> Journalists do this work for you and are trained to do it, but of course there is nothing wrong with going closer to the source.
Journalists are trained in journalism, not particular problem domains. Someone writing an article on an event in the middle east may have no education in Middle Eastern history. Without domain specific knowledge, it's impossible to write a coherent article on complex topics like these.
The very premise of general-purpose journalism is obsolete for numerous subjects. For foreign affairs, for example, the underlying facts all come from the same AP wires or press briefings. There is no value-add to having a non-expert massage those into an article. Likewise for politics. Most technology news comes from press releases, etc.
That's not true in the general case, or even really close to true. For downmarket outlets, and for stories in places the Times, Post, and WSJ don't cover, sure. But the major papers have bureaus all over the world, and those offices break major stories that aren't received from wire services.
(And, obviously: what are the wire service reporters if not themselves journalists?)
Even the Times, Post, etc., rely heavily on pre-packaged news (Manufacturing Consent, if a bit dated, gets into this.) And yes, the wire service reporters are journalists, but those reports are extremely barebones. It's the newspapers that try to add color and context, and often completely butcher that task.
Everyone relies on wire services, but it does not follow that all the major foreign stories in the Times are wire stories, and, indeed, they are not. Look at WSJ's China/Asia corruption stories. Or, locally, look at what Carreyrou did with Theranos.
You'd think, on HN, that Carreyrou would just be the immediate nut-hand game-ending argument about the "Gell-Mann (Crichton) amnesia effect", but, no, we all seem to have forgotten about Theranos and the WSJ.
>For downmarket outlets, and for stories in places the Times, Post, and WSJ don't cover, sure. But the major papers have bureaus all over the world
Increasingly less (regional offices close all the time), and where they still do, increasingly more cheaply (in both personnel costs and quality).
E.g:
The Washington Post has 16 foreign “bureaus,” and 12 of them consist of just a single reporter, according to the newspaper’s website. The four remaining bureaus all consist of two journalists. Is the Post using the word bureau a bit loosely? One Post reporter, Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi, is listed as the paper’s “bureau chief in Africa.” Raghavan is the chief of a bureau of one in Kenya. For the continent of Africa.
Journalists are trained in journalism, not particular problem domains. Someone writing an article on an event in the middle east may have no education in Middle Eastern history. Without domain specific knowledge, it's impossible to write a coherent article on complex topics like these.
The very premise of general-purpose journalism is obsolete for numerous subjects. For foreign affairs, for example, the underlying facts all come from the same AP wires or press briefings. There is no value-add to having a non-expert massage those into an article. Likewise for politics. Most technology news comes from press releases, etc.