hmmmm…i get a lot of news from boing boing. I only have issue with the news pieces. If a puffy cultural blog post is full of crap, whatever, no issue with that. The selling posts, whatever, that is mostly auto-bot stack social crap anyway so i’ve already seen it on all the other sites with the same auto-bot store. Really it is only the news pieces that people care about facts in. The ones that either help or hurt real issues i care about.
you’ve been here a long time as well, so you likely remember what BB used to be.
i realize bb is privately owned, but i also recognize what the community here has built and don’t want to see that all torn down and sold out for a few coins. but we are both survivors of several purges of a community that cared.
I guess I just want BB to be a place that intelligent people want to go, because i care about our community. I don’t want to excuse its dramatic downslide as, “hey this is just a blog”, because i remember what i was. Meh. Maybe i care too much.
I’m glad you aren’t. A lot of other people here looked into it themselves, like you did, and like i did. Some have even made the extra effort to come back here to let others know which bits are true.
I had foolishly assumed that’s what most people here do, on the regular.
21st century or not, a lifetime of 20th century skepticism still applies for me.
And maybe that’s genuine altruism on the part of some of those members, but it sure seems like a lot of folks are just using Corey’s well known shortcomings as a writer as an excuse to trolley, or to demonstrate how superior they think they are.
How is this a news piece? It’s history, for sure and cultural… but this isn’t news - it’s not something that’s happening right now that’s shaping our daily lives in some fundamental way.
Now, they often comment on the news, for sure, but they’re under no real obligation to offer a balanced, informational journalism, because that’s not what they do here. That doesn’t make it less valuable, just different from the NYT or WaPo or NPR. I’m not sure why you feel that decreases the value of the community or the blog itself.
Times change, people change, attitudes change, priorities change. We’re living through a crazy time and it’s hard not to expect communities to circle the wagons, especially when they are often targeted by trollies for their political views. No one is suggesting that you have to agree with all political views posted, but you should at least recognize them as such.
But that’s not the difference between them and a news site. Remember that many news outlets are privately held or publicly traded companies… Only NPR is public in the sense that it’s supported by some public money and by donations.
I’d like to think that lots of us are? Maybe you question our intelligence?
I can only speak for myself, but i know that my intentions are honestly positive.
It is true most of my complaints about the shift in cory’s approach, but it isn’t about him, it is about the decline from really insightful, factual, deconstructed pieces, to the level of misinformation we used to make fun of FOX News for.
Things in the world are too messed up in the world right now for the few good places to downslide to the level we used to scoff at.
Things in the world are too messed up in the world right now for us to undermine our own side with misinformation and sensationalism. That allows the opposition to write off real issues in ways we cannot afford.
@Melz2 & @anon61221983 where do you two go for news these days? I guess it is time for me to adjust to the changes here…
I listen to NPR daily, but also peruse the google news feed, so it ends up being a variety of sources (NYT, WaPo, AJC). I also go check the Guardian, Al-Jazeera, and the BBC on occasion. I also read Jezebel, I09, The Root, and the AV Club as well.
Ah, in my mind, news isn’t just current events. maybe we use the term differently. news is reporting on current or historical events, factual stuff and their impact. real issues that impact people.
i refer to what you are talking about as editorial, and those are more cultural opinion pieces, which this would not fall under.
I draw the line between the two at the traditional place.
You are okay with that? I wouldn’t go to a site that intentionally misinformed me for an agenda, because I’m not okay with that.
To me if something contains intentionally false statements to conflate people over an issue i care about, then i view it as not only no valuable, but highly harmful.
good point. i guess that isn’t the excuse people are claiming it is. you’ve changed my mind, i un-concede to that point. lol.
sorry. that was a bit rude of me to word like that. I meant something more like… I’d hope this would be the sort of place people seeking accurate information would want to visit, and i miss the level of discussion that used to occur more frequently here. I’d hope this would be the place someone with different views could go to get unbiased information.
There is so much misinformation out there these days, in this “post fact era”, that I’m lamenting seeing that affect the good places.
i talk about what i have issue with upthread. sorry, comment fatigue and i’ve either made or failed to make my point to anyone who cares.
(people are discussing 3 different things you refer to as “article”, cory’s treatment and writeup, the twitter thread, or the article that the twitter got its info from…and a few people are bringing in additional links.)
As a historian, I disagree. Historical writing can certainly address the news, but it’s a different form of argumentative writing than journalism, even as the two can share characteristics (and historians can make fine journalists and vice versa). But there is a reason why there are different departments for each.
Well, yes. I don’t feel as if they are trying to pass their views off as the facts. I guess I don’t see the fox-newsification that you see. BB has never tried to be anything other than it was, even when engaging with the news, while Fox touted itself as “fair and balanced” and a news gathering organization.
But again, I don’t think they’ve touted their work as news or balanced views, and are under no obligation to be unbiased. It’s plenty easy enough to look up differing takes on what they post and see alternatives views.
That’s where we differ. I never came here expecting entirely unbiased political content. I’m aware of the author’s biases and accept it (and often agree). But I feel I was never told it would be other wise. Not every place needs to be “nothing but the facts” I think.
if a piece is trying to convey important information to inform a reader about an issue, that is news. if it is an opinion piece about something cultural that is very different. The same way these roles are divided into different jobs and sections in newspapers and on tv. BoingBoing is at its best when it blends factual news, with insightful opinions, and deconstructs the misinformation rather than create it.
Obviously, I don’t want us to talk past each other due to just using the word differently. My comments make more sense in my context of the terms, as do yours with your context. We might just have different expectations and ideas about what BB is, fair enough.
Agreed. I don’t mind opinion in addition to facts. I do mind if the facts are wrong, especially when intentionally so for an agenda (regardless if i agree with the agenda or not). I guess I only care about opinions on issues that I feel have merit based on truthful statements.
Absolutely this. I come here for the opinions and for a BB-flavored take on whatever news or cultural event is going on, not for an AP news feed in blog form. If Cory and Rob and Mark and Xeni ever stopped offering their own thoughts on what’s going on in the world (or just on bananas and unicorns and glass twisty blunts), BB would be a much duller place.
Boing Boing isn’t news, it’s not journalism, it’s a cultural blog that covers a variety of things and are under not under the same obligations as news outlets…
Honestly, that’s the lamest excuse I know of for lazy sensationalist clickbait reporting.
Because it’s a “cultural blog,” it has no responsibility whatsoever to even try to make its reporting factual, since journalistic ethics only apply to ‘official journalism’?
It’s reporting, whether you use the “J” word or not — and really sloppy, sensationalist reporting, at that.
It’s never been really clear to me whether Cory’s just a sloppy reader who lets his own emotional responses distort what he reads, or if it’s deliberate sensationalism intended to maximize clickiness (ka-ching!), with a completely cynical disregard for polluting the infosphere of his audience.
Either way, it sucks.
It’s his blog, and he can do as he pleases, but readers calling out auctorial lies and distortions in his reporting is part of having a blog with comments.
It’s not nitpicking, and it’s nothing that anyone should “just get used to.”
Never let lies stand. Call them out. Name and shame.
You’re welcome to feel that way. Still doesn’t mean it’s a news outlet dedicated to journalist integrity. You can think it’s clickbate all you want, It’s a free country after all.
As for the content… it’s still pretty clear what Ford did and why. Debate the title all you want.
sorry, comment fatigue and i’ve either made or failed to make my point to anyone who cares. 
