alt Hacker NewsDelayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'
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One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline. I feel like half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort. Outrageous claims are just taken at face value, or at best just put alongside quotes from other officials/politicians saying the opposite. As an example, how many times has the strait of Hormuz been declared open by the US, when it turns out it really wasn't? And every time these low-effort articles just echo that statement without even trying to evaluate if that is true. I mean, the transponder data on shipping is publicly available, there's a dozen websites you could use to actually see passage through the strait to verify the claim. If you don't do even the most basic follow ups, is that even a news article? Or is it just a more elaborate form of re-tweeting?
It turns out there are a few stories that are important to be immediately aware of (declarations of war, local events like service outages or celebration - and only if they're planned with short notice). Most of the rest of the news is important for the purpose of holding people to account but outside the influence of regular people.
We can live in a society where a massive scandal happens and it takes two months for the systems and mechanisms to respond to it. I genuinely believe that most stories are better delivered with full information and nuance well after the event occurs than immediately.
I was subscribed to this. It's beautifully designed, well written, good paper stock, the works. If the idea appeals to you, it's worth trying.
Ultimately, it didn't work for me, but that's my fault. Despite my best intentions, it turned out I wasn't interested in reading about world affairs beyond the news cycle.
the twenty-four hour news cycle's unyielding need for urgent content has broken many people psychologically and we need to 'deprogram' them.
i've often thought about making a site that lets you easily do side-by-side comparisons of news sites on different timescales (1 week, 1 month, 1 year) so you can pull it up and show them "see all this stuff that you feel like you NEED to consume? like it makes you a better informed member of society? how much of it actually mattered and how much of it was just there to hook you in the moment?"
I've been building something similar for my own purposes. Basically, I use Calibre's "Fetch News" functionality to get epubs of all the news sources I trust, and then once a month (interval is configurable), I run a pipeline over all of it (some LLM magic, partly local partly API) to dedupe and rank stories, then compile it into an actual honest-to-goodness newspaper (using Typst for layout and stuff), then read that at my leisure.
In this spirit, I prefer to not read any online news, or daily newspaper, but the weekly Economist in print. It has higher quality writing than all the rest, has a built in capacitor buffer against high frequency low signal bullshit (noise) by virtue of being weekly, and contains all the information about the world that mattered in that time period. Zero engagement bait because it's an expensive subscription.
It's heartening to see that Delayed Gratification has successfully continued their work for so long.
I used to work at Tortoise (who now own/operate The Observer) and our motto was 'Slow News'. We operated on a pretty transparent membership model, but I got the impression that it was difficult to make pure membership work financially, leading to a reliance on other revenue streams like podcasting and business partnerships over time.
They had their 15th birthday late last year: https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi...
If you feel interested in following them but it feels too high traffic or chaotic you can follow specific categories with rss by just going to subcategories on the website and adding /feed to the end of the url. Even slower journalism!
For example I follow the long reads one: https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/long-reads/feed
You can do that trick with a lot of sites. One of your old faves started pumping out listicles but still puts out good stuff here and there? Might be worth seeing if those higher quality articles have their own categories with feeds.
Current subscriber and big fan here! I honestly just wish they would dial down the infographics and bring a few more long form articles each magazine.
I learned about Delayed Gratification when someone linked "The last of the Flying Wallendas" (https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi...) in a chatroom. In the spirit of the magazine, I set a reminder to read it in a year. I decided to do it again when the reminder triggered. A total of three years later, it was a good article.
Sounds very appealing. Anyone here have experience with it? If I want to try it, should I go print or digital? How is the writing compared to say The Economist or other more mainstream options?
I've been subscribed to Delayed Gratification for a year now and really enjoy it. Brilliant editorial with beautiful and easily digestible infographics. My only gripe is that at times it's a bit too UK centric at times, but I guess it's understandable this being a UK-based publisher.
Previously:
Delayed Gratification – The Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222831 - July 2022 (16 comments)
Delayed Gratification: A Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200573 - Jan 2020 (23 comments)
This is really what a lot of people need, a return to learning about something 2-3 weeks after it happens and more details are known.
I have often thought about with my friends who are "terminally online" that they would benefit from NOT being a town crier from times gone by.
Many of my friends hate Twitter, hate Elon and hate social media, but because they have to be first to all the latest news, they remain locked in to Twitter day in and day out. They cannot quit. They are socially bound to them because being the person to start a topic on whats happened in Ukraine, who was traded to the Dolphins, etc is part of their socialization.
It's been baffling to me, as I simply don't see the value in being the "first" to discuss some news, especially if its misinformation.
Anyway, all that to say that I think is a great idea and would really benefit society to return back to less "real time" news, which really tends to drown out the big topics in favor of buzz words and Twitter quips.
Was a long term subscriber, now just a podcast listener: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/delayed-gratification-...
I'd love a breaking news service that gives me the latest headlines -- but only if they are still true 2 weeks later.
The best news articles I read on sites like NYT and so on are the ones that come weeks or even months after the events. So much more informative.
My problem is the opposite. When there are breaking news directly affecting me I have no way of getting them.
In between a myriad of notifications, fake social media posts, total collapse of local radio and tv, I have no idea of how to stay informed.
Delayed gratification in my case was going through three captchas before I could even read the advert for a magazine. I know it's common but that disrespect for the customer irks me. How do people here find the content, is it worth trying again?
I used to be a subscriber of Delayed Gratification. And I really enjoyed it. But, I’m based in Sweden and it was just too much UK focused stuff for my liking.
The apparent need by the Media to keep issuing constant updates and then suddenly having to retract the story is very frustrating. Each "update" is usually slighly incremental and is invariably a short new paragraph tacked into the previous version. The final version of the story being covered is often a mea culpa retraction because earlier versions were rushed and inaccurate. I'm trying very hard to escape this destructive cycle but it's not easy.
I cancelled the subscription because I just couldn't connect its stories ever. such was their choices. Not just the subjects and how the stories were from physically so far that I felt it was an exercise in compulsion on my part. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either. Besides, at some point it started to feel like news and journalism were not centre stage, being "delayed" and different were.
I am so glad to see these guys get some well-deserved attention!
I worked with the founders Marcus and Rob, and met their infographics whizz Christian waay back when they were kicking this off. I was blown away by it then, and I continue to be blown away now.
Here's to the next 15 years!
Similar to the longer cycle times, I'm curious if there is the equivalent for HN. I like this site, https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/, but it's once-per-day. I'd at least like once-per-week.
The RSS is hidden (to my checks) but there and working:
I would love to have something like this for HN, a RSS feed with articles over 5 hours (5 hours because it is old enough to have comments which are often more interesting that the article, and fresh enough to get a reaction on a comment follow-up)
Does this publication assume prior basic knowledge of the past months’ events?
Legible News has a weekly edition for subscribers:
Interesting. I wonder where the "sweet spot" on the delay is. I've given up online news and twitter and all that entirely, and just read my print Economist, which comes weekly. That already has the news somewhat delayed and presumably with less of a rush to report has a little more fact checking.
This advertises up to a 3 month delay. I do like that with that much lead time you can see not just news but sometimes a bit of the fallout and consequences.
Not a fan of the name, though. It reads like those Claude comments that I absolutely despise, where it feels the need to comment in a reactionary way to the feedback it's getting and changes it's making, rather than a forward-looking way that's cohesive with the new state of the codebase.
Maybe I missed it, but is there a back issue available I could page through, or even just a full story somewhere, that I could read so I can evaluate what I think of it?
I enjoyed this magazine and subscribed to it for a while, but I wish there was a US-centered version of it for those of us on this side of the pond.
I think it depends on how you follow it. If you're strategic and surgical about it, breaking news keeps you informed. If it's a routine, if the TV is on all day waiting for something to break, that ultimately makes you sadder and is worse for you.
I generally wait for a story to get a full feature in The New Yorker or The Atlantic before I give it my attention. Similar concept
I just don't read any news other than if they show up here or someone in my life tells me. And even then that's way too many news. There's really not a need for any news, if it wasn't by now a 15 year old addiction to come to this site I'd be even happier with even less news. Whoever says you'll not be a productive member of society or that you NEED to know current events to participate, just tell them they're wrong, they're miserable anyway.
For a really long time, I've wanted a way to know just about products that have already actually released, rather than exciting innovations that'll be in the lab for years.
I haven't really had that problem with news.
This is a great idea (although it probably exists in other places) I'm reminded of Taleb's (2)
I wonder how much news related issues have to do with the way news is presented rather than the frequency at which you read the news. Daily news reading doesn't strike me as concerning given that getting a newspaper delivered in the mail in the morning was entirely normal practice and people didn't seem to experience the distress they do now. Between the 20s and up until the 70s almost every American household subscribed to a daily newspaper.
I figure the fact that news has turned into hedonic consumption is the much bigger deal. Neil Postman wrote a book, Amusing Ourselves to Death outlining how mass media turned all programming into entertainment programming. Everything is stimulating, emotionally charged etc. That to me seems to be the exhausting part.
So as for the title of this publication people really seem to be into the "delayed" part but I think the "gratification" part might be the problem
everything these days is "breaking news!" -- I've come to hate that moniker, and sometimes actively ignore anything tagged as such. It goes without saying that I stopped watching TV news years ago--it's pretty much garbage.
highlighting this as 'slow journalism' is a bit odd - it's a magazine, there are lots of them, quarterly etc. The slowness is a given, the delay is the feature.
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Cute idea, and I do think that we have way too much on our news feeds constantly, however, I don't think making news a quarterly ordeal is the right answer - that's a bit extreme.
I suppose it differs for everyone, and there's an argument that people used to do just fine living on their homesteads without much outside contact for months except the occasional visit into town to go to the general store.
But, for the majority of people, I believe weekly news is probably a good balance of relatively up-to-date information that's maybe even been filtered a bit (the good kind, filtering of noise, not the censorship kind), while still being infrequent enough as to not contribute to the continual degradation of the mind that constant feed scrolling brings.
Personally, I'd probably want a short daily feed to check either in the morning, or after work, but even then most news is annoying for me, and I prefer to mainly just look at tech news...