alt Hacker NewsEditorial staff?
There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.
Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff.
News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever.
I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles (to force disclosure of documents, or force declassification, or fighting to protect sources). Or spending months or years investigating a story.
Our news sources are poor, weak now.
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Agreed. Modern news is beyond lazy, and is not journalism by any means. Too many talking heads do nothing but sit behind a screen watching others for what to say next.
Granted, a few of the remaining newspapers I'm aware of run business awards (Best restaurant, etc), and the way to win is via wining and dining them, even though the paper claims it's based on people's votes.
That style of thinking - of entitlement - probably brought the lack of interest in both cable news and traditional web/paper outlets - as the younger generations started to see through it more.
> Editorial staff?
> There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.
In a lot of ways you're right, but our public radio station (cpr.org) has the largest newsroom in the state, and that newsroom makes up over a third of our staff. So yeah "news companies" don't have news rooms but that's because their business isn't news. It's funneling user data to their parent companies and getting people to click ads.
However, thanks to "listeners [and viewers, and surfers] like you" public media is still working its ass off to make a difference despite being cut lose from the government. It won't work unless you switch your perspective to local news (where most of the real information is anyway) and unless you donate.
Apologies for turning a comment into a mini fund-drive :)