[ExI] why do we still need mainstream news media?

Tue Dec 30 22:12:30 UTC 2025

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] why do we still need mainstream news media?

On Tue, Dec 30, 2025 at 8:01 AM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

 >> …Others discovered this corruption before he did, but apparently failed to post it where there was a lot of audience,

>>…CBS and ABC aired new stories about it and posted articles about it on their websites nearly a year before Nick Shirley said anything about it. 

> Now something is happening. 

>…What did Nick Shirley cause to happen that was not happening before?

He posted it to TwitterX where there are 557 million monthly active users, rather than CBS and ABC who have a tiny fraction of that audience.

>… Nick Shirley can't afford to hire a team of investigative reporters…

He doesn’t need one to do what he did.  The destitute amateur sure made the pros look silly.

>…nor would he be interested in any story unless it made the Republicans look good or made the Democrats look bad….

Wait, are you suggesting that corruption in Minnesota is related to a particular party?

>… he wouldn't be interested at all in making sure that he got his facts right.   John K Clark

John, he went into public records, found payments being made to public daycare centers, went there, found buildings marked as daycares and “learing” centers, asked the obvious questions: where are the children?  That isn’t a fact, it is a question.  Hey, inquiring minds want to know.  

Kids are hard to hide.  They don’t have a political party, nor does corruption.  What Shirley recorded looks a lot like corruption to me.  If that is caught, it doesn’t matter what party did it or what party recorded it (good chance all of the parties did both at some point.)  Catching and ending it is always a good thing, the good guys win, which leads back to citizen journalists and TwitterX, a huge free open forum, perfect for exposing corruption.

spike

Did MrBeast do a story on it and post it?    Nick Shirley brought this situation to the attention of the masses.  Others discovered this corruption before he did, but apparently failed to post it where there was a lot of audience, which is TwitterX.  Now something is happening.  

The mainstream news people need to go where the audience is.  They don’t need cable news services.  They can use TwitterX free.  Let the mainstream news people compete with everyone else for audience.  That would be an interesting experiment: see if mainstream news people can compete with MrBeast and amateur news people like Nick Shirley.  

TwitterX is a gift.

spike

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> > On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] why do we still need mainstream news media?

On Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 9:27 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 A 23 yr old amateur found what the mainstream news media would never talk about.

 Note this video was has 121 million views in four days:

https://x.com/i/status/2004642794862961123

 So why do we still need mainstream news?

>... to measure their spin as a point of reference for other streams?

I am not sure I understand that comment, but if an amateur investigative journalist can do all this, I no longer see any useful function of the professional news people.

>…Or wait, didja mean production of mainstream media?

Ja, sure did.

>… If there were no MSM, there would still be mainstream 'views' as in +/- 1 STDEV from the distribution of all views available…

OK but… they cost a lot of money to produce.  Amateurs can produce stories like that link, for almost nothing, and the viewership is thru the roof, something 60 Minutes could only dream of.

This one guy has blown the lid off of this story, which has been around for a long time, several years.  Reporters wrote about it, but nothing happened.  Now… one video, 120 million views in four days.

>…but I guess it's still easier to track the fewer MSM programming channels…

The viewer count is still going up more than a million views per hour.

Advertisers paying for those MSM channels are seeing this and asking themselves why they are wasting money on the establishment.  This was a turning point.  Now… we collectively realize why TwitterX is so valuable, waaaaay more than the paltry 45 billion it sold for recently.  That place is now the world’s newspapers, the world’s news television.  There is no further reason to bother with mainstream media, none.  The citizen reporter vision has become reality.

spike  

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