Appealing stories are often not true, and if true, often not important. Unfortunately, the demand for stories is based almost entirely on how appealing they are. So any place in the media where editorial judgment is absent tends to be filled with speculation, rumor, myths, triteness and trash.
No, they're writing what gets clicks or shifts papers. Saying WFH is bad pleases a (large) subset of managers and enrages a lot of the rank and file, but they all click. So that's what they write.
I think the key is to a) trigger emotional engagement by driving a narrative based confirmation bias in the headline, and b) still have all the facts in the story for those that will actually read it which I assume turns out to be not a large percentage of people that see the headline.
Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate.
In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and what doesn't for drawing in readers hasn't changed.
It's supposed to be a positive inspirational story and it is supposed to attract readers. Perhaps there is some liberty being taken with the adjectives but as you are aware, there are many things to consider when it comes to putting a piece of news together. The hype is not necessarily created for the benefit of the subject.
That's a good point. I feel like there's essentially two groups: those that want the information and are annoyed by the stories, and those who want the stories. I don't know whether they'd read the article if it didn't come with a somewhat relatable story.
Unfortunately, many large media companies have adopted the story-first-facts-second strategy. Are those who prefer otherwise such a tiny minority?
To me, these articles look like those SEO recipe sites that are stuffed with random content because Google won't rank them as well if they just provided what the user is looking for.
To play the devil's advocate. Let's say a columnist in the WSJ wrote a piece with a bunch of first hand stories of people who were murdered by ex-cons who had been released early. And as a result the decarceration movement was stalled. Would you be okay with that? Anecdote focused reporting is very manipulative. Aggregate statistics matter. Context matters. Knock on effects matter.
It is disappointing that our top journalists sometimes prefer to fit a story into an existing narrative but narratives capture the public's attention so the incentives get a little weird.
1) It's not "sometimes." It happens many, many times a day. It's basically become the way they do things.
2) "narratives capture the public's attention so the incentives get a little weird" -- So the news is no longer about finding and transmitting the truth. It's about selling narratives? And the more the legacy news industry progresses on its inevitable collapse, the worse it's going to get? Nice.
This is interesting. The thing that jumps out the most to me is that there's definitely not an order of magnitude difference. Thus, I don't think when you submit your story should be a concern. Quality and relevance have much, much bigger impacts.
They have the compelling story and publish as they see fit.
You read, or not, because non optimal.
They still have the compelling stories, still publish as they see fit.
Audience either way, because compelling.
Thought experiment for you:
There are two radio stations. One airs compelling content at low quality. Usable, but not produced optimally.
The other demonstrates production excellence, but just is not all that compelling.
Which do you listen to? Which do most people listen to and why?
That is what is happening here.
reply