Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Crisis of Online Journalism

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 30, 2024

Artwork at the East side gallery on the Berlin wall, Germany.

HERE in Techrights and over at Tux Machines we use several toolsets and programs ('Swiss army knives' and wrappers) to find, digest, curate, and organise news - an activity I've been doing every day for over 20 years. R.R.R.R.R.R. is the primary one, but there are more. This morning I was surprised if not shocked to see the amount of news that made the cut, or basically got filtered out of 1,000+ RSS feeds. The 'yield' is rapidly diminishing to about half what it was 12 months ago. To be clear, the processes typically involve scanning lots of feeds, then applying a date-based cutoff, e.g. past two days, then scanning for particular topics and weeding out the spammy domains or fake 'articles' (like a "DEAL" in news clothing). Then we the curators get to work and analyse what's happening, organising the news by topic and assessing the quality/accuracy or reports. Over time what makes the cut is not just decreasing in volume but plunging in volume. Today was a good example of that. It wasn't even a holiday, just a normal Sunday.

While that certainly leaves us more time to write and publish (we'll have probably published - by Sunday's end - about 190 new pages, i.e. about 30 per day this past week) this is not a desirable state of affairs. Almost a week ago a journalist was forced to plead guilty for an act of journalism (or probably die for not doing so or politely declining to do this with perceived sincerity at Saipan) and we're hardly finding any investigative reporting/news anymore. In the area of GNU/Linux or the domain of "tech" (at large) a lot of news is just "rehash" of X version Y.Z released (no originality, mostly reciting the originals from the official sites).

While I generally disagree with Bryan Lunduke on a lot of things, yesterday he wrote: "The Lunduke Journal covers the stories that no other Tech News outlet is willing to touch. From major leaks from IBM, Red Hat, & Microsoft -- to in-depth investigations into Mozilla, Wikipedia, and The Linux Foundation -- many stories only get covered by The Lunduke Journal." (Keep Big-Tech-Free Tech Journalism Alive).

A lot of the stuff he has been covering we more or less covered years ago. He's often "late" (to the party), but that's still better than nothing. The oligarchs are "stealing" the narrative and then gaslighting the public - to the point where simple facts and reality may seem "outlandish" and "hard to believe".

Techrights is far from perfect, but at least we've established our independence and resistance to censorship; so we can cover issues as we please, fearlessly and relentlessly.

It's hard to believe that online journalism will "bounce back" (mass plagiarism with LLMs makes that even less likely), but one can hope.

Reading is a valuable activity; but we're running low on high-quality stuff to read.

Vintage Camping Site Poster

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Always Check Your Inputs
Garbage in, garbage out. Or wrong assumptions, wrong corollary.
 
Unable to Find Anyone to Work as Their Media Lawyer, Brett Wilson LLP Will Continue Losing Female Staff
What sort of sick person would wish to join Brett Wilson LLP to carry this baton?
Microsoft-Sponsored Propaganda Site Has Removed False 'Hit Piece' About Dr. Stallman (With Fake and Misrepresented Imagery) But Only After 4 Years
So they only removed that page some time around 2025, i.e. about 4 years after it had been published
Dan Neidle Said That Tax Evasion Facilitator Mr Zahawi (Working to Silence Bloggers Through Brett Wilson LLP) Targeted Not Only Him (But The Others Kept Quiet)
"Mr Neidle said after repelling Mr Zahawi he was contacted by bloggers and tweeters who had received similar threats. They deleted their work “and in most cases never commented publicly on anything again”."
SLAPP Funding Transparency Urgently Needed in the UK and Elsewhere (in Practice, Not Just in Theory)
Writing about crime - including Microsoft crime - is not a crime
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Elodie Bergot Still Doing Illegal Things at the EPO, Based on the Local Staff Committee Munich
They keep taking away from the staff while compelling the staff to do illegal things
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: Extreme Testing and Golang Documentation in Geminispace
Links for the day
Vice President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Complains That Techrights Gives Visibility to Legal and Technical Issues at the EPO
"Follow-up on enquiries relating to Dir. 1218 and 1001"
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com and Various Slopfarms That Lie About "Linux" and Are Promoted by Google News
Google does not seem interested in tackling this problem
Links 09/07/2025: War Updates and Microsoft Moving to India to Cut Costs
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Was Always a 'Movement' of Inclusion of Tolerance
Even the licences themselves remove access barriers
Links 09/07/2025: "Subprime AI Crisis" and "OpenAI May Be in Major Trouble Financially"
Links for the day
Huge Piles of Legal Papers ('Paper DDoS') Do Not Impress Judges and Regulators
they just make judges and regulators even more suspicious of the eagerness to resort to 'paper DDoS'
Brett Wilson LLP Sent Over 5 Kilograms (or Over 12 Pounds) of Legal Papers! Because Writing About Microsoft Abuses is 'Illegal'.
How do you guys sleep at night? On a big pile of Microsoft money?
Extremism as a Weapon Against GNU/Linux (Microsoft Lunduke)
He ought to know the Halloween Documents. Wasn't he a Microsoft employee when these came out?
Lunduke Isn't Even Hiding His Anti-Linux Agenda (From "Linux Sucks" to "Linux is Pedophiles")
just trying to make a lot of trouble
Some People Use Computers to Get Actual Work Done
Tolerance and inclusion must extend to acceptance that some people don't agree with you, might never agree with you, and imposing what allegedly works for you on them is unreasonable
Example of "Old" Things That Still Work
The notion that something being "old" implies it must be discarded is typically advanced by those looking to sell more of something
Some Scheduled Maintenance Later Today
Typically the most vulnerable service during short interruptions is IRC
Computers Are Just a Tool
People don't get married because they love weddings, folks don't join the army because they love war, and most drivers don't drive to work because they love cars
Apple Way Past Its Prime
Apple deserves a decline
The FSF's SysOps Team Recovered From Serious Hardware Issue Within Hours
About half a day ago I noticed that all/most GNU/FSF sites were not reachable and thus reached out to a contact for any details
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 08, 2025
Slopwatch: Turning Bugs Into FUD About "Linux", Getting Basic Facts Wrong
all the screenshots are of fake articles; we don't want to link to any
Technical Reasons, Not Politics: With Wayland "it feels a lot like Linux from 20-25 years ago, which is horrendously frustrating, because it feels like we wasted one or two decades of progress and stability"
Lately, quite a few benchmarks were published to show Wayland compares poorly compared to what we had
PCLinuxOS Recovering From Fire
It looks like a nightmare scenario, where even backups onsite get destroyed
Links 09/07/2025: More Heatwaves, Officials Culled in Russia
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/07/2025: XScreensaver and Resurrection
Links for the day
Links 08/07/2025: "Cyberattack Deals Blow to Russian Firmware" and "Cash Remains King"
Links for the day
FSF40 T-shirt message
by Alex Oliva
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Creativity, Gotify with NUT Server, and Sudo Bugs
Links for the day
More on "Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People"
"pepe the frogs"
Links 08/07/2025: Sabotage of Networking Infrastructure, Microsoft XBox Game Pass Deemed “Unsustainable”
Links for the day
Dalai Lama Succession as Evidence That Determined, Motivated People Can Reach Their Nineties
And we need to quit talking about their death all the time
Many Lawyers (for Microsoft) and 1,316 Pages to Pick on a Litigant in Person Who Exposed Serious Microsoft Abuses
Answers must be given
Gemini Links 08/07/2025: Ancillary Justice and Small Web July
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 07, 2025