Last week while scrolling through twitter I came across a tweet that made me sad. Not sad because what I saw pulled on my emotional heartstrings, but sad because I knew that what I was looking at was going to have a negative impact on social discourse among those who have discussions and debates on social media.
What I saw was the announcement from The Knife media that they were to cease publishing.
They have now ceased publishing and I'm gutted.
What the knife did was published news already reported by mainstream outlets. The Knife team then removed the bias and spin so that what you were left with was clean unbiased news.
I first heard about them back in march when the journalist Tim Pool interviewed two of the people that ran the site. The interview was conducted at LibertyCon. I'll link Tim's Video at the end once I've finished giving my opinion so you can get a flavor of what The Knife was all about.
There have been many negative opinion pieces written about The Knife. Opinions linking people at the Knife to external entities and current events with not much evidence. Speculation from writers at Gizmodo, Slate and Fortune to name just a few. I'm not suggesting that these writers are right or wrong. These are opinion pieces about individuals working within The Knife.
I'm not going to entertain their opinions in my opinion because then it wouldn't be my opinion lol. Very few media outlets were providing news like the Knife. Most outlets are interested in providing content, that while, yes, it did have a news element to it, was still littered with opinion and spin that made it hard to see the news from the opinion. But most media outlets feel compelled to do this, so they can make enough money to cover operating costs and pay salaries. This is what is required in modern media in order to survive in the online media market.
You have to get those clicks lol
If, you wish to find out what the opinions of the three examples above wrote then they're easy to find. I read them and disagreed with the writers opinions.
To me The Knife provided a news clean up service and I hope that someone/something fills the hole in the market created by the Knife no longer publishing.
Below is Tim's interview (one of the better independent journalists out there)
