Comment by jasode
4 years ago
>What's with the fad where articles start by describing how a random person overpacked?
Fyi, it's not a fad. It's what's called a "human interest" angle and some publications (like this rrj.ca website of this thread) have that editorial allowance for personal storytelling. (I made a previous comment about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270673)
More examples of that include "The New Yorker", "Harper's" and other literary style magazines.
The opposite examples of "just the facts" type of publishers would be "lwn.net" for Linux tech articles or The Economist magazine for business stories. You won't find articles beginning with personal things like, "When I was a little boy, my father took me to discover ice...blah blah blah...."
The problem is that HN is an aggregation site that gets the [human interest] articles when some readers don't want it and we have no convention for tagging them to avoid annoying that subset of the audience.
Hmm, that's informative, thanks. I agree there's an expectation mismatch, but I also find the writing in those articles a bit formulaic. I guess I'm mostly annoyed because I'm expecting a "just the facts" style and getting "human interest" instead, but it's fair that there are people who prefer that style.
Although I'd argue The Economist, while not having that form of literary style, does favor wordplay of various types so it's not really a great "just the facts" example. (Not a criticism in that I like their style in general.)
Any good sources on this kind of media "sausage making" meta detail?
I'm seriously thinking about a series of blog posts kind of diving a little bit into how news comes together. Any particular topics youre interested in?