Irresponsible Stuff reporting

Forums › Off topic › Irresponsible Stuff reporting

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

4792 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1227781 2-Feb-2015 15:13

Hmm...

"The domain name worststuff.co.nz is available for registration.
To register this domain name proceed to:

Section 2A - New Account
Section 2B - Existing Account"

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

TLD

902 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1227787 2-Feb-2015 15:30

So what are Fairfax staffing levels like nowadays? How much time do they get, or are even allowed to research and verify stories? They have cut down on full time photographers locally at the Marlborough Express, and did so in a rather ruthless way. Instead of going for a last in first out strategy, they got rid of chief photographer Scott Hammond because that gave them the biggest saving. Apparently Scott was beyond pissed, but now he still does a lot of work for them freelance. I was offered part time work, but turned round and started running. No way in this life I'd work for the buggers.

How did Fairfax do when they bailed out of TradeMe? I can see they sold at around the $3 a share mark, but ISTR they paid a huge amount for it in the first place. Ahhhh Wikipedia says they broke about even, but had to pay another $50m bonus.

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)

Talkiet

4792 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1227814 2-Feb-2015 15:52

I swear they are reading this and just going out of their way to make the most inane content possible... +6 Two handed sword level trolling indeed...

"A new study which sought to end homelife disputes by revealing the best way to stack a dishwasher, created plenty of disharmony in our comment section today.

While debate still rages about whether cutlery should go right-side-up or up-side-down or whose-side-are-you-on, we bring you our picks for the best five comments so far:"

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

flyingdutchdude

31 posts

Geek

#1227839 2-Feb-2015 16:04

At the risk of becoming a troll, here is great example from a few hours ago:

The Press
'Three tourists lose rental car contracts'
www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/65671502/Three-tourists-lose-rental-car-contracts

'An Indian man driving a rental vehicle on the Devil's Staircase, between Kingston and Frankton, was seen by police when he crossed the centre line at 6.30pm on Friday, and Reid said that man's His contract was cancelled as well.'

I can like to speak the English.

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1227868 2-Feb-2015 16:29

Don't forget top quality articles like "Best and worst dressed celebrities of the week."

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

DravidDavid

1907 posts

Uber Geek

#1227878 2-Feb-2015 16:43

Do you think these are perhaps written by bots that haven't been programmed correctly or something to that effect? I've heard of articles being written by bots, but have never seen the work of one.

Either that, or it's poorly paid second language speakers employed to pump out as much as possible to see what sticks.

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#1227980 2-Feb-2015 19:17

DarthKermit: Don't forget top quality articles like "Best and worst dressed celebrities of the week."

And that they seem to think that the top that a D-list celeb wore to a pointless Hollywood awards ceremony is somehow important international news, and the whole threatened new meltdown of Greece and the Eurozone isn't.

Their idea of quality local reporting is probably a pretty lengthy article, accompanied by photos, entitled "Uninteresting Child's Pet in Auckland Does Nothing in Particular".

Sigh.

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

gzt

17104 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1228997 2-Feb-2015 21:01

NZtechfreak:
gzt: The 64 million dollar question: How much would you be prepared to pay daily for a responsible and reliable locally based news service providing national and international?

No idea, except that I would pay for it.

There is an investigative journalism publication in France with a $100/year subscription that sounds like it is doing pretty well (it had a significant investment from a wealthy benefactor to get started though). Interestingly a publication like that is even more badly needed in France, who as I understand it have no legislative equivalent of our OIA. I would easily pay twice that for a serious independent hard news outlet.

Thanks for that I will look into it.

So that's about 1/20 of the posters here. ; )

I guess its a chicken and egg. If something like that is available maybe the free services will be more appreiciated .

SheriffNZ

671 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1229037 2-Feb-2015 21:58

My pet peeve is the articles they pick straight up from their parent and don't even update for things like Australian dollars or referring to a particular Australian place as local. It's just lazy.

Sadly, if the level comments on stuff are reflective of their readership, then there are a hell of a lot of people interested in inaccurate, sensationalist reporting.

What do people think of the NBR? I get an ip subscription through work and find it ok, but I have read an article (opinion piece) by one former MP which was so biased and inaccurate it wasn't funny (I know the people he was writing about). NBR offer a $90 annual mobile on subscription which doesn't sound too bad.

kiwijunglist

2981 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#1229064 2-Feb-2015 22:38

http://www.gpforums.co.nz/threads/479286-Stuff-Mistake-Thread

^ 17 pages, 400 posts. Quite a funny read.

HTPC / Home automation (home assistant) enthusiast.

gzt

17104 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1230069 3-Feb-2015 00:18

SheriffNZ: What do people think of the NBR? I get an ip subscription through work and find it ok, but I have read an article (opinion piece) by one former MP which was so biased and inaccurate it wasn't funny (I know the people he was writing about). NBR offer a $90 annual mobile on subscription which doesn't sound too bad.

I was a weekly nbr buyer many years ago. It was precise and concise at the time. The mobile subscription is reasonably priced. A shorter trial would be nice. I'd be interested to hear the frequency of posts and updates.

TinyTim

1042 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1230821 3-Feb-2015 22:01

Glassboy:
Talkiet: For International news - Al Jazeera.

For National news... Tell me if you find one. I don't think there's a competent online news service for NZ national news.

Cheers - N

Simple http://www.radionz.co.nz/news. They also have this talky thing.

+1 for Radio NZ. What's very interesting is the stories they have are almost never the same as what's on Stuff.

The only trouble is there's not a lot of content. And if you listen to the talky thing you've probably already heard it all!

afe66

3181 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1230994 4-Feb-2015 10:35

gzt: The 64 million dollar question: How much would you be prepared to pay daily for a responsible and reliable locally based news service providing national and international?

Bernard Hickey tried to set up up nz journalism website with subscribers...

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10851056

A.

BarTender

3606 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1231017 4-Feb-2015 11:12

Radio NZ and Scoop are two excellent sources of well written news in NZ.

Plus The Civilian.... Must always read The Civilian for the more accurate view of whats going on in our country.

MikeAqua

7773 posts

Uber Geek

#1231628 5-Feb-2015 11:41

corksta: The NIWA example is from today's NZ Herald where their "science reporter" states that NIWA is short for 'National Institute of Water Atmosphere' (did he just take a stab that that's what it stands for?!)... but of course then goes on to refer to them as Niwa.

In this case the reporter is almost correct. National Institute of Water and Atmosphere is the formal name of the institute, but its brand name is NIWA. A bit like MetService is the brand of the Meteorological Service of New Zealand. Personally I don't object to acronyms if they are well known (e.g. LBW) or defined at first usage if they aren't well known.

But ... using social media (unedited and potentially fictional) , as a source for supposedly edited news? Totally inappropriate. I've seen many stuff stories that largely consist of copied and pasted material from twitter. Fast inaccurate information is less use/more dangerous than slow accurate information.

I realised how crap the NZ media are about 15 years ago. I was involved as a volunteer with a hot air balloon festival. We couldn't get any TV media to take an interest. Until the afternoon one of the balloons made an emergency landing in a creek bed (no injuries or damage). Then both networks scrambled helicopters to get there in time for the 6pm news.

Mike

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5