I probably read a few of your articles, unless you were covering Arch. Not sure if that was yet a thing at the time of the Digg fiasco.
It’s sad that those were the incentive structures, but I find it unsurprising. By my final years in a newsroom, reporters had quotas for social-media posts. Guess what you’re not doing when you need to tweet eight times a day? Actual reporting.
One might say, “OK, but it doesn’t take that much time out of your day,” which I’ll grant, but it takes you out of the flow. If you’re thinking about your next tweet, you aren’t thinking about what other source you need to talk to that would solidify the story.
Corporate journalism is digging (no pun intended) its own grave in many cases. Longform is still going strong (e.g. Ars, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic), and I’m relatively certain Ars has cost me way more than just the subscription. I learned about Factorio on there, and a few weeks later, I got my life back.
troyunrau@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
A feedback cycle where no one wants to pay for content, so advertisers are needed to fund their staff, which means clicks and engagement become the metric of success. But, the solution is either publicly funded news (largely unpopular), or regulating the open internet (more unpopular). So, yeah, the death of corporate journalism is coming.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 2 days ago
Ah, publicly funded news. Which the junta is trying to eviscerate.
I’ve honestly been pushing for the death of corporate journalism, as we’re past the point where it can be rebuilt. Under this structure, there is no path forward, especially given the widespread fealty revealed last fall by LAT and WaPo.
We have a thriving propaganda community within journalism, but that’s, uh … not the goal here. It’s not as though boots-on-the-ground reporters want to be doing this, but fucked-up motivators lead to fucked-up results in any industry.
But hey, a few more mergers can fix that before it’s revealed as a house of cards, causing mass layoffs while executives sip mojitos.
I hate this timeline.