No More Stories
17th December 2021
Journalists need to stop writing “stories” and start monitoring empirical consensus.
This is a bit of a rant, and it’s about a topic that I’m not an expert on, but I do feel strongly about. So, despite the forceful language, please read this knowing that there’s still a fair amount of epistemic humility behind what I’m saying and I’m definitely open to updating my opinion if an expert on journalism or public policy were to have some compelling reason for the Chestertonian fence of the structure of journalistic institutions. Comments sections are the devil’s playground so I don’t have one, but feel free to reach out and if we have a fruitful discussion I’m happy to publish it here.
One of the things that COVID has taught me is that the concept of a “story” in the news media is a relic that needs to be completely re-thought. It is not suited to the challenges of media communication today.
Any journalistic article that doesn’t start out with the facts but starts with an anecdote is not a report but a ‘story’. Feel free to ignore it.