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Pay-Per-View Journalism Is Burning Out Reporters Young
Hugh Pickens writes "Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google's algorithms and draw readers their way. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times all display a 'most viewed' list on their home pages; some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles. 'At a [traditional] paper, your only real stress point is in the evening when you're actually sitting there on deadline, trying to file,' says Jim VandeHei, Politico's executive editor. 'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at digital news organizations. At Politico, roughly a dozen reporters have left in the first half of the year — a big number for a newsroom that has only about 70 reporters and editors. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says Duy Linh Tu of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 'I worry about burnout.'"
Investigative journalism is dead.
The only thing left for journalists to do is put a little spin on corporate and government press releases.
I'm sure this "burnout" isn't confined to journalism. Virtually everybody I know who is shackled to a deskjob with an email account faces the same problem.
The electronic leash has gotten so tight nobody can breathe anymore. I know I can't.
No matter how "nice" the workplace, in today's "competitive" marketplace you've got to be first - and if the 20-somethings are feeling that put-upon think how a 50ish guy like me must feel!
That Lindsay Lohan is going to jail today. You can pay me now that you've viewed this comment. Thanks
too many people doing the same job... sounds just like the new criticisms with the post 9/11 intelligence agencies.
the problem is, at 10%+ unemployment, what else are the people going to do?
But...but...blogs are the "new and improved" journalism, instead of the "old and busted" dead tree. Those that have something invested in the internet told me so.
Watch a week of The Daily Show. Watch how they compare current comments by politicians to past comments by those same politicians.
I don't think this is about the time-to-publish.
I think this is more about not having the depth or experience to dig into the background material. Reporters who really know their subject material will have no problem attracting viewers.
Do what Radley Balko, probably the most important civil liberties reporter out there right now, does: actually go after the nitty gritty details of the stories that rub you the wrong way from the police reports. He's taken "mundane" stories and turned them into WTF?! controversies (which they deserved to be) by doing that. To my knowledge, he rarely has to fight with other reporters over the same stories because, well, he actually **investigates** rather than do a few phone calls and call it a day.
When only the most visible can make a living and everybody else is reduced to financing their struggle some other way, then it is an instance of what I call "rockstar economy". More and more competition is for a decreasing number of profitable spots. Many bands never make a profit, but a few become obscenely rich. The internet nourished the hope that more people could become publishers, and it has delivered on that hope. The effect however is that the global availability makes it harder to make a living that way, except for the few who - often through luck alone - attract the attention of the masses. Being in the right place at the right time is becoming ever more important. This economic development is unsustainable. It wastes a tremendous amount of talent.
It's harder to get a scoop that will be picked up globally (internet) versus just local? Why isn't that hard to imagine?
Journalists no longer have to beat the other local journalists to the punch, they have to beat _every_ journalist to the punch. Welcome to the internet.
bad journalist.
If all you do is spend your day browsing the web trying to find some info that someone else reported so you can report on it in a sad attempt to get some add impressions then you will find it very hard to consider it fulfilling job.
On the other hand, its an easy job that requires no brains or effort so you probably should quit your bitching.
If you want to trot the world, see strange places and break that AWESOME story, then, well, you're going to have to take some risks. Get out from behind the desk. Actually see the world and ... GASP ... FIND SOME FUCKING NEWS TO REPORT ON OF YOUR OWN.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
...instead of there being a comparatively select few in the world who get actual journalism jobs, there's an endless supply of journalists writing things online that anyone could do?
They're burned out because the *blogosphere* (eurggh) is too flooded for anyone to get very far doing just that. If there were something to aspire to other than maybe, by chance, becoming one of the "popular blogs" and continuing to do what you've always done, they'd be all starry eyed and happy.
As it is, they're just bored.
I haven't reached the point of turning into the next Ted Kaczynski, but I often question the claim that technology has made our lives easier overall. The net effect appears to have been to cause everyone to demand instant access and instant responses to everything, complicate our lives, shorten deadline expectations to ridiculous levels, increase "information overload" exponentially, and ultimately create a helluva lot of stress. Excuse me while I fire up Left for Dead and take out my frustrations on some zombie ass...
"Young engineers once dreamed of hacking the globe in pursuit of a new invention, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh bug or try to solve some miniscule problem involving the smallest of system parts — anything that will impress executive boards and draw bonuses their way. Lockheed Martin, The Boeing Company, and Northrop Grumman all peddle very advanced defense technologies to the United States Government that require armies of engineers to aggregate existing subcomponents from other contractors in order to generate cost plus revenue on project contracts. 'At a [traditional] engineering company, your stress point is just before the design review with the customer, where you are trying to explain the solution to his problem with a last-minute presentation. 'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out when one of your middle manager bosses comes knocking at your cubicle entrance for a surprise study of your progress.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at large engineering firms all over the nation. At all three major defense contractors, hundreds of engineers have been laid off due to contract cancellations resulting from schedule overruns. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says [Random Engineering Professor] of the [Random Engineering College]. 'I worry about burnout.'"
Yup...it fits well enough. Burnout is what happens when retarded business majors and incompetent morons get promoted up the company power ladder for slightly increasing this quarter's profit. If you head up organizations with short term thinkers, then it is the grunt workers at the bottom that suffer in every industry. This is the result of living in a money-worshiping society that values the next dollar above all else.
You want to do your part to change the way things work in your industry young reporters? It's simple. Stop working for the large media outlets that treat you like a consumable resource. Instead, find a nice local newspaper that treats its employees with respect or, better yet, start your own independent blog. Will you make as much money? Nah. Will you live longer with more sanity? Probably. You can't have your cake and eat it to. Have enough respect for yourself to make your income a means to an end, rather than the end itself, and your employers will start to treat you with respect as well. If you are insecure enough in your persona to let a large company rape you up and down the halls in terms of stress and hours worked, then you are going to get stomped on throughout your entire career until you are finally subdued into a finally beaten pulp of what was once a human being.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Any young journalist coming out of college in *ANY* era thinking that journalism is going to mean "trotting the globe in pursuit of a story" is in for a huge disappointment. Even in the heyday of journalism, very few journalists ever even left their town on city. For every Bob Woodward, there are about 1,000 local reporters whose most exciting story of the year involves an argument at a town council meeting.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought
That sounds more like editorial than journalism. Investigate. Report news. Leave the fresh thoughts to the readers.
Boo Hoo!
And not usually fun either.
Bout time they joined the rest of us.
Pretty much anything that happened yesterday, can wait until I am ready to read it in tomorrow morning's paper (yes paper).
I don't want to be bothered with every little detail of the world that emerges throughout the day. That is the reporter's job – to observe, digest, and report each day's news.
anything that will impress Google's algorithms and draw readers their way
This is why headlines have become so outrageously hyperbolic. Few would click a link labeled Obama gives a speech But a headline like Obama STABS Republicans in the HEART with a verbal KNIFE!!!1 and you get a million hits.
The paper is being forced to reduce costs. They're doing what a capitalist market demands they do, squeezing every dollar of income they can out of their workers. Truckers get to roll their rigs, shipping yards get to drop crates, and writers get to burn out. Same problem, similar results; but hey, at least there's one advantage to being behind a desk -- less risk of immediate physical injury.
Conversely, the lack of investigative journalists is making the newspapers obsolete. They're being strangled by economics.
At Politico, roughly a dozen reporters have left in the first half of the year...
I'm supposed to feel bad because twelve people have left Politico?!! That stupid rag that reports on nothing but Washington insider back-biting? You know, if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Tell me when something to feel bad about really happens... you know, like... well, anything else.
That is all.
...it's gone the way of advances. Christ, who gets an advance these days? We've all but guaranteed ourselves a generation of desperate, sloppy writers who never have time to edit, and pump out as many snappy titles as they can hoping for hits.
Works for digg.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Then the only thing you're qualified to comment on is journalism. There's some call for that, yes, but not much.
It's the advertising model that's to blame. And the publishers are the ones who agreed to play this way, so you can point the finger there.
In the old days, a publication would go to advertisers and say, "We have a brand that's recognized blah-de-blah and we have a daily/weekly/monthly circulation of dee-da-dee, here are some studies that show who our average reader is, this is their purchasing power, do you want to advertise with us or not?" And if you were the New York Times, they would. No further questions asked.
I come from the world of trade publishing. You know those magazines like Information Week where you can fill out a survey and you get the subscriptions for free? That survey is what's paying for your subscription. That survey is what we take to advertisers to explain to them exactly who our readers are and how advertisers can expect to reach people in IT with purchasing power if they advertise in our pages. These "qualified circulation" magazines can often charge advertisers more than a regular, pay-for-subscription magazine can, because we know more about our readers (assuming the readers tell the truth, but ignoring that is a little game the entire industry agrees to play). Again, it's not about who the advertiser reached with an ad. It's about who they could reach.
That was the past.
Now, in a desperate bid to ignite the online advertising market, publishers have made a devil's bargain. Now they agree to turn over reams of Web logs for every page view they serve. The advertiser wants to know: Exactly how many times did you serve our ad? For what content? Who saw it? When was it served on a story that did well and when was it served on a story that nobody saw? How can we stop putting our ad on your boring stories and only put it on the stories that people like?
That last sentence is the kicker. You can see where it leads. More and more, the publication is compelled to stop running stories that aren't hits and only try to run stories that will be "viral" blockbusters. This pressure is incredibly difficult to ignore, but it's insidious. It erodes the judgment of the editorial department at any publication. It leads to the kind of story-chasing described in TFA.
And don't think blogs are going to save the industry this time. It's even worse at some unknown blog -- how are you ever going to get your voice heard if nobody visits your blog? So you need a headline. You need a sensational story. You'll do it just this one time, and everybody will keep coming back for all your other scintillating insights that aren't quite so sensational ... sorry, Charlie. It won't work. You'll end up doing it too.
The only way to fix it is for publishers to turn off the faucet. You want to see an exact breakdown of our Web logs and how your ads are skewing with what story, when and how? Fuck you. That's proprietary information that we don't release to our clients. Suffice it to say that we are a leading publication in our field. Take or leave.
But how likely is that?
Breakfast served all day!
and political honesty it takes to be able to admit publically that you were wrong and you've changed your mind.
when have you honestly seen that happen? I've seen them change their minds left and right, but I've never yet heard one say they were wrong and why they have changed thir mind (the only time I've heard one say "I was wrong" was when they got caught in Italy with a rent-a-boy after trying to engrain anti-GLBT language into the constitution)
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
The Jungle is electronic now.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
... our silicon overlords.
And, of course, some things are better left to our silicone overlords.
(Overladies?)
[captcha: paranoia]
This article states a truth which has existed for the better part of a generation. University for journalism is closer to an arts course than a science one; you can get through it with a good grade easier relative to other subjects like math or science which require a specific mind to get through and even then can prove challenging and time consuming.
As such graduates - which were never really 'taught' in a direct subject 100 years ago - emerge from university to a tough jobs market. Often they need work experience, plus a series of publications before say...a local newspaper will take them in as a low-level staff member. Due to constricting markets wages have fallen; graduates here in Britain are known to begin a job on as low a salary £11-12K (about $15-16K) per year with a slight rise when we enter the London Metropolitan borough.
Assuming you're 22, talented, and have enjoyed much of your degree and the possibilities it presents (perhaps being a young idealist you picture yourself as a roving reporter, or a foreign correspondant in exotic locales etc) - the reality is that you will, for years, have to sit in an office all day long and basically reword stuff coming in on the AP/PA/Reuters wire - all day long. Far cry from your modules which presented you with an adventurous trade. That's perfectly true; you can be sodding Tintin in this business but if you're like that then you aren't young because you wouldn't have the money to travel or do in-depth investigative stuff; not to mention that geniune investigative work is rare in the ink and paper side of the trade.
After a few months of copying out the wire, bored out of your mind, you've probably lost a lot of passion for the trade. You want out. The rose-tinted specs are off; and you are basically in a job where you are confined all day to an office with a huge workload that never ends because editors want the paper packed to the gills with stuff that's appearing in 10 other rags at minimum. If you have a bullying subeditor and/or editor it can be worse; the scare stories I've heard of breakdowns or young hacks in tears thanks to a dressing down in the ed's office are too numerous to all be fabrication.
I saw this crap early on, and was able to take up other work to supplement my freelancing which is a labour of love. I was saying to a Guardian journo the other day...I smile whilst out getting a story in the July sunshine and cool breeze, the greenery and ordinary folks going about their day - and then contrast it to vigil at the PA wire, lukewarm coffee and petty office politics that haunt young 'churnalists' whose talent is squandered under a constant flow of drudgery.
Would I trade my even-lower paid freelance job for £12 grand per year in the local press doing that? Not in this life.
I agree with you, however its not just corporate and government press releases, but press releases from everyone, each individual. Twitter and blogging have made this possible. This is actually a good thing, not only is there much more information being freely offered up by individuals closest to the story, but it is in an electronic format that can be rapidly processed and aggregated, mashed up, or simply ignored.
The real issue is that news houses are turning into sweat-shop filters, finding contradictions and doing natural lang to squeeze relevant facts together into a (usually) coherent sentence. The next big mover in this industry is going to be someone who figures out how to collect data from Twitter and blogs, and then automatically find factual contradictions and put relevant facts together into an article. Such a news house could more easily afford then to send the humans off to ask questions, and conduct novel investigation into important matters.
--"You are your own God"--
I work in production at a TV station, and I don't even check my email when I'm there, much less at home. If people want something done aside from my normal duties when I'm there, bring me the work, or come talk to me. When I leave, I'm out, I don't work for free. I have to fight just to get what's due to me as per our employment agreement, so now I just do my work. My level of caring is equal to my benefit for my output.
You want more responsibility from me? Pay me, simple as that. If I get replaced with a person who will accept less pay, then it is time to leave anyway.
Private Eye, a UK satirical/current affairs magazine comes out twice a month with quite a bit of investigative journalism and lots of things you don't read any where else. They website contains hardly any of their content and they still have quite a few subscribers.
Today I've had to reread sentences 4 or 5 times to figure them out, and all but one has turned out to say what it means, albeit in a roundabout way. The rest were missing words, used the wrong word in the wrong place, or denotated the opposite of the author's connotation.
This is in maybe 8 or 10 different articles from different authors.
Editors are nonexistent, and authors have become incredibly sloppy and indifferent.
The headline has become the content, and the reward for clicking on it is a reduction in your knowledge of the subject...
Let's face it, news and journalism today is not about disseminating information, it's about entertainment. But ultimately the problems journalists are facing are no different than what anyone else has experienced. Many people enter the working world with plenty of idealism and ambition. Unfortunately reality doesn't work as they had hoped and it turns out people have to work a lot hard than they had expected to get ahead. Sometimes things just aren't fair.
I'd say that many journalists probably start out with the particularly naive expectation that they're going to educate the world. Hell, it looks like a lot of professionals have this attitude, that their jobs are to educate. Their jobs are to inform us, to tell us what happened and nothing more. I don't want inconvenient details ignored, other aspects over-emphasized, or personal commentary. This is not to say there's no place for commentaries, but that's what editorials and talk shows are for. You know what you're getting with Jon Stewart or Glen Beck. But I sure as hell better not be getting opinion from Anderson Cooper or Katie Couric, but of course they can't help themselves. I can't stand it when they try to deliver a story in a dramatic manner, which is pretty much all Foxnews does.
Ultimately this is the fault of the consumer. They're the ones who eat up the crap they're fed. Journalism wouldn't be the way it is if it weren't for consumer demand. I do have a problem with news aggregators when they reap the benefits of someone else's work. But I've found that the most successful of these provide their own unique content. It's the only way to ensure loyalty. So what this means is that the landscape is changing.
Like I've said before, it's ultimately the responsibility of the individual journalist to find a way to thrive. I have to do the same in my career, why shouldn't a journalist be expected to do the same? What are we going to do? Start giving them bailouts like some are proposing?
The real concern I have is the rise of rampant bias. It's gotten for too easy for people to only expose themselves to the news they want to hear, that which agrees with their worldview.
The children of affluent and privilege finally find out that hard work is hard. Sheesh, welcome to the real world where most people are underpaid and overworked.
The Daily Show get their news second hand mainly from the 'news' outlets they criticize. Yes, its interesting to see them tear apart the lies, distractions, schizophrenia and lopsidedness that passes for news -- but don't mistake that criticism for actual news.
What the Daily Show does is a kind of journalism, but they hardly function as 'reporters' in any significant way.
With very few exception the people that write for the media these days aren't journalists. At best they are writers that ask a few questions now an then. They no longer have the know how to put a story together and investigate in even the slightest. If a story doesn't come to them prepackaged it doesn't get covered.
This is why they get so upset and act like a cover up has occurred when a story breaks and they haven't already been told about it at a White house press conference. They assume it is someones job to tell them about everything that happens.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
If they're leaving journalism, maybe the next generation will learn form their mistakes, and avoid journalism degrees.
In fact, we've got very serious problems with journalist simply being ignorant buffoons today. All the real digging gets covered by a few well educated blogs by domain experts, like say 538. We must ensure those independent sources get legit information by protecting groups like wikileaks, zerohedge, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers
Young enthusiastic entry level workers daydream about doing fabulous and exciting things at their employers' expense, but find out that they're actually supposed to just produce for said employer in whatever way is necessary in return for a paycheck? This is amazing news.
After university, you have actual responsibilities to take care of, and it isn't all candy and puppies. News at 11...
Or maybe not.
What Motivates People.
Yeah. There've been some interesting studies on this lately. And I know it's bordering on the realm of pseudoscience. Personally, I'd like to see some more rigorous work done, maybe wider studies, replicate these results, back it up with some hard neuroscience. Seriously. Because it makes a lot of sense - and I'd like to see whether this is just a culturally isolated phenomenon, or if it's all of humanity, or what. I'd like to see it proven. Really really proven. Or debunked.
Because it really turns our whole carrot-stick approach of work-ethic morality upside down.
Frankly. I mean, if it's true, do we (as a civilization. . . humanity), really need money?
I mean - our money, globally, is imaginary now, as it is. We don't even bother to PRINT 99% of it on paper. It's electronic bits. Some of which represent orders of magnitude of individual currency units. And the SICK thing is. . . 99% of us? Will never have a chance in hell of ever owning 99% of this imaginary "property". No matter how hard we work. No matter who we know. No matter how lucky we get.
Yet, we're supposed to be working and slaving away for it?
We're in-debt for it?
We're starving, hating, killing, and warring over it?
We're making decisions that short-change our future, our children, our planet's ability to sustain life. . . over imaginary units of . . . numbers used to measure financial transactions, that are used mostly for. . . what, um. . . the vast majority is basically hoarded.
And the only reason why I can figure out why anyone would want to hoard imaginary bits of currency, is to either just be MEAN, and keep it from everyone else, or just out of the mistaken belief, that they can motivate everyone else to work hard, if they can con everyone into thinking they can get some.
And this stuff isn't even really good for motivating us to do our best work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=autofb
. . . apparently.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I comment a bunch on the Washington Post site, usually clicking on the comments for stories by radical extremists like Charles Krauthammer and other fools who write there.
But I don't usually read more than the first paragraph of their tripe.
So you're saying they rate these fools higher when all they do is infuriate Patriotic Americans? ...
Wow.
Flawed business model. If I lived in DC, I'd be using their columns to line bird cages with. And any ads next to them I wouldn't buy stuff from.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at digital news organizations. At Politico, roughly a dozen reporters have left in the first half of the year — a big number for a newsroom that has only about 70 reporters and editors. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says Duy Linh Tu of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 'I worry about burnout.'"
You don't fucking say? Just goes to show you that the journalists (and other loose "disciplines") don't actually teach their students anything worth-while.
Work is hard. It's supposed to be that way, or people would do it for free and fun. Hell, that's the kind of thing many IT workers face on a daily basis - and the threat is not that they won't make a deadline or get a catch, but that they'll have hundreds if not thousands of angry users to contend with, and maybe get fired.
Apparently these journos didn't foster their heavy drinking enough in school. Something. They're clearly not up to par and should just go back to doing political rallies on campuses.
Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com did this right prior to the last presidential elections. While the rest of the sheep-reporters were elbowing for room on the campaign bus or plane, listening to the candidates bla bla bla the same stump speech in town after town, Nate and "BrettMarty" were going on their their self-titled 'Kerouac' tour, going from state to state across the US, visiting campaign HQs they could find . These guys reported stuff that the mainstream-sheep weren't. My sense was they were driving around - and sleeping - in an old chevy van. Clearly younger, they could sacrifice their bodies and lives for the story. Worth a look at the series. This is one example. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008_09_14_archive.html
Absolutely. The amount of reporters the average user needs relative to the amount of news they desire to consume is completely out of balance.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The writers that can churn out the most inane, stupid crap with a catching headline will make a lot of money?
Clever signature text goes here.
Well, welcome to the world of wire services. This was life in the Associated Press and United Press International and countless other wire services that were born and then buried over the years. I worked as a journalist for just about 10 years in photo, print and then TV and this is the life. You are on deadline and you have to hustle to get there first. There is nothing more satisfying that to have another reporter tell you that they are going to go do your story. Not everyone is made for this kind of life, and I watched over the years as people who did not have the drive, energy and love for what they were doing fade away. Finally I reached my end too. It's just the way it is.
I wish we'd return to the old standard of amateurs being more sought after than professionals. A professional needs to be paid to do the work. As an amateur you do it, quite literally the meaning of the word itself, because you love it. People who are emotionally invested in what you they do are usually better at it.
*DrugCheese rants*
This reminds me of The Gambler by Paolo Bacigalupi, a short story where a reporter on the web tries to pursue meaningful stories rather than the fluff that attracts the most hits, and has trouble meeting his quota as a result. A very good read.
Welcome to working for a living.
Maybe if they did something other than parrot Democrat Party news releases and make shit up about conservatives, more people would read them.
There's a limited market for Leftist partisan propaganda, the New York Times has it pretty much saturated all by itself.
I figure I'll get modded down for this but I've got karma to burn.(You know since I'm saying something minorly critical about Stewart and we can't have that.) Anyway I'm not buying that whole "I'm just doing a comedy show on basic cable and don't forget the puppets" thing from Stewart. The reason is simple, have you looked at who he interviews? I mean he has important people on his show fairly often and interviews them with some seriousness. (Not always, there's a few jokes but it isn't all jokes.) I mean he's interviewed a couple of world leaders, a sitting Vice President, loads of senators, quite a few former presidents, ETC. I'll give you that Leno did interview the president on the tonight show but that is not a regular thing with him. (He might interview a John McCain or an Al Gore but not with the regularity Stewart does. I mean hell, Stewart will have on an ambassador which should show he does more than "Just comedy".)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
This isn't that new. The idea was used in a story I read in the last year, so the meme has had time to make it from the real world to fiction.
Now, can anyone remind me which story this was in? I've forgotten.
The reason Stewart interviews such people is that he is hosting a POLITICAL comedy show. Those politicos he gets to interview want to show they are human and have a sense of humor. Leno, Letterman, etc. are general talk shows and do not focus on politics.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I mean it isn't that he finds political people. It's that he finds important people to have on his show that you'd think don't have the time to waste showing that on "a stupid comedy show." You have guys Pervez Musharraf, I guess he's just got time to blow on crap like that? What about all the cabinet secretaries that he has on? Selling an administration's point of view to a younger audience is the point, not making anybody seem more human. Hell, it's not that unusual to have some author or historian on to talk history.(Usually to shill a book but the point is the guy or gal comes on to talk politics or history. Not to make the subject matter seem "more human") Hell, When he had on Jim Wallis this year the point wasn't to make the guy seem human. The point was to talk about his critique of the often conservative bent of religion from his point of view as a religious liberal. The point is obvious, he likes having these serious people on because he actually likes talking about these serious subjects like politics and pholosophy and his show gives him the opportunity. (But then he turns around and claims it's just a stupid show on basic cable.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
In other words, the NYT system selects for crap writing that has no value or utility.