Hacker News

points by benbayard 2 days ago | 0 comments

Independent journalism shutting down is really tragic. One of the OG internet publications.

Punditry is a kind of journalism, but far from the most important kind; what people get from Salon today they can get better from a hundred different newsletters.

[–] PaulHoule 2 days ago

I think the most damning fact about the readers of The New York Times is that they're much more interested in the opinion page (which is just Charlie Blow blowing it out his ass) than they are in the actual reporting which might concern some people you don't know in some place you never heard of that did something that involves a lot of explaining.

[–] tyre 2 days ago

This is Maureen Dowd erasure. Please respect one of the GOATs of vapid, internally-inconsistent nonsense. She's an absolute legend.

Nor can we forget David Brooks, the moralizing conservative who left his wife for his research assistant 24 years his junior.

David French accusing Mayor Pete of fixing bread prices, Lulu Garcia-Navarro with more glasses than good faith questions, etc.

Say what you will, but the NYT has a deep bench of shenanigans. They truly love the game.

[–] tptacek 2 days ago

David French is a weird person to single out here. Dowd and Brooks don't have any real identities outside of being vapid pundits; French is a former movement conservative (and litigator) who was defenestrated for opposing the rise of Trump. You don't have to like him --- I don't read him --- but he's not really at all like Dowd or Brooks. When you make that comparison, you weaken your point, because it sounds like your real problem with NYT opinion staffing is that it includes right-of-center voices.

If you just wanted people to agree with you, Salon definitely had you covered!

[–] tyre 2 days ago

You think that based on my view that the NYT Opinion section is a clown car, I therefore want to only read people who agree with me?

The NYT happens to staff people on the intellectual right, which is whatever. It's a core part of who they are. My issue is lack of intellectual rigor.

[–] PaulHoule 1 day ago

I can say personally I like David Brooks a lot more than I liked him 10 years ago but he left the Times to go work for The Atlantic.

[–] easterncalculus 2 days ago

Genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. David French joined NYT in 2023 and was already an independent. He is not at all a foil and is basically in lockstep with his more left of center cohosts like Jamelle Bouie (who is apparently a fascist, according to the median Bluesky poster). This idea that he’s a right of center contributor to NYT is based entirely on work from before he was there. The only person who was right of center in NYT opinion was Ross Douthat and he’s already gone.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

David brooks was never that heavy on moralizing, imho. He was more of an idealist who saw a vision for society that he conceded could never be realized , but was content with people otherwise acting in accordance with their incentives and preferences.

[–] okeuro49 2 days ago

Substack is booming.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

it's amazing how much long form content there is over the past 5 years, especially the past 2. my reading list is so flooded I have given up

[–] ghaff 2 days ago

Booming is a relative term. I would have to see how many writers are making a "living wage," a favored term of people in tech circles which generally means a fraction of what they make.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

it's just a blogging platform + newsletter service. There was never an expectation ppl would make a living income from it, except for only the top. But it's like this with almost everything in life.

[–] solyin 2 days ago

Yes there was. The monetization was why it wasn't medium.com. Friend of a friend is a substack writer. 50k subscribers that pay $10/month for her insights.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

I said "except for only the top." With 50k subscribers, presumably this is in the top tier. Similar to medium, the average person who creates a substack blog has to get all the traffic on their own, substakc does not help .

[–] aquentinn 1 day ago

Why do they host it on there then, can't they just get a domain and own their data/content?

[–] ghaff 1 day ago

Some short answers are ease and discoverability. I use Blogger myself after fiddling around some mostly because it was easier (and a bit cheaper) than setting up and hosting something myself.

[–] paulpauper 1 day ago

It's a blogging platform built around an app , which is like a quasi-social network in its own right.

[–] ghaff 2 days ago

>except for only the top. But it's like this with almost everything in life.

For creatives, however you care to define the term, probably. But there are a lot of professions where fairly run of the mill professionals and even tradespeople still make a pretty decent living even if they're not partners in their organizations or own their own businesses. Of course, you get down to the tier that's doing taxes at Walmart or working in an auto parts store, not so much, although probably still more reliable income than the average Substack writer.

[–] throwaway2037 2 days ago

I agree. In the last 10 years, a huge number of popular independent journalists and pundits (opinion writers) have moved to Substack. For me, in 2026, it is the OnlyFans of blogging.

[–] linhns 2 days ago

Sadly, it ceased to be that way for a long time.

[–] paulpauper 2 days ago

independent journalism is on substack, twitter , tiktok or other social media

[–] vlyan 2 days ago

>Independent journalism

you mean this?

https://www.google.com/search?q=white%20people%20site%3Asalo...

[–] MonkeyClub 2 days ago

If it sells, you sell it and make money.

In fact, you sell it in all colors and make more money:

https://www.google.com/search?q=black+people+site%3Asalon.co...

It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to sell.

But then someone democratizes the publishing (Substack).

Someone else then mechanizes the producing (LLMs).

And you no longer sell.

Bummer.

[–] vlyan 2 days ago

the tone is very different, don't you think?

https://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/white_men_must_be_stopped_t...

[–] MonkeyClub 2 days ago

Slightly, but that was the custom at the time.

[–] vlyan 1 day ago

lol, yeah, exactly.

knowing that most of them had already been replaced with diverse individuals prompting an inclusive LLM for equitable $2/hr pleases me immeasurably.

[–] DonHopkins 2 days ago

All the good news web sites got fucked, and their best stories and documenteries have been taken down, even from the archives, by thin skinned people who don't want them told.

I miss suck.com.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com

Suck.com Net.Moguls Internet Mogul Trading Cards:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181211075708/http://www.suck.c...

Rick Adams, Front:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180802115113im_/http://www.suc...

Rick Adams, Back:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180802143444im_/http://www.suc...

And the hard hitting funny-because-its-true parody from fuckedcompany.com.

Fucked Company published an excellent documentary on the Digital Entertainment Network.

(It's from "Fucked Company", so obviously it's NOT SAFE FOR WORK, but who's at work any more these days?)

Classic Dot-Com Era Fucked Company Brock Pierce DEN (Digital Entertainment Network) Documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W41Ttr73TqU

>Dot Com Boom & Bust - Digital Entertainment Network

>A parody of the founders of Digital Entertainment Network. DEN was "a quintessential example of the excesses and lack of control of the dot-com craze."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Entertainment_Network

I rescued this from the Internet Archive before it got taken down, and it was originally posted on the Fuckedcompany.com website, which went defunct in 2007.

Yes, THAT creepy MAGA Bannon Epstein good buddy pedo crypto shill guy, Brock Pierce, who turns into a banana at 20:30 in this video:

Cryptocurrencies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg&t=19m42s

Brock Pierce's Relationship With Jeffrey Epstein Went Deeper Than Anyone Knew:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/brock-pierces-relationsh...

Fucked Company:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

Oh no :(, the Internet Archive fucked them:

https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://www.fuckedcompany.com/

>Sorry.

>This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.

Alternative alternative archive of the front page, only existing in the web.archive.org snapshot of wayback.archive-it.org snapshot of fuckedcompany.com:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240326164342/https://wayback.a...

Then they went from sorta fucked:

https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20091016001955/http://www...

To fucked:

https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20130104195206/http://www...

[–] felixgallo 2 days ago

hotwired, suck, boing boing, CNET, digg, slashdot, segfault, geocities, flickr...

[–] ghaff 2 days ago

I still subscribe to flickr but it basically exists on the back of Smugmug and I'm not sure how long that can keep going.