News is already of marginal utility to most people, except as entertainment.
The top headlines on my version of Google News are:
* an update on Trump's trial-- marginal utility, unless you are involved in the trial, with only its outcome being of use to the masses
* a story about France's new prime minister-- marginal utility, unless you live in France
* more trump trial
* more trump trial
* a piece on Age of Emprires
* whoever Nicole Eggert is has breast cancer
* an iPhone survived the drop from the Boeing 737 decompression event-- the story about the decompression has utility but the phone surviving is useless info
* news about the Peregrine moon lander-- useful to me because I'm an aerospace engineer and benefit from failure analysis of other projects, although its main utility is keeping it in my consciousness until actual in-depth analysis is available
* crime story out of Florida a state over 700 miles away-- useful to Floridians I guess
Minimally important.
The only news that is useful to people is that which can be used to inform their decisions: weather, stocks, local and national politics related to their jurisdiction, hyper-local (neighborhood level) crime, upcoming local events, and any safety or culture news related to destinations one is planning on visiting.
Everything else is just information/misery/voyeurism pornography.
It is frustrating to me because I want to know about what is going on in my area, not about some missing persons case in a state 1,400 miles away, and local news is either dead or worse than national news.
That being said, I like hacker news-- an aggregator that claims to be about anything that good hackers would find interesting whose main purpose actually seems to be providing an outlet for people to complain about Apple, Amazon, and copyright law.
Agreed. Even the "news" listed on this site is usually of dubious value. I enjoy it, but I couldn't claim that a large percentage of it is "important."
I think people are under the odd impression that news used to be akin to national intelligence. But that was always far more detailed than news agencies were able to report. And, hopefully, more actionable. But most of the "actionable" comes from the greater agency of the government. Not from knowing the data.
Comments
News is already of marginal utility to most people, except as entertainment.
The top headlines on my version of Google News are:
* an update on Trump's trial-- marginal utility, unless you are involved in the trial, with only its outcome being of use to the masses
* a story about France's new prime minister-- marginal utility, unless you live in France
* more trump trial
* more trump trial
* a piece on Age of Emprires
* whoever Nicole Eggert is has breast cancer
* an iPhone survived the drop from the Boeing 737 decompression event-- the story about the decompression has utility but the phone surviving is useless info
* news about the Peregrine moon lander-- useful to me because I'm an aerospace engineer and benefit from failure analysis of other projects, although its main utility is keeping it in my consciousness until actual in-depth analysis is available
* crime story out of Florida a state over 700 miles away-- useful to Floridians I guess
Minimally important.
The only news that is useful to people is that which can be used to inform their decisions: weather, stocks, local and national politics related to their jurisdiction, hyper-local (neighborhood level) crime, upcoming local events, and any safety or culture news related to destinations one is planning on visiting.
Everything else is just information/misery/voyeurism pornography.
It is frustrating to me because I want to know about what is going on in my area, not about some missing persons case in a state 1,400 miles away, and local news is either dead or worse than national news.
That being said, I like hacker news-- an aggregator that claims to be about anything that good hackers would find interesting whose main purpose actually seems to be providing an outlet for people to complain about Apple, Amazon, and copyright law.
Agreed. Even the "news" listed on this site is usually of dubious value. I enjoy it, but I couldn't claim that a large percentage of it is "important."
I think people are under the odd impression that news used to be akin to national intelligence. But that was always far more detailed than news agencies were able to report. And, hopefully, more actionable. But most of the "actionable" comes from the greater agency of the government. Not from knowing the data.