Barry Petchesky on how the news sausage is made

Thought this was a pretty good piece by Deadspin's Barry Petchesky on news gathering, why it needs to be done, and how the public has a definite misconception on why reporters do it and how much they enjoy it.

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/reporting-is-ugly-1734079376

 

Very well done. I saw some of the tweets and while they looked bad, a few too many journalists I follow on Twitter were awfully quick to get smug and condescending about it. I think Barry perfectly illustrated why it happens and why that's not a bad thing.

I do think news orgs are in a difficult spot on stories like this. Plenty of studies show that giving the shooters attention can only lead to more of these kinds of tragedies, but there's so much demand and interest in the stories that you can't ignore them. Glad I don't have to deal with this stuff much.

 

Damn good.

A few months ago I didn't know what a concern troll was. Now I do, and they bug the shit out of me.

 

Yes. Well done, indeed. And JTC, the Twitter thing did look bad, until farther down in the story, he described how the information used to be gathered. Some of that stuff was ugly. And the witnesses can always ignore the tweets.

 

Good thing he now works for an organization that just rips everyone else's reporting off. He'll never have to knock on another door.

 

And he probably makes a lot of money doing so. Congrats to him!

 

Maybe.