Pressing News Front Page
“A newspaper that would cover the most important facts about the last 24 hours would cover the 15,000 child deaths on its cover page every day.”
—Our World in Data
So here you go:
I hope to inspire a fellow human to write about what matters to humanity, not newspapers’ ad departments.
See also this recent post: What happens on the average day?
You might be interested in the Solutions Journalism Network.
https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/
Corporate media is already pretty good at focusing on drama and problems, because that kind of content helps them build audience (we are the problem) and ad revenues.
What corporate media isn’t so good at is focusing on solutions, because that requires thinking, which isn’t as popular with the audience (we are the problem), which is primarily consuming news as a form of entertainment.
The key elements of the Solutions Journalism Network would seem to be quite relevant to the Effective Altruism project. Here’s how they describe these key elements of their work.
RESPONSE
Focuses on a response to a social problem — and on how that response has worked, or why it hasn’t
INSIGHT
Shows what can be learned from a response and why it matters to a newsroom’s audience
EVIDENCE
Provides data or qualitative results that indicate effectiveness (or lack thereof)
LIMITATIONS
Places responses in context; doesn’t shy away from revealing shortcomings
I was not aware of this movement. Thanks for discovering it to me!
It looks exactly what I would like to see in the news.
See also the Tarbell Fellowship, a one year programme for early-career journalists interested in covering important topics such as global poverty & existential risks.
(Applications for the 2023 intake close on October 9th)
I love this, but I also hope that there is a thriving, diverse EA-newspaper scene in this alternate universe, since I think the question of “What are really the most important facts / ongoing trends in the world?” is profound and difficult to answer. From a LessWrong post that really influenced me (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qGceZXtQoMuiJ2cxN/what-is-going-on-in-the-world):
Here’s a list of alternative high level narratives about what is importantly going on in the world—the central plot, as it were—for the purpose of thinking about what role in a plot to take:
The US is falling apart rapidly (on the scale of years), as evident in US politics departing from sanity and honor, sharp polarization, violent civil unrest, hopeless pandemic responses, ensuing economic catastrophe, one in a thousand Americans dying by infectious disease in 2020, etc.
Western civilization is declining on the scale of half a century, as evidenced by its inability to build things it used to be able to build, and the ceasing of apparent economic acceleration toward a singularity.
AI agents will control the future, and which ones we create is the only thing about our time that will matter in the long run.
Institutions could be way better across the board, and these are key to large numbers of people positively interacting, which is critical to the bounty of our times. Improvement could make a big difference to swathes of endeavors, and well-picked improvements would make a difference to endeavors that matter.
Most people are suffering or drastically undershooting their potential, for tractable reasons.
Everyone is going to die, the way things stand.
Most of the resources ever available are in space, not subject to property rights, and in danger of being ultimately had by the most effective stuff-grabbers. This could begin fairly soon in historical terms.
And on and on. I sometimes think humanity is in a state akin to moral cluelessness about how our actions will affect the future—maybe call it “viewpoint cluelessness” about which of many seemingly-incommensurable issues are truly the most important, top-level concerns. (But of course it is the job of EA to compare the seemingly-incommensurable, and the perspective of your Pressing News cover is a good consensus place from which to start!)
Not sure how seriously you mean this, but news should be both important and surprising (=have new information content). I mean, you could post this a couple times, as for many non-EA people these news might be surprising, but you shouldn’t keep posting them indefinitely, even though they remain true.
Great informations, thanks
I recommend projectcensored.org for media perspectives, and meta-perspectives, that are not commonly shared. I have browsed their stuff, and their books, off and on, for more than 20 years now.
A lot of news shows up in the business section framed as an economic issue (for example, projected drops in China’s GDP due to its latest heat wave and drought) when the actual circumstance has additional, sometimes obvious, implications not covered in the story’s economic analysis.
I don’t mean to imply that censorship dominates the news, but I agree that it’s sometimes pieces with more entertainment value than news value that dominate. For example, no amount of study of a celebrity’s car accident deserves the level of news attention that such things get.
There’s sometimes a barrier to entry to follow news in some area, for example:
exchange design in finance
developments in medical protocols
changes in laws regulating a popular industry
threatened changes in insurance availability
trends in software production
The barriers aren’t high, but lack of context makes important news seem meaningless. It’s hit or miss whether you encounter the sources that build context for you or have the experiences that give you the context unless you’re a professional in a field. You can be an information junkie or be on some sort of mission or I guess some of you folks are superforecasters, but that’s not what most people do.
I absolutely love this.