BigNote

joined 2 years ago
[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

In a word the answer is cost, or economic viability. Local papers can't operate for free, even strictly online. It costs money to hire and maintain a functional staff of college-educated reporters and editors who are willing to live and work in small towns and rural communities.

Without classified ads/advertising, a physical subscription base and real newsstand sales, where is the money supposed to come from?

The answer is that it's not there at all, and that's why local news has basically died over the course of the last two decades.

If you can think of a new workable revenue model for local news, by all means please do tell. The entire nation is screaming for a solution, though many of us may not know it.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Agreed. That said, I am uncomfortable with the idea that policing language is the correct or only solution to the problem.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

My downvote was based on the fact that you didn't make your bias clear and instead presented your opinion as fact. Maybe that's a "me" problem as I have a background in journalism and by formal training dislike any statement of opinion that is not specifically qualified as such.

Though I don't agree with your position, I did not downvote you on that basis and never would unless I thought you were promulgating objectively dangerous or stupid ideas.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Fully agree. Unfortunately we are a very small minority.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

That's an unwarranted assumption. It's perfectly possible that they are already familiar with your arguments and are uninterested in relitigating the issue with idiots. Certainly that would be my position.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago

Why would anyone give a fuck about their "image" on an anonymous Internet forum? Honest question.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 15 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure that it's as "quiet" as OP thinks it is.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

There is no universe in which Chinese labor unions are even remotely the same thing as labor unions in the western-style industrialized democracies. China is an authoritarian top-down quasi-capitalistic system which means that there is no management for workers to negotiate with apart from a single massive structure that's ultimately controlled by Xi's government.

Contrast that to western-style industrialized democracies wherein unions are meant to use organized labor as a ballast against the power of privately owned industrial management.

It's just not the same thing at all.

Furthermore, while virtually all modern machinery contains Chinese-made parts, it's just a fact that in the western-style industrialized democracies, tradesmen vastly prefer power-tools made in places like the US or Germany or Japan because they tend to be much better in terms of quality and reliability and lifespan then are their Chinese-made counterparts.

Go to any big construction site in the US and you'll immediately see that the workers prefer brands like Milwaukee, DeWalt, Makita, Hilti, Husqvarna and Bosch over the cheaper Chinese-made alternatives, for example.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Fortunately the relevant authorities are well-aware of the threat.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The field of computer science decided what AI is. It has a very specific set of meanings and some rando on the Internet isn't going to upend decades of usage just because it doesn't fit their idea of what constitutes AI or because they think it's a marketing gimmick.

It's not. It's a very specific field in computer science that's been worked on since the 1950s at least.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

This is because the Internet killed journalism's revenue model. In the past a big metro daily had three main revenue streams; subscriptions, newsstand sales and classifieds/advertising. Newsstand sales is the only leg that didn't get gutted by the internet, so in order to keep it viable, they have to charge more than they used to, but even then, it's just not really cost efficient and many major metro dailies no longer print a hard copy version.

One problem with journalism is that since everyone consumes it in one way or another, everyone imagines that they have an informed opinion about it, but unless you went to j-school and/or have worked in the field, you probably don't.

[–] BigNote@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I think you are a little confused on the meaning here. In this context "getting" just means take-out or something you ordered and will be delivered to your house.

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