7 ms·

I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I followed that with anywhere else? His response was nope. There is

I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I followed that with anywhere else? His response was nope. There is a lot of potential for using snapchat for news related coverage. Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. I might sign up for an account if Snap gave me a way to get hyper-local coverage from snap journalists.

farnsworth 9y ago
That's unfortunate, Snapchat "news" as I've seen it has been far lower quality than even cable news.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Worse than Now This?
  - chii 9y ago
    That's a comedy show. If you rely on last week tonight for your news source, you're already in trouble.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      I'm not talking about LWT: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/ https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/
Swizec 9y ago
> I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I mean, I'm 29 and I get all my news from Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews. Panders to a different demographic, but is ultimately just as bad. Most news is garbage anyway. Designed to make you anxious so you'll buy more stuff. At least HackerNews doesn't have that motive so it's more interesting on average.
- avaer 9y ago
  The thing is, the crowd that gets their news from Snapchat would agree with you that most news is garbage. Which is why they get it on snap. I love HN as much as you do, but the stories here equally pander to a demographic. It's just closer to ours.
  - losteric 9y ago
    It's important to distinguish between entertainment and news.
    - Swizec 9y ago
      Do news outlets even make that distinction? Because I don't think they do. At least not in the broad sense of entertainment as "Content you consume despite complete lack of actionable information" some news you find out and you're like "Holy shit, I gotta do X and Y and instantly change my behavior". Examples of such news are, "Tsunami barreling towards your city" or "Nukes detected en route to your town" or "Air raid incoming" or even "Draft starting for your target demographic". Or something more benign like "So and so VC is starting a fund for thing you're doing" Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Examples of news like this: "Bowie dies" or "Terrorist attack in city 8000km away" or "US gets involved in yet another war that doesn't affect you" or benign things like "VC starts a fund for thing you have zero interest in"
      - look_lookatme 9y ago
        > Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Seems like getting most of ones news from "Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews" would be the primary contributing factor to this myopic worldview.
        9y ago
aphextron 9y ago
>Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. Sure, why not? We've already completely destroyed the distinction between standards based accountable journalism and blog post rabble rousing thanks to social media "news feeds". This seems like the next logical step.
- two2two 9y ago
  I understand your sentiment, but why can't there be varying degrees? If we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose.
  - chii 9y ago
    > we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose. and that's why there's apathy, because you cannot easily tell the difference between award winning and terrible (when the desire isn't to tell the truth, but instead manipulate the public opinion). If only there's a way for the reputation of a new source to be tarnished for reporting badly...
    - csydas 9y ago
      I understand your complaint but this ship has sailed long ago; a corollary of modern communication and access to information online is that now anybody with an agenda can publish it. The old model of set gatekeepers and Walter Cronkite delivering the trusted news isn't really possible at the moment since we're flooded with information. There are more information sources than one can possibly sort through and you can spend your life in a bubble without realizing it anymore since you can't tell where news came from, who made it, who sponsored it, and so on. You can curate your own news flood, and people happily do to ensure it only has defeatable opposing views and the rest is just reaffirming. We gave up on mainstream media and for some reason decided that rants on YouTube, walls of text on Reddit, and tweets were better. Actually come to think of it, this might be a really good idea for a distributed ledger for the Associated Press - let whoever report whatever with the AP block chain, but require that the entire "transaction chain" or chain of custody is published with each bit. Make it clear what came from where and how it forked.
0x445442 9y ago
>> and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news Translation, anything that fits with our (NBC's political agenda).

farnsworth 9y ago

That's unfortunate, Snapchat "news" as I've seen it has been far lower quality than even cable news.

rhizome 9y ago
Worse than Now This?
- chii 9y ago
  That's a comedy show. If you rely on last week tonight for your news source, you're already in trouble.
  - rhizome 9y ago
    I'm not talking about LWT: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/ https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/

Swizec 9y ago

> I asked my 16 year old nephew 6 months ago how he accesses the news. His answer: Snapchat. I mean, I'm 29 and I get all my news from Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews. Panders to a different demographic, but is ultimately just as bad. Most news is garbage anyway. Designed to make you anxious so you'll buy more stuff. At least HackerNews doesn't have that motive so it's more interesting on average.

avaer 9y ago
The thing is, the crowd that gets their news from Snapchat would agree with you that most news is garbage. Which is why they get it on snap. I love HN as much as you do, but the stories here equally pander to a demographic. It's just closer to ours.
- losteric 9y ago
  It's important to distinguish between entertainment and news.
  - Swizec 9y ago
    Do news outlets even make that distinction? Because I don't think they do. At least not in the broad sense of entertainment as "Content you consume despite complete lack of actionable information" some news you find out and you're like "Holy shit, I gotta do X and Y and instantly change my behavior". Examples of such news are, "Tsunami barreling towards your city" or "Nukes detected en route to your town" or "Air raid incoming" or even "Draft starting for your target demographic". Or something more benign like "So and so VC is starting a fund for thing you're doing" Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Examples of news like this: "Bowie dies" or "Terrorist attack in city 8000km away" or "US gets involved in yet another war that doesn't affect you" or benign things like "VC starts a fund for thing you have zero interest in"
    - look_lookatme 9y ago
      > Most news, however, gets a reaction closer to "Oh, neat." or "That is outrageous! I must write a Facebook post about how this affects me so people don't forget that I exist in light o this tragedy". Seems like getting most of ones news from "Twitter, Imgur, and HackerNews" would be the primary contributing factor to this myopic worldview.
      - 9y ago

aphextron 9y ago

>Say NBC creates a "become a NBC snap journalist package" available to anyone that requests it. Included is a pin, handheld mic with "NBCx" (or some other visual identifier), something like an AP style guidebook that is simplified, and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news. NBC can sift through these specific accounts, select and publish what's most relevant. Sure, why not? We've already completely destroyed the distinction between standards based accountable journalism and blog post rabble rousing thanks to social media "news feeds". This seems like the next logical step.

two2two 9y ago
I understand your sentiment, but why can't there be varying degrees? If we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose.
- chii 9y ago
  > we fill the spectrum from terrible to award winning; at least we can choose. and that's why there's apathy, because you cannot easily tell the difference between award winning and terrible (when the desire isn't to tell the truth, but instead manipulate the public opinion). If only there's a way for the reputation of a new source to be tarnished for reporting badly...
  - csydas 9y ago
    I understand your complaint but this ship has sailed long ago; a corollary of modern communication and access to information online is that now anybody with an agenda can publish it. The old model of set gatekeepers and Walter Cronkite delivering the trusted news isn't really possible at the moment since we're flooded with information. There are more information sources than one can possibly sort through and you can spend your life in a bubble without realizing it anymore since you can't tell where news came from, who made it, who sponsored it, and so on. You can curate your own news flood, and people happily do to ensure it only has defeatable opposing views and the rest is just reaffirming. We gave up on mainstream media and for some reason decided that rants on YouTube, walls of text on Reddit, and tweets were better. Actually come to think of it, this might be a really good idea for a distributed ledger for the Associated Press - let whoever report whatever with the AP block chain, but require that the entire "transaction chain" or chain of custody is published with each bit. Make it clear what came from where and how it forked.

0x445442 9y ago

>> and a concise bit a rules on what is considered news Translation, anything that fits with our (NBC's political agenda).