Journalism in the 21st Century: Intelligence is apparently a disqualifier

[David Clark]

Journalist write stories. Headlines are written by marketing people. In the 80’s we had two statewide newspapers, one with a liberal editorial policy the other with a conservative policy. Other than the editorial page the one place you could really tell the difference was in the headlines. National front page stories were generally from the same wire services and were identical in both papers. The headlines were clearly designed to sell papers to those who favored the paper’s editorial stance.

[JohnStrangeway]

I love me some journalism bashing, but this is The Sun you're referencing, Rip. UK newspapers in general are to be avoided, The Sun in particular.

That and The Star are two I remember. As far as I recall the best papers for the "news" were the local ones. The rest seemed to have all kinds of ridiculous crap in them. Possibly because they had a purpose, reporting the areas news plus whatever is going on elsewhere instead of trying to fill pages with "stories" to sell?

Blast from the past tho.

[Risifrutti]

I thought it was The Guardian that was the piece of shit. Imagine a country of that small size with 2 pieces of shit.

Well we do have the Dailymail to pull us back from the brink.

Page 3 of the Sun is usually their high water mark of journalism (and that is sliding as well I'm told)..

[teddyd]

I thought it was The Guardian that was the piece of shit. Imagine a country of that small size with 2 pieces of shit.

Oh but there are more than just two... Many more... Many, many more...

This is the country of the News of the World paper and associated fiasco: News of the World - Wikipedia. I am happy to report that it is (was) owned by my former countryman, old Rup of Murdoch fame, who is now your countryman (and has been for a very long time).

News globally are abysmal. I look more to authors of articles who have a good and deserved reputation, than publications.

[Christopher Button]

Journalist write stories. Headlines are written by marketing people.

Pretty much this. Which is why you get such infuriating discrepancies between the content (which is often already pretty bad), and the outrageously misleading titles. It's click-bait bullshit, because they know it'll work. And it does.

To wit: There was an article some years back featuring an interview with Alexander Arguelles, arguably the greatest living polyglot. He is always at pains to qualify his knowledge of foreign languages, carefully differentiating between those he can speak proficiently and professionally, and those in which he has only passive reading abilities. Such was the case in the interview, yet what was the title of the article? "I can speak 50 languages fluently!".

[JFord]

My favorite periodical was the Weekly World News. They got the stories the National Enquirer missed e.g. Typical Article

I heard a radio interview of their senior editor expounding upon their journalistic philosophy: "Never ruin a good story by asking one too many questions." Their top columnist advocated supplying K-12 teachers with stun guns.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I miss them too. My favorite part of the checkout line.

[DonkeyLips]

In the same vein, I saw another headline I thought a man of science like you would enjoy.

"Mysterious Celestial Object From Another Galaxy Is First-Ever Interstellar Asteroid, Scientists Say"

That certainly had me sitting up in my chair, until I realized the people writing headlines at weather.com don't know what a galaxy is.