the US too. Its current system | of empire has its own money sinks | pessimizer wrote: | The US was excellent at not being in Europe during WWII, | and really great at accumulating a massive negative | balance of payments for 40 years after the juice from | that ran out. | sangnoir wrote: | "Not having your factories being bombed" has huge | economic upsides. | inglor_cz wrote: | "Having your factories bombed" is, ironically, a huge | motivator too. At the end of the war, Germans had better | and more modern industrial equipment than the British, | mostly hidden in improvised underground factories. What | really suffered was the civilian housing stock, but the | average German industrial machine was less than 5 years | old - to a surprise of the Allied occupation authorities. | | Both Germany and Japan rebuilt their industrial bases to | become export juggernauts. And fairly quickly so. | Experience with forced improvisation helped. | selimthegrim wrote: | I'm assuming the Soviets packed it all up | inglor_cz wrote: | From the former DDR and territories that went to Poland, | yes, they took quite a lot, but the German industrial | heartland around the rivers Rhein and Ruhr is located in | the West and it was divided between American and British | sectors. No Soviets there. | cloutchaser wrote: | Well, that's the direction it's been going for 100 years, | so you should be happy | ABCLAW wrote: | Well your government has reached the point that it cannot | govern at the federal level or reasonably receive strong | mandates to deal with issues. Faith in democratic | institutions is tanking. | | This is what it looks like before the system breaks | entirely. The buffers can't buffer anymore. | hgsgm wrote: | erentz wrote: | > The federal government was supposed to be small, because | the founders understood the downside of a large federal | government. | | Those that want to return to this need to start advocating | to abolish freedom of movement and permit states to | implement residency requirements to access services. That | way State A can go ahead an implement locally the "large | federal government" services like Medicare or Social | Security, while State Z can choose not to. At the moment | our constitutional rights mean State Z residents can | freeload by moving to State A. This kind of problem simply | wasn't conceivable when the country was founded. | wrycoder wrote: | That's why the homeless go to San Francisco or Maine. | Better services. | | The states are like incubators for different policies. | The rest of us watch, and see what does work, and what | doesn't work. For all I know, there are residency | requirements for services in some places. | | One of the things the Constitution protects is freedom of | movement. | | If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare | for All, I think they could just do that. | | If you don't like the laws in your state - change them. | | If you live in California and you don't like the law in | Alabama, what business of yours is that? | erentz wrote: | Supreme court determined a long time ago that a state | cannot implement a residency requirement (e.g. 1 year | minimum residency) before accessing that states benefits. | | > If a state wanted to implement something like Medicare | for All, I think they could just do that. | | Yes. But for the problem explained. Also you can throw in | issues such as states can't issue their own currencies or | treasuries to finance things. | | Really the USA is not set up for this kind of | "confederation". We are a federation of states that have | very limited powers and very stupidly drawn borders. If | we want what it sounds like you're after then we need | more a European Union style set up. Not separate states. | But entirely separate countries. Basically we should | decide if we're a country called the USA and are all | American's first, or if we're all Kentuckians, Texans, | Washingtonians, first and American's second. | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | This is sort of how it works in Canada; healthcare, | disability, welfare and (some) pensions are all managed | individually by each province. When you move, you have to | jump through hoops to get access to those services in the | new province. Still gets funded federally though and how | money is transferred between provinces is huge point of | contention. | erentz wrote: | Yeah, I think this is how it works for example in | Australia too. You could conceive of this in the US just | as easily, for example Medicaid (not Medicare) is a bit | like that, run and jointly financed by the state and | federal. But again that's "big government" to these | states that want to reject healthcare. | | What I would bet too is if you go and poll people on | whether they like their "big government" program or what | to get rid of it, most people would rather keep it, | Medicare is big government I don't see seniors wanting | rid of it. Social Security is big government. The | military, I don't see anyone in these "small government" | states saying they want rid of that. | arrosenberg wrote: | The founders were not that homogenous, and plenty of them | wanted to recreate the British government for the new | United States. | smt88 wrote: | Having a small federal government has no relationship with | eliminating the Electoral College. | | The "land votes, not people" scheme of the US is a holdover | from appeasing wealthy landowners and slavers. We need at | least one branch of the federal government that is directly | democratic. | | The way things are going, an increasingly small minority of | extremists will make decisions at the federal level, as we | are starting to see now. | pessimizer wrote: | The Electoral College is a triviality that we get hung up | on because every loser blames it for their loss. | | The real undemocratic institution in the US is its most | powerful, the US Senate. It should be directly | democratic. | hgsgm wrote: | The electoral college is bad for the exact same reason | the Senate is bad. | wrycoder wrote: | It is directly democratic. Two senators are elected by | the voters of each state. (The Founders preferred that | the two senators be elected by the legislatures of each | state, but a constitutional amendment changed that.) | | We are not one big representative democracy. We are a | federation of states. It was not intended that the | federal government run everything - it was concerned | primarily with defense and relations with other | countries. Originally. | 8note wrote: | its the states that are bad in that. | | splitting out all the related citites into their own | states would make a more appropriate federation | hgsgm wrote: | "Originally" doesn't matter anymore. The Founders wanted | us to write a new constitution before 1820. They also | didn't let women, blacks, and non-landlords vote. | | Do you know where the States come from? They aren't local | cultures. They are a bunch of territory ruled by some | aristocratic British dude. | | Most of the states that exist are due to undemocratic | compromises with monarchs and slaveholders. | | Draw state boundaries around communities that want to be | cohesive, and stop designing a nation around 18th Century | concerns, and we can talk. | smt88 wrote: | Each seat in the Senate is directly democratic, but the | Senate as a whole is not. | | The reason is that people in states with low populations | have far more per-capita representation in the Senate | than people in populous states. | | The Senate is so powerful that this means that most | federal decisions are determined by the minority of the | country. | smt88 wrote: | > _because every loser blames it for their loss_ | | No Republican loser has blamed it for their loss because | it hasn't hurt any of them in the modern era. When you | get 6 million more votes than your opponent and still | lose, that's a subversion of democracy. | | I don't see how that's any different than the Senate. | With direct democracy, we would've had a more popular | president with more popular policies for an additional 8 | of the last 22 years. | robonerd wrote: | > _The real undemocratic institution in the US is its | most powerful, the US Senate. It should be directly | democratic._ | | I'm not qualified to vote on 95% of the stuff Congress | has to deal with, so thanks for the offer, but no thanks. | Direct democracy is a shitfest for anything much larger | than a canton; representative democracy is much better | for running large countries with a diverse set of serious | matters to address. | drewcoo wrote: | > I'm not qualified to vote on 95% of the stuff Congress | has to deal with | | But are they? We're constantly hearing how nobody reads | the bills and nobody can be expected to really understand | them. | smt88 wrote: | I think you misunderstood what they meant. | | The problem with the Senate is that tiny states like | Wyoming have the same power as huge states like | California. | | That means that people living in rural areas (or just | small states) have far more power and representation in | the Senate than people in urban areas. | jimmygrapes wrote: | Yeah because then the entire country will only have to care | about what NY thinks | dlp211 wrote: | No. I don't even know how you get to this idea. First of | all, there is only one national election, you still have | your Representative and 2 Senators in addition to your | State, County, and Local governments. Second of all, there | are more Republicans in New York and California then in a | significant amount of the middle states combined. The idea | that NY or California has some singular voice that will be | force upon you is just a ridiculous concept. | | The country clearly leans slightly center left as a whole, | but we are trending hard right right now and that is a | recipe for disaster and the electoral college is in large | part to blame. | wrycoder wrote: | It's what I call the Democratic wobble. | | We've been trending left for fifty years. Maybe it's time | to go the other way for awhile. And hand some power back | to the states, where it belongs. | cuteboy19 wrote: | i can understand not wanting power to be centralized in | the hands of a faraway federal govt. but i dont | understand the fetish of states rights. why not city | rights or county rights. or heaven forbid maybe even | individual rights | hgsgm wrote: | inglor_cz wrote: | "We've been trending left for fifty years." | | Depends on the topic. Gun rights, for example, have gone | decidedly to the right. Few people now remember that | Ronald Reagan signed some significant gun control | legislation without losing support of his voters. | wrycoder wrote: | Not really. In the late '50s, when I was a teenager, I | lived in a rural area. I had my own rifle, and so did my | friends. I also bought a 22 revolver and carried it | around the country in the early '60s and never thought | twice about doing that. | | In the '60s, high school students carried rifles on the | NYC subway while going to target practice. Try doing that | today. | | So, I'd say there has been a lot of pressure to move the | window on gun regulation to more restrictive over the | last fifty years. I don't think it's done any good at all | relative to reducing crime committed with guns. Law | abiding gun owners have always had low incidence of gun | infractions compared to, say, the police. | | The real problem is not enforcing the gun laws we have | had for years. Chicago is a prime example: very | restrictive laws, but very few convictions for gun | offenses, which are frequent. Why is that? | inglor_cz wrote: | With all respect, the late '50s and early '60s are a long | time ago. I was thinking about more recent developments. | | As of today, there is almost half a billion of guns in | civilian possession in the US, and the # of open carry | and concealed carry jurisdictions has grown massively. | | I would say that the lowest point for gun rights US-wide | was around the Columbine school shootings, and that the | trend changed quite decisively since them. Legislation | like that has no chance of passing today. | wrycoder wrote: | We were talking about "trending left in the last fifty | years". 1972 was fifty years ago, so I was setting the | stage by describing the situation in the preceding | decade. | [deleted] | nine_k wrote: | A few years ago my friends started call NYT "Pravda", saying | that it's turned into the mouthpiece of the "party line". | | Grudgingly, I had eventually to agree. | MrYellowP wrote: | > The national media completely misrepresented Georgia and the | people in it to the rest of the country. | | The national media _everywhere_ is full of shit. That 's the | _norm._ It 's the norm, because it _works._ | selimthegrim wrote: | > an excellent public university system | | Why don't you tell this to the several UGA math profs who quit | recently (including an acquaintance of mine from high school) | or the GA Tech faculty unhappy with state COVID policies | dsugarman wrote: | I've spent a ton of time in SF and Baltimore, wondering what | specifically you had in mind? I think it's less socially | acceptable to be right leaning in SF? Sure you would be looked | at weird if you used a koozie or wore croakies in SF, or if you | went up to people at a coffee shop to ask them to pitch their | startup in Baltimore, but the differences feel cultural not | political. | [deleted] | lotsofpulp wrote: | > They made Georgia out to be an unreformed Confederate | backwater: | | Electing Marjorie Greene Taylor and the coverup attempt around | this killing might have contributed. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery | | Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in | being unreformed Confederate backwaters. | jimbob45 wrote: | _Although, I would not say rural areas of GA are special in | being unreformed Confederate backwaters._ | | Fucking true. People think hicks are unique to the South and | are oblivious to the hordes of hicks living in eastern | Oregon, eastern Washington, and northern California. In fact, | they're even more extremist over in the west because they | don't feel like they're represented at all. | WillPostForFood wrote: | Georgia elected Marjorie Greene Taylor and Raphael Warnock. | States aren't red or blue; it is a divisive over | simplification. To paraphrase that parent comment, What would | be unremarkable in San Francisco would raise eyebrows in much | of the rest of California. | smt88 wrote: | Georgia didn't elect Marjorie Taylor Greene. A tiny subset | did. She received 230,000 votes in a rural district. | | Raphael Warnock won a statewide election with 2,280,000 | votes. | feet wrote: | Gibbon1 wrote: | I've pointed this out before but after the 2016 election | after the Democrats lost their dangerous gamble to put the | wife of a previous president in the Whitehouse. I looked at | the hyper local results. | | Yeah there aren't red and blue states. There are states | where either rural or city votes dominate. Both the tiny | cities in Montana and the huge metro's in Texas vote blue. | hgsgm wrote: | kn0where wrote: | To be more accurate, Georgia elected Warnock, and a | particular congressional district within Georgia elected | Magic The Gathering. | wronglyprepaid wrote: | > coverup attempt around this killing might have contributed. | > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Ahmaud_Arbery | | Did a quick search through the article, can't find a mention | of any attempt to cover up the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, can | you elaborate? Is there an ongoing investigation into this | and is there some way we can help? It is insane that in 2022 | the authorities in America are still complicit in lynchings | and that nobody does anything, it disgusts me. How long will | this indiscriminate murder of BIPOC continue, why can't | America do better? What is it about Americans that drive them | to murder BIPOC? | lotsofpulp wrote: | The whole second paragraph describes how no arrests were | made, and the only reason anyone was punished was because | one of the murderers ordered his attorney to send the video | of the murder to the news. | | >Former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson was | indicted in September 2021 for "showing favor and | affection" to Gregory (her former subordinate) during the | investigation, and for obstructing law enforcement by | directing that Travis not be arrested.[42][43] I | wronglyprepaid wrote: | I see, forgive my English, I guess because I'm not a | native speaker I miss the nuances of how what you quoted | at all matches the definition of cover up, thanks for | explaining. I will listen and learn, and I hope Americans | can listen and learn to not murder BIPOC and that BIPOC | lives matter, but I guess with the poor schooling system | there is no funding for this, and likely even if there | was funding to teach children that BIPOC lives mattered | the US supreme court will ban it. | hgsgm wrote: | halffaday wrote: | There wasn't much of a coverup. The tastemakers happened to | have some convenient video to work with and used the | opportunity to fabricate a myth that a petty criminal was a | hero. It's a testament to the power of media and gullible | minds in great numbers. | rayiner wrote: | I've spent quite a bit of time in South Georgia, as a visibly | non-white guy with a Muslim surname. Folks were nicer to me | there than in NYC or DC. | | Majorie Taylor Greene was elected in 2021. She's a _reaction_ | to national media efforts that started with the governor's | race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia as "deplorables." | People are tribal. When attacked from outside, they'll close | ranks. | | As to Ahmed Aubury, it's an unfortunate fact that police | fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it | frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn't | portraying the Uvalde police department's efforts to cover | things up as an indictment of the whole community? Do you | think it has nothing to do with the community being 80% | Hispanic in addition to the police chief? If the community | and shooter had been white, we would have been treated to | story after story about how "mass shootings are a | manifestation of white supremacy." | tzs wrote: | > She's a _reaction_ to national media efforts that started | with the governor's race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia | as "deplorables." People are tribal. When attacked from | outside, they'll close ranks. | | Tribalism and reactions to attacks from outside _might_ | explain why she won the general election. | | But before she got to the general election she had to win | the primary. That was Republican only and there were 8 | other candidates. | | I haven't been able to find biographies on all of them, but | the 7 I did find seemed to be normal Republicans, several | of which had held state elected or appointed offices in the | past, rather than promoters of QAnon and various | antisemitic, white supremacist, and 9/11 (and many other) | false conspiracy theories. | | Getting to the runoff could be explained by all the | reasonable candidates splitting the vote, but how to you | explain her winning the runoff? | rayiner wrote: | When a community is attacked from the outside, they will | put aside their internal disagreements and coalesce | around someone who promises to "fight," as opposed to | reasonable folks who take a conciliatory approach. | cjbgkagh wrote: | Maybe there is a Pied Piper strategy where influence is | being used to promote the worst in ones enemies so | they're easy to beat later on. Sometimes it can backfire | though. | bsder wrote: | > She's a reaction to national media efforts that started | with the governor's race in 2018 to paint half of Georgia | as "deplorables." | | Citation needed. | | We're long past the "These are actually good people." | | Sorry. You need to face up to the fact that these people | are true believers and that this is who they really are and | that they are _evil people_. | | "He's not hurting the right people." "Better Russian than | Democrat." etc. | | When you are recieving the pointy end of the stick, it | doesn't matter to you whether the person on the other end | believes in what they are doing or not. | rayiner wrote: | > When you are recieving the pointy end of the stick, it | doesn't matter to you whether the person on the other end | believes in what they are doing or not. | | Correct, but who is holding the pointy stick? Hint: it's | not rural folks in Georgia. It's the folks that have Wall | Street and Silicon Valley behind them. | bsder wrote: | Who the rural folks in Georgia keep voting for? In record | numbers? | | You're kind of making my point. | | However, yes, these rural folks _ARE_ the ones standing | in front of abortion clinics and assaulting people and | shooting doctors. They _ARE_ the ones who drove up to | Washinton, DC, to take part in an insurrection. etc. All | at the behest of a really shitty conman from New York and | his criminal cohort. | | I can go on if you would like? | | These rural people _ARE_ shoving the pointy end of the | stick into people. Directly and individually as well as | with their votes. | claydolatry wrote: | deanCommie wrote: | heavyset_go wrote: | This is the text version of this comic[1]. | | [1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/8/1786532/-Cart | oon-Y... | lotsofpulp wrote: | > As to Ahmed Aubury, it's an unfortunate fact that police | fuckups and cover ups happen. But the media chooses how it | frames any given such event. Notice how the media isn't | portraying the Uvalde police department's efforts to cover | things up as an indictment of the whole community? | | The difference is that in Ahmed Aubury's case, there was | clear evidence of corruption along racial lines amongst | local leaders, and which there is a long history of in the | area Aubury was murdered in. | | Obviously, this was not the case in Uvalde and so it would | not be portrayed as such. | barry-cotter wrote: | > Obviously, this was not the case in Uvalde and so it | would not be portrayed as such. | | Jeffrey Epstein was obviously killed. What's obvious to | one group of people is not obvious to others. There are a | great many people to whom it is obvious that the median | journalist is more like Taylor Lorenz than them and hates | people like them and has no compunction about lying if it | makes hurting them easier. | unclebucknasty wrote: | > _She's a reaction to national media efforts..._ | | This comment goes a long way to rationalize your initial | assertion that "it's the media's fault". | | You're essentially saying that MTG's constituents voted for | her out of their resentment over the media believing they | were ignorant enough to vote for her. | | Could it be that they actually voted for her because they | like her? How are you so sure that's not the case? | | > _an indictment of the whole community_ | | Again, I actually live in GA and there was largely no such | indictment of the overall community. That indictment was | overwhelmingly reserved for the police department and the | perpetrators. And, yes, there was some discussion around | systems and conditions that produce such perpetrators and | coverups. | | You seem to be picking up these threads that just don't | exist here and forcing them into a frame of media blame. Of | course, you must be getting these ideas from...the media. | | In other words, you're railing on about false media | narratives and the entire basis for your claims seems to | rest on false media narratives. | | > _story after story about how "mass shootings are a | manifestation of white supremacy "_ | | The only instances of this I've seen were in the cases that | involved actual manifestos or other evidence directly | espousing white supremacist beliefs. | | Do you have evidence to the contrary? | justin66 wrote: | As someone with family from the Dalton area, I would warn | against trivializing the difference between Greene's | district (NW corner of the state) and places where sane | people tend to congregate in larger numbers. People I love | have lived there, but it's exactly the kind of place where | three out of four people would think voting for Marjorie | Taylor Greene is a good idea. | | Marietta is a cultural Mecca, comparatively, not to mention | Atlanta. | rayiner wrote: | > Marietta is a cultural Mecca, | | Whose culture? | selimthegrim wrote: | For someone who claims to have lived in Atlanta, you | should be able to answer this one. | rayiner wrote: | Carpetbaggers? | | Seriously, though. I love Atlanta. But OP's implication | that MGT's district lacks a "culture" is exactly the sort | of rhetoric that got her elected. That sort of talk makes | people mad and justifiably so. | justin66 wrote: | > But OP's implication that MGT's district lacks a | "culture" is exactly the sort of rhetoric that got her | elected. That sort of talk makes people mad and | justifiably so. | | The notion that the people in that district did not have | it in them to elect a right-wing conspiracy theorist | prior to some sort of recent national culture war / media | phenomenon is _entirely_ mistaken. | | edit: that's not to trivialize some of the other stuff | that's going on nationally... I suspect the national | culture warriors actually _do_ explain why MGT 's | campaigns are funded as well as they are. | rayiner wrote: | Politics isn't about what people "have in them." It's | about everyone pursing their perceived self interest. | | If you attack a group of people, they will consolidate | ranks and fight back. And they will throw their weight | behind leaders that they perceive as fighters. This is | especially true of honor cultures like in the American | south. | | I'm reminded about the speech George W. Bush gave after | 9/11: https://georgewbush- | whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20.... I think | liberals don't fully understand the genius of this | speech. He wasn't just moralizing to Americans to tell | them not to take out their anger on Muslims. He was | giving Muslim Americans an opportunity to reaffirm their | Muslim identity while giving them a vocabulary to talk | about the ones who did evil in the name of Islam. | | Contrast this against the rhetoric the media in New York | uses against people in the rural south anytime something | bad happens there. They portray it as a confirmation of | the bad things that New Yorkers already believed about | southern culture. | justin66 wrote: | My initial objection was about the culture you | experienced further south vs the culture in MTG's | district, which always struck me as a pretty culturally | unique place (in addition to being the carpet capital of | the world). You riffed on the part of my comment that was | a joke (re: Marietta and ATL). | | I disagree with you less than might have been obvious, | particularly because I've had relatives make the move | north and experience some discrimination. | [deleted] | RickJWagner wrote: | Thank you for an excellent example of a national narrative that | does not match the true local flavor. | avgcorrection wrote: | You are all one people! | | _No!_ | | That's right--you are all either on Team Blue or Team Red! | | _Yes!_ | | Amazing how widespread such dichotomies are. | xnx wrote: | > The nationalization of news and politics in a country of 330 | million people is toxic. | | The "nightly news" used to be a much more common experience | that people shared: "Twenty-seven million to 29 million | viewers, on average, tuned in every night to hear Walter | Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. Today, though, the viewership | of evening news programs on CBS, NBC and ABC combined is | smaller than CBS' when Cronkite sat in the anchor's chair." | | Today the most popular news channel is Republican propaganda. I | don't use that term to be dramatic. I do not think there is a | more accurate description. | yongjik wrote: | 330M is large, but not so large that national news stops making | sense. Japan is roughly comparable - it has 126M people, and it | was composed of competing (and sometimes warring) feudal lords | until the Meiji Restoration (1868), a few years after the US | civil war. | | Yet go to Japan and suggest that it's toxic for people in Tokyo | to care about what's happening in Fukuoka, and people will look | at you as if you've grown another head. | | I mean, what is a nation if not a group of people subscribing | to the same central authority and sharing a rough idea of a | society? On the face of it, saying that "nationalization of | news and politics in a country is toxic" is so absurd that I'd | like to see an argument _for_ supporting that, instead of using | it as a starting point of an argument. | | If people in SF stop caring about what's happening in Atlanta | (and vice versa), it won't bring peace. It will merely | accelerate the disintegration of the USA as a single country. | cheschire wrote: | yeah but the population density of japan is 10x that of | america, and the distance between atlanta and los angeles is | well over 3x that of tokyo to fukuoka. | | I doubt GP was intending to speak strictly about population | count itself. | Mountain_Skies wrote: | It's not only the media but also the political campaign | industry. Some inner city council person somewhere says they | hate Jewish people and suddenly their opponent for city council | has nationwide fundraising support. Same for some small town | mayor saying they don't want "those people" in his town. Now | there's money flooding in nationwide for his opponent in the | election. In a country of 330 million, there's always a | politician somewhere saying something reprehensible. Political | parties and their fundraising wings love finding these | incidents and then making money off of them. | dangoor wrote: | How did this whole article manage to avoid mentioning that Axios | itself has local news? | evtothedev wrote: | I was wondering this same thing! And honestly, I've found | Axios's approach to be kind of inspirational. | evtothedev wrote: | I keep thinking this is a ripe space for a startup. I could see | it being, "Infrastructure for local news" or perhaps "Local news | in a box." | | For example, what would it take to have something like | Berkleyside[1] for every small town in the country? Or what about | something like Block Club[2] | | If anyone wants to spit ball ideas for this, I'd love to riff: | https://calendly.com/evan-arnold/riff-on-local-news?month=20... | | [1]https://www.berkeleyside.org/ [2]https://blockclubchicago.org/ | enigmoid wrote: | Patch [1] seems to be exactly what you're describing -- "local | news in a box": | | > What is Patch? > > Patch is an innovative way to find out | about, and participate in, what's going on near you. | | My Connecticut hometown had a Patch site. As other commenters | have pointed out, apps don't address a dearth of local | journalists (Patch appears to encourage community | participation, which sounds good, but is not journalism), | funding for local news (though I would expect it to reduce | operating costs), etc. | | [1] https://patch.com/about | evtothedev wrote: | Oh, neat! Thanks for sharing this. | adrianN wrote: | Who pays for local news? You need to have actual journalists | sitting in boring local council meetings and reading boring | reports to generate "news" stories. That is not free. Local | news competes for attention with national news, global news, | and a billion types of non-news entertainment. Ad money is | probably too thin to cover the expensive legwork needed for | local coverage. | bilsbie wrote: | I'd say to question those assumptions. Open source software | exists but the congenital wisdom that engineers would never | do work for free. | | You'd be surprised what people will volunteer for. Some | people are already attending those things and perhaps they'd | be willing to report back. | adrianN wrote: | It's a lot harder to get unbiased news if you solely rely | on volunteers. | goodpoint wrote: | There is no such thing as "unbiased" and there is nothing | wrong with biased news as long as the reader is aware of | the bias. | abirch wrote: | Can you imagine getting your news from a version of | Richard Stallman. | adrianN wrote: | I do in fact read his RSS feed from time to time... | evtothedev wrote: | I think there are a couple interesting angles on this. | | The two websites I linked above are donation based, and both | are growing. I think this is a reasonably viable model for | larger metropolitan neighborhoods and wealthier suburbs. | Although frankly, I'd like to find a way to spread local news | to all parts of the country. | | The second angle would be some sort of aggregation play | around local desires (e.g. a riff on Ben Thompson and | Aggregator Theory). Google/Facebook allow you to target ads | by geography and interest, which obviously eviscerates a lot | of local ad revenue. But could there be another way to bundle | & slice interests plus content? For example, you do local, | irl interest (cycling clubs? garden walks?). Or perhaps you | do an emphasize on privacy + irl experience? I don't have a | great idea here (yet?) - but I refuse to believe there isn't | something. | abathur wrote: | One tendril of the problem is that online delivery enables | organizations to track _engagement_ at a more granular | level than "which articles generated lots of letters to | the editor?" | | I suspect it takes a lot of integrity, stubbornness, or | stupidity to continually plow resources into reporting out, | writing, and editing eat-your-vegetables articles instead | of reallocating those resources towards the content people | engage with. | PaulHoule wrote: | One answer to that is to go to a weekly format. I think the | economics work out a lot better than for a daily. | | Around Tompkins County we still have the _Ithaca Journal_ but | each edition seems a little thinner than the one before. | | There is a civic-minded weekly, _Tompkins Weekly_ which is | mostly newspaper-length stories and makes it to public | meetings, and also the weekly _Ithaca Times_ which covers | serious issues, often with stories a bit longer than | newspaper stories. There are also some publications focused | on arts and entertainment. | coffeefirst wrote: | This has been tried a lot with very little to show for it. | | The problem is running a real newsroom that actually has the | capabilities to do serious coverage is shockingly expensive. | | So you need a revenue model. Being local, it can't pursue scale | like WaPo or Dotdash-Meredith, so programmatic isn't going to | work for you with. National advertisers want more scale and | more specific demographics than you're able to offer, and | besides, why should they deal with you when they can target the | same people on Facebook? | | So you're left with a few local advertisers, who may be willing | to spend _some_ money, but the metro papers have tried that for | the last decade and it 's not enough. | | Which leaves subscriptions. | | And here's the question: Newspapers were never actually in the | political coverage business, they're in the _Information | Business_ , and local politics and news are loss-leaders inside | that. In the old days, their offering included sports, real | estate, classifieds, jobs, shopping, movie times and various | other near monopolies that are now scattered to the winds of | the internet. | | So that leaves two questions: | | 1. What is a local information product that's good enough for a | sizeable percentage of the community to pay for? | | 2. At what price point? | | 3. How big does that community need to be in order to make it | work? | | Can this be done? Actually, I think there's a shot if the right | person tried it in the right place. I have some ideas, but odds | are long, and I don't think anyone without a deep grasp of both | the local community they plan to serve and the business they're | going into has a chance. | dredmorbius wrote: | It's expensive and _risky_. Telling truth to power invites | power to fight back, and power has the means to fight. | | A major unrecognised role of publishers is in providing legal | shield to authors and reporters. Though some publishers are | ducking out on that responsibility, see Cory Doctorow's take, | "Reasonable Agreement": | | https://doctorow.medium.com/reasonable-agreement- | ea8600a89ed... | | Alt (paywall / regwall / JS): https://scribe.rip/reasonable- | agreement-ea8600a89ed7 | mola wrote: | If you mean startup as in VC backed super growth oriented | companies. Then this set of incentives is exactly what got us | here. I don't see anyway local news framework make big money | without devolving to the attention grabbing mindless beasts we | have now. | evtothedev wrote: | But newspapers have always been in the business of grabbing | attention. Tim Wu has written about this extensively.[1] The | issue for me is that in the past, this generated a lot of | positive by-products (i.e. local news reporting on corrupt | politicians resulting in them being kicked out of office; | local news reporting on polluted water supply resulting in it | being cleaned, etc.). With Google/Facebook news, and a focus | on national stories, you loose this side benefit. | | [1] https://bookshop.org/books/the-attention-merchants-the- | epic-... | dekken_ wrote: | Is it even "local news" when it's owned by some corporation like | Sinclair? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo | ntoskrnl wrote: | The article is about local newspapers, not TV stations | aaronbrethorst wrote: | We're allowed to have knowledge outside of the specific thing | being discussed in an article. | | Also, if two local newspapers close every week, then where | else will people turn if not to their local Sinclair station? | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _if two local newspapers close every week, then where | else will people turn if not to their local Sinclair | station?_ | | This is a questionable substitution. Local TV news is | heavily watched by 55+ Americans, with over a third of 18 | to 34-year olds having never watched it [1]. | | [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/742221/frequency- | of-watc... | dredmorbius wrote: | Could you link a screenshot as Statista are paywalling / | registration-walling that content? | | Thanks. | Dan_Sylveste wrote: | I can't share a screenshot of the statistics due to | copyright restrictions, but I can confirm that what user | JumpCrisscross said (about the statistics) is true. | dredmorbius wrote: | Fair use / fair dealing. | Dan_Sylveste wrote: | Almost never applies to 100% of a work. | dredmorbius wrote: | You're being both specious and incorrect. | | The test is fourfold. | | This thread is boring. | | Clearly, you won't ask as requested. Thats' sufficient to | know. | BurningFrog wrote: | Pretty sure "local news-ness" and ownership are separate | qualities. | aaronbrethorst wrote: | Are they though? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/ | media/sinclair-n... | dredmorbius wrote: | Pretty sure they're not. | | https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo | rglover wrote: | They're not. I worked in a local news station's news room | (and grew up working in them alongside my dad). I would pull | stories off an Associated Press feed [1], copy the scripts | verbatim, and throw them into the rundown. It's one gigantic | feed trough. People deny it because they want to feel like | they're in control, but they're not. They're cattle. | | [1] https://www.ap.org/media-solutions/enps/ | karaterobot wrote: | People want gossip, blood, and vitriol. We created platforms | where you can get a stream of it any time, day or night. The best | (worst) of it, aggregated from around the world. People were free | to choose, and chose that instead of waiting for the paper to | arrive in the morning. They could in theory have done both, but | they clearly only wanted the one thing. So that's what we have | now. I don't understand this ritual where we blame corporations | for giving us what we tell them we want. | tsol wrote: | >I don't understand this ritual where we blame corporations for | giving us what we tell them we want. | | It's hard to convince people to take responsibility when they | cherish their freedom more than anything. We emphasize freedom | so much that consequences are a barricade to us | zackmorris wrote: | It's tempting to blame journalism for the ideological divide | we're seeing in the US. But the very best headlines are the ones | with a 50/50 split of public opinion (the most controversial). | This is also where politicians gain the strongest foothold to | push their agendas (wedge issues). | | Unfortunately, under capitalism there is tremendous pressure on | investigative journalism to make rent. Which tends to push | stories towards the divisive and cynical end of the spectrum. And | politicians towards negative campaigning and mud slinging. | | I feel that Ronald Reagan abolishing the Fairness Doctrine in the | 80s and Newt Gingrich legitimizing alternative facts and the | glorification of ignorance in the 90s are what put us on this | alternate timeline we find ourselves on today. We could add in | the selection of GW Bush over Al Gore by the Supreme Court in the | 2000s, which solidified moneyed/authoritarian interests and | corruption over democracy for at least the next 2 decades, but | looking like 3 now. | | Local news is one detail in this. But really I think the divide | is about the transfer of power from the previous generation to | young people. We're witnessing a fourth turning and even a | flipping of the parties around certain issues, which is why | they're acting crazier and crazier in their denial. Looking at | popular news channels and public officials, I can't help but | wonder where the adults are. | parkingrift wrote: | Not sure I agree. I live in New York City and my family is | scattered in suburban towns all over the south. They constantly | ask me about the "violence in NYC" and whether it's safe. | | The important issue here isn't whether NYC is safe or violent. | The issue is why are they reading about NYC? That's the question | we should be asking. | | Why and where is my mother finding out about a random act of | subway violence? Social media. Why is this content being pushed | to her? Why do social media companies get to decide the type of | content you see and also skirt publisher laws? | | The problem isn't a lack of local news. The problem is the | nationalization of local news and algorithm driven 24/7 fear | mongering on social media. | | Take a 30 day break from social media and the news and the world | feels safer. Gee, I wonder why. Did the world change? | kevin_b_er wrote: | They are subject to an intense propaganda campaign. NYC is | viewed as democratic, and so the propaganda attacks it by | amplifying any problem or just fabricating them. | | You can see the top stories your parents are exposed to on FB, | https://twitter.com/facebookstop10?lang=en | | The top ones are often propaganda outlets who feed them the | lies. | dmix wrote: | > Why do social media companies get to decide the type of | content you see and also skirt publisher laws? | | There should be laws telling media companies what to publish? | So people don't read FUDy articles that people always seem to | seek out and demand? And these laws exist for other mediums? | | When I was a kid our nightly news broadcast was full of crime | and moral-panics news clips, people eat that stuff up always. I | doubt it was much different in terms of gossip and social | conversations. | mynameishere wrote: | Of much greater importance--why would media from NYC become | absolutely obsessed with a trivial event in, say, Ferguson, | Missouri? Why not concern themselves with the incredible | violence of places like...NYC? Why not look deep into the | actual statistics around violence, rather than amplifying | particular incidents from irrelevant places? Bad faith | question, of course. They do it because they have to travel far | and wide to find things that match the narrative. Outside their | window, in the streets which their own politicians control, the | narrative is a little different. | | To answer your own question for the sake of contrast, it's not | strange that provincials would know about the events in NYC. It | is a large, important city. | [deleted] | photochemsyn wrote: | Not a word about why media antitrust is important... even though | the article casually mentions that " _Newspapers continue to be | consolidated by hedge funds and private investment firms that | believe they can wring more profits from the papers through | synergies as the industry declines._ " | | > "Axios is owned by Axios Media, whose investors include Glade | Brook Capital Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greycroft, and | NBC News. NBC doubles up as Axios' media partner." | | https://marketrealist.com/p/who-owns-axios/ | | Not only that, people employed by today's media conglomerates are | increasingly drawn from the 'wealthy liberal coastal elite' | sector and are typically filtered through an unpaid internship | process before getting hired, leading to non-representative | 'journalists', which is probably doing as much damage (i.e | pushing the populist perception of news media as a symbol of out- | of-touch elitism) as the corporate consolidation is. | | Another side effect of this trend is the death of investigative | journalism, which generally upsets the state and corporate power | centers who are increasingly joined at the hip. For example, the | last Washington Post investigative series of note was "Top Secret | America" from about a decade ago, and now that Jeff Bezos owns | the paper and AWS is actively seeking CIA and NSA contracts, | forget about anything else like that. | dgb23 wrote: | Investigative, independent, long form, good journalism still | exists, you have to pay for it though and it isn't as popular | as mainstream. | jarjoura wrote: | I used to be an avid Economist reader, but even they are | increasingly moving away from long form non opinionated | journalism towards more bite-sized, clearly biased takes on | the world. | | They have made it know they clearly believe Brexit was a | mistake and now they have made a point to go "see I told you | so" more often than not. | [deleted] | woodruffw wrote: | For New Yorkers: Hell Gate[1] is a new group, focusing on local | news and intrigue. I don't believe they're accepting money yet, | but they've done some excellent local investigating. | | [1]: https://www.hellgatenyc.com/ | WhitneyLand wrote: | The source material makes a weak case for the causation (rather | than simply correlation) claimed in the title. | | Here's a link to the actual report, for some reason it's buried 3 | or 4 levels deep from the article: | https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/research/state-... | | Notice the headline (clickbait?) topic is not the primary theme | of the report. The report is primarily about the state of the | newspaper business. In the key findings, "news deserts" causing a | divide is only mentioned in one of the last points. | | I'm not trying to disagree necessarily, but they need to provide | better support for the tie-in. | in_cahoots wrote: | Agreed, this article provides clear evidence that the industry | is declining but no evidence of it being linked to a growing | divide. I'm sad, but not surprised, to see so few comments | engaging with the contents of the article itself. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-04 23:00 UTC)