Pay-Per-View Journalism Is Burning Out Reporters Young 227
Hugh Pickens writes "Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google's algorithms and draw readers their way. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times all display a 'most viewed' list on their home pages; some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles. 'At a [traditional] paper, your only real stress point is in the evening when you're actually sitting there on deadline, trying to file,' says Jim VandeHei, Politico's executive editor. 'Now at any point in the day starting at 5 in the morning, there can be that same level of intensity and pressure to get something out.' The pace has led to substantial turnover in staff at digital news organizations. At Politico, roughly a dozen reporters have left in the first half of the year — a big number for a newsroom that has only about 70 reporters and editors. 'When my students come back to visit, they carry the exhaustion of a person who's been working for a decade, not a couple of years,' says Duy Linh Tu of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 'I worry about burnout.'"
not pay-per-view journalism to blame... (Score:3, Insightful)
too many people doing the same job... sounds just like the new criticisms with the post 9/11 intelligence agencies.
the problem is, at 10%+ unemployment, what else are the people going to do?
Rockstar Economy (Score:1, Insightful)
When only the most visible can make a living and everybody else is reduced to financing their struggle some other way, then it is an instance of what I call "rockstar economy". More and more competition is for a decreasing number of profitable spots. Many bands never make a profit, but a few become obscenely rich. The internet nourished the hope that more people could become publishers, and it has delivered on that hope. The effect however is that the global availability makes it harder to make a living that way, except for the few who - often through luck alone - attract the attention of the masses. Being in the right place at the right time is becoming ever more important. This economic development is unsustainable. It wastes a tremendous amount of talent.
True, its hard to make a living as a (Score:2, Insightful)
bad journalist.
If all you do is spend your day browsing the web trying to find some info that someone else reported so you can report on it in a sad attempt to get some add impressions then you will find it very hard to consider it fulfilling job.
On the other hand, its an easy job that requires no brains or effort so you probably should quit your bitching.
If you want to trot the world, see strange places and break that AWESOME story, then, well, you're going to have to take some risks. Get out from behind the desk. Actually see the world and ... GASP ... FIND SOME FUCKING NEWS TO REPORT ON OF YOUR OWN.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
The state of journalism is really sad. So much focus on scandals, not enough on important stories. So much focus on whether politicians' rhetoric is being successful in moving the polls, not enough on whether the politicians' actions are helping people. So much focus on X number of people dying someplace-or-other, with very little description of anything good or productive going on anywhere. So much focus on all the things that will kill you, not enough focus on telling you how you can help others.
I've given up. I barely pay attention to news anymore.
journalist...eke out a fresh thought (Score:4, Insightful)
Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought
That sounds more like editorial than journalism. Investigate. Report news. Leave the fresh thoughts to the readers.
Re:True, its hard to make a living as a (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to trot the world, see strange places and break that AWESOME story, then, well, you're going to have to take some risks. Get out from behind the desk. Actually see the world and ... GASP ... FIND SOME FUCKING NEWS TO REPORT ON OF YOUR OWN.
And that's what you do, right? Because it's just that easy. Grab your passport, get some plane tickets, fly your way to Myanmar, buy your way into the inner circle of government, then fly back to Los Angeles and write your exposé on corruption in the Myanmar dictatorship and sell it to the Los Angeles Times for, oh, let's say $1,000. Rinse and repeat. Right?
Headlines (Score:4, Insightful)
anything that will impress Google's algorithms and draw readers their way
This is why headlines have become so outrageously hyperbolic. Few would click a link labeled Obama gives a speech But a headline like Obama STABS Republicans in the HEART with a verbal KNIFE!!!1 and you get a million hits.
Re:Welcome to the Digital Age! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's competition. When you have ten thousand journalists trying to do a job of a few hundreds, of course they'll have to work extra hard to beat each other.
If you don't want the electronic leash to be so tight, you have to do something with less competition, where you have a competitive advantage. For example, instead of reporting on standard events, provide analysis based on knowledge that isn't very widely available.
Re:Here's a thought (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Welcome to the Digital Age! (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a desk job with a computer and e-mail. I have a cellphone with my work e-mail so I can stay updated while I'm not in the office, but I only really read it while I'm working. I guess if something really important came up my boss could call me in, and I'd be happy to oblige if I could because I know I would be compensated for it. So far this hasn't ever happened, though. My work weeks are 40 hours, although I feel no need to keep track of every minute - sometimes I leave a bit early, sometimes late. My boss doesn't really mind when I leave so long as work gets done on time. There's no punch clock where I work.
You may claim that my situation is unique and that I've been very lucky but this has been the same for the last three places I've worked in. I only left those jobs because I wanted better pay and more interesting things to do. The same goes for pretty much everyone I know. If you find yourself "leashed" to work, your cellphone or your boss's whims, switch employers. There are plenty - PLENTY - out there that care about keeping their employees happy. It has nothing to do with technology.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not that they are journalists but how is it that nobody in the actual industry ever goes back and calls people on what they said 6 months ago?
Doing that gets the Daily show a lot of viewers, I would think that doing the same thing in a more rigorous journalistic environment would get you a lot of eyeballs.
Of course once you start doing that, you loose your access to politicians and people of note because they can always find people willing to show up to a press conference and not ask any difficult questions in the hope of getting a few eyeballs on their web site.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then watch the entire footage those "clips" the Daily Show edits.
I'm a Daily Show and Colbert fan, but please don't take them as real journalists. Even they themselves say that.
True and yet... an awful lot of journalists don't even make it to that low bar.
On one hand, it's a little bad to forever hold politicians accountable to everything they've ever said, in that it rewards rigidity of thinking and punishes the kind of intellectual and political honesty it takes to be able to admit publically that you were wrong and you've changed your mind.
On the other hand, it's a lot bad to not hold them accountable at all to their past statements.
It should be someone's job to do that research and, when relevant, put the positions into context. Is this not the job of a political journalist? Should not some real journalist be able to carve out a niche for themselves by doing the Daily Show style job of saying, "Wait a minute, here's Rudy '9/11' Giuliani claiming that there were no domestic terrorist attacks during the Bush Administration, and he almost can't complete a sentence without referencing one..."?
I think you'd be able to do that job pretty well even in a non-partisan way -- politicians of every stripe and creed walk into those situations constantly.
Politico? (Score:3, Insightful)
At Politico, roughly a dozen reporters have left in the first half of the year...
I'm supposed to feel bad because twelve people have left Politico?!! That stupid rag that reports on nothing but Washington insider back-biting? You know, if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Tell me when something to feel bad about really happens... you know, like... well, anything else.
Re:Headlines (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course if you really want to change the world, become a Big Brother/Big Sister and touch someone's life. As a general rule you can't change the world for the better, but you can change some one's world for the better. The only way to make the world a better place is one person at a time.
Publishers have shot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the advertising model that's to blame. And the publishers are the ones who agreed to play this way, so you can point the finger there.
In the old days, a publication would go to advertisers and say, "We have a brand that's recognized blah-de-blah and we have a daily/weekly/monthly circulation of dee-da-dee, here are some studies that show who our average reader is, this is their purchasing power, do you want to advertise with us or not?" And if you were the New York Times, they would. No further questions asked.
I come from the world of trade publishing. You know those magazines like Information Week where you can fill out a survey and you get the subscriptions for free? That survey is what's paying for your subscription. That survey is what we take to advertisers to explain to them exactly who our readers are and how advertisers can expect to reach people in IT with purchasing power if they advertise in our pages. These "qualified circulation" magazines can often charge advertisers more than a regular, pay-for-subscription magazine can, because we know more about our readers (assuming the readers tell the truth, but ignoring that is a little game the entire industry agrees to play). Again, it's not about who the advertiser reached with an ad. It's about who they could reach.
That was the past.
Now, in a desperate bid to ignite the online advertising market, publishers have made a devil's bargain. Now they agree to turn over reams of Web logs for every page view they serve. The advertiser wants to know: Exactly how many times did you serve our ad? For what content? Who saw it? When was it served on a story that did well and when was it served on a story that nobody saw? How can we stop putting our ad on your boring stories and only put it on the stories that people like?
That last sentence is the kicker. You can see where it leads. More and more, the publication is compelled to stop running stories that aren't hits and only try to run stories that will be "viral" blockbusters. This pressure is incredibly difficult to ignore, but it's insidious. It erodes the judgment of the editorial department at any publication. It leads to the kind of story-chasing described in TFA.
And don't think blogs are going to save the industry this time. It's even worse at some unknown blog -- how are you ever going to get your voice heard if nobody visits your blog? So you need a headline. You need a sensational story. You'll do it just this one time, and everybody will keep coming back for all your other scintillating insights that aren't quite so sensational ... sorry, Charlie. It won't work. You'll end up doing it too.
The only way to fix it is for publishers to turn off the faucet. You want to see an exact breakdown of our Web logs and how your ads are skewing with what story, when and how? Fuck you. That's proprietary information that we don't release to our clients. Suffice it to say that we are a leading publication in our field. Take or leave.
But how likely is that?
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I think you'll find that true investigative journalism has simply become unprofitable. It's not that people don't want to work on it, it's that no one really wants to report verified, accurate fact with as little bias as possible any more.
Introducing a bias that whips your audience into a frenzy sells a shitload more ads.
And why bother verifying (or, let's be honest, even collecting!) facts when all you want to do is keep your audience angry enough about the only they know for sure. The simple fact that everyone but you is lying to them about everything?
Investigative journalism still exists, to an extent. But it's going away, because advertisers pay the outlets that attract the most eyeballs, and people aren't willing to pay for the newspaper any more.
We are, truly, getting the news outlets we so richly deserve.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then watch the entire footage those "clips" the Daily Show edits. I'm a Daily Show and Colbert fan, but please don't take them as real journalists. Even they themselves say that.
Check this Daily Show report out [google.com] (it is a google link since the video keeps getting take down notices on youtube). What you say is a complement really, because if their kind of journalism is not "real" - it is certainly more enlightening than the processed sanitized crap the "pro's" try to shovel down our throats.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you -can- update a news website every minute doesn't mean you necessarily -should-
I want to find you and give you a friendly man-hug. I really do. It would be so cool to have reporters actually check their facts and have their editors really give a crap about whether the truth is being at least attempted at.
I honestly wish the world worked that way, but it doesn't any more.
If you wait to report your story, by the time you released it everyone would skip right on past the headline saying "nope, read that four hours ago, what are these people smoking that they think I still give a shit?"
You might attract a small following of people interested in dropping the information crapflow and looking for verified, reasonably nonbiased, honest reporting. But few advertisers are going to want to deal in what they consider "old news".
The only way to get advertisers is to gain a really dedicated following of people. And with the dizzying array of news sources, first is often seen as best.
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I've given up. I barely pay attention to news anymore.
Its called "extreme narrrowcasting". A pretty effective industry killer. Usually comes from over management and/or over reliance on simplistic metrics. Generally requires an oligopoly where only a couple companies control the market. Also requires shortsightedness, not exactly a quality lacking in American corporations.
In a healthy ecology of news sources, the supplier with the most "scandal/rhetoric" will probably beat the more bland supplier. However, when escalated, it rapidly repels the population, until one supplier gloriously achieves 100% of the market of the remaining 1% of the consumers.
In the movie biz, it leads to endless sequels of formulaic movies. In the music biz it leads to lip syncing and formulaic music. In the video game biz it leads to FPS sequels, or in the early 80s led to quite an industry crash. In the news biz it forces tabloid journalism.
Once enough people are fed up, the entire industry collapses, and reboots, essentially.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:4, Insightful)
It may be true that things are taken out of context to some extent, but these people are still saying these things.
TDS and TCR aren't taking a quote like "There's no evidence that Obama is a racist who hates white people" and turning it into "Obama is a racist who hates white people". They are not hiding behind words, lying, or otherwise abusing the concept of journalism. They are no AP, or whoever, but they are ultimately honest commentators who call out when other people are being dishonest.
Also, a politician who says "I once believe this, but changed my mind because of this, and now I believe this", is promptly removed from office.
Spoiled brats just can't do real work (Score:1, Insightful)
The children of affluent and privilege finally find out that hard work is hard. Sheesh, welcome to the real world where most people are underpaid and overworked.
Daily Show != news (Score:4, Insightful)
The Daily Show get their news second hand mainly from the 'news' outlets they criticize. Yes, its interesting to see them tear apart the lies, distractions, schizophrenia and lopsidedness that passes for news -- but don't mistake that criticism for actual news.
What the Daily Show does is a kind of journalism, but they hardly function as 'reporters' in any significant way.
Re:Publishers have shot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but you've missed the point completely.
This isn't like TV or newspaper, where advertisements play whether people are watching it or not.
Now you're getting Zen. If an ad is printed in a newspaper, but the newspaper gets shredded and used to line a bird cage, does the ad "play"?
Paying for each time a page loads is why we're in this predicament. Advertisers want to pay for stories that get seen by the largest number of people. They don't want to pay for obscure or convoluted stories that don't get easy airplay. But the stories that people want to read are not necessarily the most important stories, let alone the best examples of journalism.
You see the trend toward sensationalism, celebrity news, lurid dramas, etc., in almost every news outlet. Allowing advertisers to pay based on the individual story, rather than the reputation of the newsroom, exacerbates this trend. Eventually, it creates a hard divide: Stories that people feel like reading get all the ad money. Difficult stories don't get paid for.
Thus, you end up with what TFA describes: Reporters scrambling to find any little angle that someone else might not have mentioned, any way to spin a story so it gets noticed, so their hamster wheels keep turning the little generators that keep the lights on.
You Don't Say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Young journalists once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story, but the NY Times now reports that instead many are working online shackled to their computers
Young enthusiastic entry level workers daydream about doing fabulous and exciting things at their employers' expense, but find out that they're actually supposed to just produce for said employer in whatever way is necessary in return for a paycheck? This is amazing news.
Re:I'm Feeling Bored and Creative... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Publishers have shot themselves in the foot (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it bad that the only stories that get produced are the ones that interest readers?
It seems that, if we accept your explanation of the facts, your basic problem is that almost no one wants to read the material you consider "important". But, if no one actually wants to read it, in what sense is it "important"? It seems that it isn't really important to most people.
Even if you think it should be.
Re:Or become real reporters. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what I do not understand about online journalism. At the moment, newspapers seem to be in a race to the bottom, with each trying to publish the same sort of crap before everyone else; mostly rehashed press-releases, all the while complaining that nobody wants to pay for their news online.
Maybe I am part of a small target group. But, dear newspaper publishers: Please give me a website that
1. pays talented journalists a decent salary to go out and investigate complex stories, actually reveal novel information, and then come back and write lucid, enlightening stories.
2. does not show any ads, thereby making itself independent from corporations for revenue, turning the readers into the sole customers.
3. has a calm, clean layout, accessible from both the desktop and mobile devices, hassle free. Oh, and please actually fill my damn screen with text and images, instead of using 20% of its width to show 50-line articles broken into 5 pages, filling the rest with horrible flash ads.
I am willing to pay, say, 200$ a year for a subscription to this site (I currently pay a similar amount for print subscriptions to a weekly [newyorker.com] and a monthly [monde-diplomatique.fr] paper). It doesn't have to have hourly updates, all I want is something to read for an hour in bed every evening. I don't understand why such a website doesn't exist yet. I know, ads are an important part of traditional publishing, but web publishing is cheaper (printing presses and paper boys are more expensive than servers and bandwidth), and there are great economies of scale: The first publisher to establish a high-quality online news service will be able to attract readers from the entire English-speaking world.
Seriously, I don't get it. Why is everyone still trying to make money with ads?
Re:Daily Show != news (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame radio and then TV. With print, updates were limited by the daily or weekly print schedule, or at worst by morning and afternoon editions. Radio made it possible for "Breaking news" to intrude at any time, and gradually people began to accept that "breaking news" might be, uh, broken news. TV, with its forced sense of in-your-face immediacy, made this worse. And now we have the natural endpoint, Twitter as 'news'.
I've also stopped paying attention to "breaking news", as being too often broken fluff, or a "reporter" almost *creating* news on the spot.
And it generates a "panic every time you miss 2 seconds worth of news updates" psychotic behaviour even in people who know the end of the world is just not that imminent.
I agree, let's go back to reasonable timeframes that allow the news to get it right. Funny thing too, there was less SPIN applied BY news agencies back then, even tho there was more time to apply it.
Til then, let me know if the world ends, cuz I won't hear the news til the day after. ;)