> Seems like a business publication..but a lot of fark and fluff.
To be fair, I'd be surprised if anyone at BI sees this as a "real" article. Like, it's more of an equivalent of a cartoon in a newspaper or a meme – couple of funny diagrams to get some easy clicks.
If you want to get an accurate view, I think you'd need to look at the base rate (like, are all articles empty fluff?).
Alternatively, I could imagine a two-pronged model when the fluff-clicks are funding the "real" journalism. If so, I'd check if the deeper articles are substantially higher quality – I think it's unlikely, but I might be wrong.
>A lot of times it reads more like an advertisement than actual journalism
that's because a lot of it is advertisement. Paid posts are rampant, but so is lazy "journalists" simply copy and pasting press releases, maybe re-wording a couple phrases to make it seem like their own writing.
> Obviously this needs to be properly disclosed, but the result is very different from an advertorial, i.e.: _actual_ expert commentary on a well-researched piece.
No. If an advertiser is paying to publish it, it's an advertorial, full stop. Why would they pay to produce and publish an actual quality article that doesn't push an agenda in some non-journalistic way? It's literally the job of advertisers to push an agenda.
I'm glad you posted this because I felt the exact opposite (it's almost always good to have my assumptions questioned).
I wanted to read some info but I had to click, see a picture, and then see some small amount of text slowly appear. I closed the tab after seeing that on the first image -- to me it's basically as worthless as a video. I don't have the patience for that and feel that the NYT doesn't value my time. Clearly some people feel the opposite!
I would love to see some data on these experiments by the nyt: do they show greater revenue than ordinary articles?
> I don't know how news websites choose what stories to write and feature, but it seems absurd and getting worse.
That’s what happens when your business model is contingent upon capturing maximum eyeballs per character. It seems like each story is a subtle plug for some product or service these days.
> Should a news source be optimizing for engagement, or for accuracy in communicating facts?
A journal is a business, with something to sell, the news, and the attention of their readers to advertisers as well.
> The New York Times is a big deal. As they tell their advertisers, the NYT is the #1 news source for young, rich thought leaders:
Obviously ultimately it reflects badly on the profession, since all these news sites are using the same clickbait techniques, from Breibart to the Dailymail to NYT, since they probably hire the same consultancies when it comes to clickbaiting design, or at the very least, people who come from the same marketing circles/education.
Losing market share threatens “hub” status. That doesn’t mean everyone is miserable. But there is a real story in the data someone who reads the article will glean.
> as long as you’ve got the clicks
The Journal makes money on subscriptions. You’re describing publications that cater to people who don’t pay for news and don’t read articles.
>> I find it puzzling at the least that the article takes no issue with this at all; it wouldn't immediately occur to me that Yahoo Small Business would publish paid placement ads as articles, but this doesn't exactly scream "reporting" to me, so I have to wonder if that's close to the truth.
“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” - George Orwell
> That magazine has just about 25,000 subscribers, so you can guess the quality of their journalism.
Not saying anything about this particular magazine, but in general, I don't think that you can judge the quality of a publication's journalism by their subscriber count.
> is at the end of the day just another means to attract eyeballs to sell ads to
If you’re poor (or stupid), yes, this is the journalism you’re limited to, and that’s a problem. For everyone else, quality subscription-based journalism is an option.
Yes it is. It is also an example of journalism where the writer gets paid by the word, hence the tedium of the 'vignette'.
In the UK we don't have 'paid by the word' in quite the same way, so you rarely have to wade through rubbish to get to the gist of the article on a UK website. It is a U.S. phenomenon having the fluff-bloat at the start of the article, and, to be honest, it puts me off reading anything linked here from the likes of the New York Times. I just cannot stand this writing style with the extra 'vignette' or whatever padding out the article into some narrative that I cannot be bothered with.
I think what is happening is they are buying their ability to publish news. Once accomplished you will see plenty of those "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" I think.
I don't disagree, but you should consider the fact that journalists are asked to convey complex information in as few words as possible and in a way that appeals to as wide an audience as possible.
Things are generally better in publications that still have healthy revenue, but those are becoming few and far between. At the end of the day, we (the general public) get what we pay for.
>The publishers see it as people just read the headlines and summary on Facebook, then never ever go to the actual web site to read the story.
This is going to be a hot take but maybe it's because people have been conditioned to think that the articles themselves are often low quality clickbait offering little beyond the headline and stuffed with more ads than content. Quality of journalism and consumer trust in media has been declining for years.
> Look who owns often cited media for example the Economist on Wikipedia
Aha! I was wondering why some of their editorials recently were out of whack. Usually a fairly progressive publication it's posted some fairly biased stuff about protecting the rich lately.
> The article gives up on its clickbait headline almost immediately
I find often it’s not the content of the article that’s relevant. It’s generally not as there’s a lot of trash out there. But they do raise good discussion topic that lead to active conversation. I find that is the real value for me personally.
I'm pretty sure this is a "yellow journalism period" on the internet but it will get worse before it gets better since the common man needs to completely lose faith in these rags like they did with tabloids.
Clickbait is alot like the tabloids and yellow journalism of print media, honestly.
> Where will the money come from?
Subscriptions most likely. It'll be newspapers written to favor the desires/biases of the upper middle class who would consider dropping $100/year for such a thing.
To be fair, I'd be surprised if anyone at BI sees this as a "real" article. Like, it's more of an equivalent of a cartoon in a newspaper or a meme – couple of funny diagrams to get some easy clicks.
If you want to get an accurate view, I think you'd need to look at the base rate (like, are all articles empty fluff?).
Alternatively, I could imagine a two-pronged model when the fluff-clicks are funding the "real" journalism. If so, I'd check if the deeper articles are substantially higher quality – I think it's unlikely, but I might be wrong.
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