"The mainstream press has had its failures — episodes of credulousness, false equivalency, sensationalism and inattention — for which we have been deservedly flogged."
From that list, the stand-out failure of the mainstream press is unquestionably "inattention". The decay of in-depth reporting of stories that will impact society in exchange for focusing the spotlight on more-marketable content is a self-inflicted wound that shows no signs of remission. One of the most talked-about pieces of content that's come out of the NYTimes in recent years was their Snow Fall piece. It explored a new way of communicating a story, and may serve as a model for how they present some content in the future - but ultimately, a story that provided the Times with some of its greatest exposure in recent memory was just a story about an avalanche that affected an infinitesimally small percentage of the world.
Broadcast news has decided to follow a formula. Evening news dumps the real news out in a half-hour, usually capping the 24-minutes left over after their pharmaceutical or insurance commercials run to finish their show off with something to make viewers feel good about the world - maybe an inspirational story about some kid that got to score a touchdown, or a new baby animal at the zoo. But that touchdown, or that baby animal video, or the story about the royal "whatever" comes at the expense of inattention to something that impacts a whole lot more people than the puff piece.
But maybe they have no choice. If the NYTimes runs a piece on a subject on their cover every-day for a year, a majority of their readers might stop reading. If broadcast news started their evening newscast with a story about the environment every night maybe people would change the channel or turn them off completely.
Greenwald, and others have the advantage that they currently can take a story and carry it for days, weeks, months, or years if that's what it takes to tell the story. The NSA story is big enough, and apparently the source material is numerous-enough, that 5 months later there's still enormous repercussions for the revelations just-now being published. The attention he's giving to this one story must be unsettling to a business setup to cover NSA revelations in the same publication as a story about twerking. Makes you wonder how many other stories of this magnitude are just waiting to be revealed - but aren't due to lack of focus by those entrusted to report.
From that list, the stand-out failure of the mainstream press is unquestionably "inattention". The decay of in-depth reporting of stories that will impact society in exchange for focusing the spotlight on more-marketable content is a self-inflicted wound that shows no signs of remission.
But even here on Hacker News, where a lot of us count on having thoughtful readers of the comments we post and the stories we submit, the demand for shorter, less attention-demanding comments and submissions, and tl;dr summaries of blog posts that are only about five paragraphs long, still continues. So if news organizations aren't serving up stories that are based on close attention to important issues, maybe that is because the news organizations know what most news consumers are looking for.
From that list, the stand-out failure of the mainstream press is unquestionably "inattention". The decay of in-depth reporting of stories that will impact society in exchange for focusing the spotlight on more-marketable content is a self-inflicted wound that shows no signs of remission. One of the most talked-about pieces of content that's come out of the NYTimes in recent years was their Snow Fall piece. It explored a new way of communicating a story, and may serve as a model for how they present some content in the future - but ultimately, a story that provided the Times with some of its greatest exposure in recent memory was just a story about an avalanche that affected an infinitesimally small percentage of the world.
Broadcast news has decided to follow a formula. Evening news dumps the real news out in a half-hour, usually capping the 24-minutes left over after their pharmaceutical or insurance commercials run to finish their show off with something to make viewers feel good about the world - maybe an inspirational story about some kid that got to score a touchdown, or a new baby animal at the zoo. But that touchdown, or that baby animal video, or the story about the royal "whatever" comes at the expense of inattention to something that impacts a whole lot more people than the puff piece.
But maybe they have no choice. If the NYTimes runs a piece on a subject on their cover every-day for a year, a majority of their readers might stop reading. If broadcast news started their evening newscast with a story about the environment every night maybe people would change the channel or turn them off completely.
Greenwald, and others have the advantage that they currently can take a story and carry it for days, weeks, months, or years if that's what it takes to tell the story. The NSA story is big enough, and apparently the source material is numerous-enough, that 5 months later there's still enormous repercussions for the revelations just-now being published. The attention he's giving to this one story must be unsettling to a business setup to cover NSA revelations in the same publication as a story about twerking. Makes you wonder how many other stories of this magnitude are just waiting to be revealed - but aren't due to lack of focus by those entrusted to report.