#journalism-resilience

#journalism-resilience

"A certain kind of person is opting into spending a lot of time on social media, and they may be people who are more disaffected to start with."

Owens described how Infowars aimed to create a cinematic experience, stating, 'We would go out there, we would shoot videos like we were in the weeds, we were showing what was really going on. But it was nonsense. It was lies.'

Your own attorney general in 2020 said that there was not measurable voter fraud to change the outcome of the election. You don't think it was rigged? I think it was rigged! Trump said. Sir, where's the evidence of that? Landers asked. If you think it wasn't rigged, you're a rotten reporter!

A reporter at Ars Technica, whose beat was specifically reporting on AI, was fired after it turned out that a piece he had co-authored contained quotes fabricated by the AI tools he was using. Ars Technica has subsequently retracted the original story entirely, publishing an editor's note, stating that it was 'a serious failure of our standards,' but that they believe it to be an 'isolated incident.'

"It's hard to interpret this as anything other than an attempt to squash the freedom of the press," one critic said.

The shocking diminishment of The Washington Post, which has just announced it is cutting a third of its staff, is not just another story of a great paper succumbing to algorithms, social media, and the march to idiocracy. In their zeal to be seen as fair and evenhanded, journalists tend to accept the common criticism that they failed to adapt that, basically, they didn't produce enough viral TikTok videos. There's some truth to that, but the main problem lies elsewhere.

If you've worked in a technical role in news for long enough, you likely remember when the "show your work" spirit was everywhere. Newsroom nerds shared code on GitHub, swapped tips on social media and unfurled long blogs guiding others on how to get things done. You might also have a vague sense that - like reaction GIFs, demotivational posters, and that guy who sang "Chocolate Rain" - you're seeing less of it these days.