I came across this news item that said that Democrats have a glimmer of optimism about their chances to win a special congressional election in a deep red district in Tennessee.
I was intrigued since I had had not known about this election and so I looked for the fact that interested me the most and that is the date of election. But the article did not say. The only references to a date was to say that the election is ‘upcoming’, which is not helpful at all since it is obviously not in the past, and that it will be held ‘next month’ which is irritatingly vague.
This is infuriating and I consider this journalistic malpractice. The date should be in the opening paragraph. How hard would it be to just state the damn date, which is surely one of the most significant facts? But unfortunately, this kind of omission happens quite frequently, as I have complained before.
So I looked online and found that the date will be Tuesday, December 2, less than two weeks away.
I agree with you. To me, this indicates that Politico views Congressional elections as a spectator sport, rather than as an example of community engagement. It is a sad sign of viewing politics as if it is mere entertainment, instead of being an aspect of adult self-government.
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
-- Rudyard Kipling, journalist.
Sounds to me like Politico absolutely smashed basic journalism out of the park.
Consider:
1. You read the story.
2. You kept on reading the story, right to the end.
3. You SAW ALL THE ADS.
4. You looked further into the story.
5. You came here and told us all about it, INCLUDING A LINK, so that we’d all go there and see the ads too.
Sounds like whoever put that story together did their job exactly right and should be getting a raise… (do AI bots get raises?)
Oh, hang on, I think I see the problem here. You think that “basic journalism” is about informing the reader of the important facts of a story?
“Journalism” in 2025 is about selling advertising (just like social media, television, magazines, sport, movies… you name it.). And it absolutely worked on you. Even if you have an effective ad-blocker, you’ve acted as a vector to the story from other people who may not. Good job.
This is a recurring problem in articles I read. My local newspaper had a story about the fact that many people didn’t know where the local out-of-hours medical service had moved (I don’t know the English term; more serious than the doctor’s office, less serious than the emergency ward).
The article covered where it used to be, talked to people who didn’t know where it was now, and interviewed doctors who were worried about people not finding it in an emergency, but never mentioned where it had moved to -- no map, no address, nothing. That’s such a basic piece of information in an article like this that it’s tragic that they left it out.
We should create a new form of journalism which goes in-depth in information which was not widely available when it was news. Let’s call it the olds.
(I’m mostly kidding. In the past I found that certain kinds of magazines were good at that sort of thing, though obviously only a limited selection. And that’s still useless when the missing information is a future date, already-available context, or similar. It’s been forever since I read a magazine, though.)
This is part of the reason why Charlie Pierce at Esquire has, for years, referred to Politico as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac”.
For those not familiar, Tiger Beat was a US fan magazine aimed at teenage girls. Hardly serious journalism. Also, if you haven’t read it, get a copy of Pierce’s Idiot America, an excellent book.
@3 sonofrojblake — Chutzpah!
#3 sonof
They succeeded at clickbait and SEO. I know you call it journalism, but that just means you are as misguided as them.
@Holms -- if you honestly can’t detect the sarcasm in what I said, I really don’t think I (or anyone else) can help you. And if you detected the sarcasm but posted that response anyway… I really don’t think I (or anyone else) can help you.
Experience has taught me that AIs are not able to remember and consistently post dates and locations. They can’t tell whether or not they are doing all the correct journalism questions, so they quote people who are statistically likely to have said something about it. But they can’t tell if those people they quote actually did say something about it.
Therefore the clinic article and the election article? I don’t think saying they were written by AI is sarcasm at all, but a true and accurate description.
Whenever I see an article for a foreign location now, and TN is foreign for Mano and me we’re both in CA, I do a search about the headline with “-ai” as part of the search terms and see if there are any sane articles about whatever it is. Because the AI advertisers and those AI “writers”/AI publishers who are fellating them are relying on us being bemused and less critical about some-place we are less knowledgeable about.