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I’ve found that thoughtful opinions are best sampled on an individual to individual basis and not easily found by reading articles from a news organization.

News orgs are rushing to print the story and (at most) only include small tidbits of reactionary analysis. It isn’t the fault of the individual as much as it is the medium. The medium inherently lacks depth.

Two places to start: Daryl Cooper, Michael Tracy.



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I would hate to rely on newspapers for any topic. You can tell the writer has limited knowledge and you couldn't get enough info here to have an opinion that wasn't anything more than noise

This is retarded. I don't read news for opinion, I read it for facts and _reasoned_ interpretation. There's some value in opinion pieces but not nearly to the extent or in the manner that this author says.

I prefer high-quality opinions, such as found in the Atlantic, Economist, and New Yorker, over "breaking news" which is usually just a copy-paste of someone's press release. Opinions have far more intellectual content. You can't have intellectual content without some point of view, and once you understand the POVs of some authors and publications, you can see around things you disagree with.

It's true that there are lots of low-quality opinions too, but there is more than enough high-quality opinionated content to fill your day reading. There's no reason to read "breaking news". If something's important, a weekly publication will soon enough have something thoughtful to say about it.


Actually, I think the real reason there are so many opinion pieces is because they're much cheaper. They don't require resources for discovering the story. Personally I skip right past opinion pieces that are labeled as such, but I find so much of CNN's stories are so slanted they all read as opinion pieces.

That was my point, rather than research a topic and give the reader/viewer hard facts, major "news" orgs bring in opinion panels that degrade the conversation and add nothing of value.

You're wrong, I agree with most of their opinions. I don't like the way they present them with appeal to emotion, speculation, and opinion woven into their reporting. It's unnecessary and a turnoff to those who don't share their opinions who might be otherwise swayed by the facts.

These are opinion pieces. Opinion is not news.

An opinion piece does not good journalism make. That would be like a someone citing Sean Hannity show as a source.

It sounds like you're looking for an opinion piece when what you're actually reading is reporting of facts or human interest stories.

Not to nitpick, but isn't news supposed to be objective and opinion not?

It seems kind of weird to wander into an opinion piece, then seem put-off that its author might be biased. Yes, it is very likely that if you check the author's background, then you will find threads that are consistent with the opinions expressed in an article that he/she produces. In fact the article itself is an expression of that background.

Again not being a pedant here. Just don't understand the admonition to check the background as the basis for dismissing a writer's opinion.


> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links

Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something to confirm their biases.


An opinion piece isn’t a source.

If it's merely meant to be news coverage, it shouldn't be in the opinion section.

People should just make up their own mind by reading a publication, instead of adopting another publication’s opinion about a publication.

I honestly think that's giving most publications too much credit. Many opinion pieces seem intended to provoke outrage, much like Facebook's much-maligned newsfeed algorithms.

This. Its content is largely written by people who seem to feel that their own opinion has some intrinsic value to other people (I used to be one of them). Doing research and focusing on weighing opposing viewpoints is too much work. Really cuts into the cathartic act of spewing words out into the world.

outsourcing personal opinions wholesale to articles that others have written, without being able to reformulate/articulate said opinions in your own words, does not make for an especially compelling argument.

That's certainly /r/news' justification, but their argument doesn't wash. It's no more opinion than any other piece of investigative reporting - they all tell a particular story through the facts they select, how they describe the issue, and the conclusion they draw.

I'm not a big fan of this style of online journalism. Do we have anything on this other than an opinion piece heavily lacking in detail? Could anyone even explain what the opinion is exactly?
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