Turns out he wanted me go join his MLM.
Reasons to Be Cheerful is nice. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/
It's very likely that because of their age and lower likelihood of vaccination, the people trying to destroy America are dying at least slightly faster than the people trying to fix it.
To copy the opening from the current draft of my Christmas letter.
Because you know I'll never finish and send the letter?
I like the link in 2. I suspect that it's tricky to find things that are both good and feel relevant -- that might be a good niche for local news. This article about a small Iowa paper discusses that pivot as "solutions journalism" near the end of the article. Storm Lake newspaper documentary
I suspect that it's hard to keep people reading stories about good things going on far away; industry newsletters are filled with them. I suspect that the niche for "engineering challenges overcome" is better fulfilled with newsletters for my industry, than explained for laymen. (Conversely, there was a show called Build it Bigger that was similar boosterism for laypeople, but was nicely produced and got at the issues.)
I wonder if part of the issue with positive reporting is that it gets swamped by PR releases too quickly. It feels like everyone wants recognition for their work, products, etc., but most people don't care to watch infomercials. (Or, again, if you're interested in watching people accomplish impressive things, there's Making It and baking shows.)
OP is not alone. Good but grim post over at LGM today called "tuning out the news" which is what lots are doing.
I'd set up that Network for small beans by major media standards! Things like closing in on the eradication of both polio and Guinea worm. (Jimmy Carter might live to see the last of the Guinea worm, and his foundation has led that fight.) Millennium development goals in a 20- or 25-year time frame. Curing hepatitis C. The new levees in New Orleans held against a category 4 hurricane. &c &c &c
There's a very long list of good news stories out there, and with just a few tens of millions (of which I would be content with one or two) it could be made into compelling television. Whether it would get ratings is anyone's guess.
Yes please! I've got some small beans. I hope you mean literal small beans.
The ulterior motive would be to illustrate and promote well-functioning government programs and well-designed policies that effectively improve problems.
Two tnoughts:
1. isn't that was science programs like NOVA used to do?
2. IIRC there is a well-understood link between getting people angry, and keeping them engaged. One supposes that getting people happy does not thus promote engagement. Hence we go from "History Channel as place to learn history" to "reality teevee".
It would be nice if we could reduce the influence of advertising on all media. Sigh.
I suspect that the reason is supply side rather than demand side. Our poisonous media culture includes the belief that news isn't news unless you hurt someone by writing it.
One problem is that small doses of anger do in fact make people happy. And Ajay is at least half right on this. It's certainly the way to make your name as a reviewer or an opinion haver. And that's been true a long time. I am reading Amanda Craig's novel about London journalism in the 90s, A vicious Circle, in which a naive young woman has book reviewing explained to them:
Ivo sipped. He had already drunk half the bottle. 'Oh, you will be. You know what you're talking about, you just don't know how to make it readable. "This novel is about a housewife living in North Oxford -" Your reader will be asleep by the second sentence.
Look, what's the first thing a review has got to do?' 'Tell you about the book?'
'No.'
'Tell you about the author?'
'No.'
'What, then?'
'It's got to make you want to read it. Look, forget anything Mark may have told you.' Mary blinked. 'A review is a piece of journalism, just like any other. If you get someone to read what you write, you've done half your job. Every single article in a newspaper isn't just so much information. It's a pitched battle with the reader's indifference, laziness, telephone or wish for another cup of coffee. You have to grab them by the balls and hang on.' Ivo looked at her and smiled. It was not a nice smile.
'That sounds -' 'Like a tabloid? Well, all journalists who are any good learn from tabloids, not from posh broadsheets. Of course,' Ivo added, sighing, 'once you become famous, people will read you simply to know what you think. That's why most of our reviewers are crap. We have to have big names, but most of them have forgotten how to write, assuming they ever knew. And the absolute dregs of them write for the Books Pages. Why? Because it's the lowest form of journalism there is. And the lowest form of that is reviewing fiction. You don't have to go out and discover things for yourself. You don't have to sit at the end of a telephone line. You don't even have to know anything about the subject. All you have to do is read a couple of hundred pages of someone wanking their imagination, and write five hundred moderately clever words about it.'
Craig, Amanda. A Vicious Circle (pp. 167-168). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.
But that quote is just wrong. It is saying that journalism is inherently parasitic - the point of a flea is to make more fleas, the point of journalism is to engage. The only point, in fact. It's all about the clicks. No higher purpose.
It is very much more true of book reviewing than one would like it to be. It certainly resonates with my experience of "culture" journalism, partly because I tried, and sometimes succeeded, in doing the other sort. The extent to which journalism is simply parasitic on other journalism is remarkable when you look up close. In many ways the function of a journalist is to filter out the novelty in the world, and make it seem familiar and comprehensible. That is especially true in an ad-supported environment.
To use a British example, far more of book reviewing and culture writing generally, is done by Mark Lawson types than is done by Clive Jameses. This is only partly because James was an incomparably more accomplished writer. He also bloody well cared about the things he was showing off about for their own sake. In my experience that is surprisingly, almost vanishingly, rare.
And while clicks aren't, or shouldn't be, everything, they are a necessary condition for anything to succeed as journalism, I could point you to things I wrote, or commissioned, which were thoroughly worthwhile, but read, to a first approximation, by no one at all. So they were failures in terms of what I was paid to do.
Thanks for taking the teleological view. Most don't bother.
Teleological is right. Think how ridiculous that statement would be about any other manufactured product. The purpose of a vaccine is to persuade people to inject it into other people. The purpose of a car is to persuade people to sign purchase contracts. It's true in a certain sense but it's a very narrow and almost deliberately impoverished view of the product, and one that is noticeably devoid of any sort of professional ethics or moral code.
That's all I am to you. An example.
Hey, buddy, you've got smaller fleas on your back. Just thought you should know.
Nope. I'm a flea-infesting flea.
No such thing as a third-level flea.
Ad Infinitum means nothing to you?
It's fleas all the way down.
The CBS Sunday morning show does a nice job with good news. Jane Pauley explains the creative things that companies are doing to make the world a better place.
That was better when it was Charles Kuralt's excuse to visit his mistresses.
But, ajay, the purpose of most new car models is to persuade people to sign purchase contracts: that's why manufacturers bring out new models. The actual engineers may try to do a good and honest job. But they're paid because they help to sell things. No doubt this was not once true, or very much less true. But that is what drives the car industry today and all other mature industries.
Even before the internet, the news had a surplus of supply over demand. You can get it in a hundred places and 99.9% of the time it makes no -- I was going to say difference to your life, but that's wrong: it is nothing that your agency can affect. The places where journalism makes a difference are those where you are producing what's called in other contexts actionable intelligence. How much of your daily consumption falls into that category? I don't knock journalistic virtues. I try to practice them. But they are orthogonal to the way the industry actually works.
But book reviews are definitely in the category of actionable intelligence! People might read them for entertainment, but mostly, surely, they read them to inform the decision "shall I buy this book?"
And "purpose" elides the question "for whom"? The purpose of designing a new car for the designer is to allow him to keep his job.
Yes, but keeping his job is a sub-goal to "Making the company more profitable". And in an industry that has been shrinking as fast as journalism over the last 20 years, everything is a subgoal to "losing less money".
I'm not sure that broadsheet book reviews are very actionable intelligence. The books that sell best are very seldom reviewed; the sort of literary novels that get reviewed don't often sell at all (700 copies is I believe the median). Non-fiction is a more interesting case. But even there one often reads the review in order not to have to read the book, much as Moby affects to do. What really sells books is word of mouth among devoted readers.
The places where actionable intelligence is supplied are always to niche audiences of the people who can take action on particular sorts of intelligence: trade papers, really. When that trade is managing substantial chunks of the world, you get the Economist, but one of the great strengths of the Economist is that it's only weekly, so it leaves masses out. The great weakness, of course, is that it's the Economist, with the Economist's prejudices and weaknesses.
I read Wikipedia plot summaries. Real time saver.
I'm not going to read a whole book review.
That's all I am to you. An example.
You think you have it bad?
I don't read the wikipedia summary until someone I trust recommends it to me.
What about writing recaps of television shows, the texts of most interest to I guess millenials? Not a trivial activity.
https://annehelen.substack.com/p/an-academic-turned-critic-explains
To the OP, there's a several decade long trend to less illiteracy, less hunger , and global population growth is definitely slowing, maybe fast enough to avoid disaster.
|| Fuck. Rittenhouse acquitted on all charges.
Not good news. Feel free to move discussion to a more appropriate thread. |>
Incidentally, if you're looking for a list of books worth buying, the current New Statesman books of the year section has some very juicy recommendations.
This is, of course, another example of the surplus of supply over demand. Almost all the books I haven't read and would profit from (or need to read again) were not published this week, or even this year. The majority were not published this decade, or even century. They will never be reviewed. The stuff winnowed out of this year's crop -- let's say five books from the page linked above -- is all going to be excellent. But it's not, I think (Possible exception for Ian McGilchrist), going to transform the way I understand the world.
42: Link goes to this comment section.
I'm guessing this is what you are referring to?
"Im not sure that broadsheet book reviews are very actionable intelligence. The books that sell best are very seldom reviewed"
The second sentence isn't evidence for the first - you're looking at it the wrong way round. If a review of a book affects my decision to buy it then it's actionable intelligence. And it does - hence why, for example, the Guardian puts a wee "buy this book" link at the end of its reviews!!
Today is the 42nd anniversary of Muad'Dib taking over the Grand Mosque.
The Pope agrees with your general point in email speeches when he's knighting the bloke from Reuters.
OK; it's fairly actionable intelligence, and of course the sort the Guardian wants to encourage because it lets it sell itself to advertisers.
45, yes: that was it. Don't know how I managed that. Thanks.
NW 48 You did it again.
I used to see Ivo Sponge now & again being handsy when I worked on the 23rd floor at Canary Wharf doing the Y2000 conversion.
It was the odious bloke from the Sunday Times, wasn't it? I remember him boasting about being paid £75k in the pub across the road, and talking about "My people"
I thought it was the literary Irish man from Battersea.
I thought it was the literary Irish man from Battersea.
I thought it was the literary Irish man from Battersea.
Bloody phone. Is that too obscure?
I'm pretty certain we are talking about the same man. J***n W***h
There's your man. Didn't know he went to the ST.
There's your man. Didn't know he went to the ST.