I could almost subtitle this: When Good Ad Revenue Goes Bad.
To really start this story, we need to go pretty far back. It all began at the advent of cable news. You see, back in the olden days, cable subscriptions were primarily for entertainment purposes. You had channels like HBO and the like, offering an alternative to watching broadcast fare. At that time, there was one major news network on cable, CNN.
The CNN of years ago resembled little of the hyperbolic, personality driven network of today. Back then, it was like an hour news program on a loop for most of the day. There were few commercials, and while there were "shows", most were informational in nature. There were no Glen Becks or Rush Limbauhs. Even their panel-style show, Evans and Novak, was more balanced than anything you'd see on TV today.
But with tragedy came ratings. When major news events happened, CNN was there, with total, absolute coverage. Now this put the fear into the hearts of local and national news programs that aired only once a day. Broadcast news saw its ratings sliding, since most national stories could be seen on CNN, and later its sister station Headline News, long before they were on air. During some tragedies, they would break into daytime shows, but for the most part, it was just for a limited time.
The corporations watched how people became focused on these news channels, and soon you saw actual commercials appearing. Nightly news programs began to slowly creep into use. But there was only so much news, so instead we had investigative news programs. Shows like Dateline became a nightly staple, using highly dramatic language and movie trailer-esque build ups for their next episode.
This same sort of shock value reporting became a standard in newspapers long before it was a thing in TV, and it was a sign of the very same principle: they were sensing their own demise. Newspapers might still be around, true, but they don't hold the focal point of our attention as they once did. When TV came into everyone's homes, and you could get your news for free each night, why bother with your morning paper? And of course papers couldn't print breaking news, they would just report on it the following day.
So newspapers did what TV would do, and now what the fifth estate does today: Sell based on opinion and outrage. Splashier headlines, big name columnists, shocking stories and investigations. Anything to get you to pop your money in the box to buy a paper.
In TV's case though, it was your attention they wanted.
They needed to guarantee advertisers an audience. Originally, that meant crafting good shows, and paying actors and writers a good salary to deliver. Once news became more about entertainment and drama, they found a cheaper avenue. For a while. However, anchors were not stupid, they knew their value was growing. People trusted figures like Tom Brokaw to deliver the news fairly, and so as they were asked to commit more and more time, they asked for more and more money.
Couple that with the additional daytime hosts, morning hosts... Well, needless to say, you needed to be pulling in major amounts of money. So, of course, they kept reaching further and further into shock value articles. That is, until, reality TV came along and stole the show completely. Soon, people were exhausted by the 24 news cycle, and the novel idea of watching so-called reality on TV was what held their interests.
So what does this have to do with modern click-bait, slapdash journalism? It's the very clay foundation this house of bricks was built on.
Part of the backlash that helped lead to TV's demise as the primary news source is that they went too far into the outrage bin, and hired too many personalities. People tired of seeing this new version of news, which at times verged on parodying itself. And so with the rise of the Internet, and the convenience of having news at your fingertips, people were headed there. Plus, there were no more fees for using it than just your connection costs.
The other great concept was that it was fast. Sure, CNN might get a story inside of an hour, but internet news could be there faster. And that's just been the case the more pervasive the Internet has become. Right now, an event can be covered, live, by dozens of people via social media, and all it takes for news outlets to do is aggregate all that info into a story. the biggest danger of that, though, is that you need people to be out there doing it.
Journalism was not a very lucrative trade. Sure, if you got to be an anchor like Brokaw, you got plenty of money. But there was only 3 chairs that mattered in the olden days, ABC, CBS and NBC. Later, there were more, but to get those was still hard. With the rise of the Internet, though, anyone could technically be a journalist. No need for a degree, just cover the story, post it, and try to be first with it. While this led to issues at first, amateur reporters, so-called enthusiast press, honed their skills and started getting taken seriously. This likewise encouraged others, and soon the Internet was awash in bloggers reporting the news, as it happened, raw and unfiltered.
In time, sites started acquiring some of this talent, because, again, you need people to cover these stories. Most freelance and even some staff journalists in the business today don't have journalism degrees. Those that do are likely old guard, people who were taught the standards of journalism, of the ethics of getting the story right. And while still some enter the field, they are not the ones getting most of the eyes.
As I said, when a medium faces its demise, you see desperation. And that's where click-bait and the rush to be first comes in. Readers on the Internet are fickle. They want their information, and they want it now. And each story has a shorter life span than ever before. So if you want to get those clicks, and that ad revenue, you need to be fast. In story creation, you can be fast and good, but it costs a high price. Since these sites were desperate for cash, they dropped the concept of proper fact checking.
This led to journalists, even in the mainstream 24 hour news cycle, getting burned. The most common were celebrity deaths, where a random internet comment would suddenly spiral into evidence of the death of said celebrity. But no one learned from this. Sure, they became slightly more careful, but they'd still report on the possibility of a story long before they could confirm it. The need for being first outweighed the need to be right.
And that's where we are today. Today, the primary focus is to get the story first, and fix it later. It does't matter how their story impacts anything. Remember, no such thing as bad PR, it's just another story you can spin later. With stories like the UVA rape case, you're seeing the natural conclusion of personality driven news coverage combined with the desire to break the story first. People want to be a crusader in the news, to get coverage for issues they personally have a stake in, rather than simply observing the world and reporting on it. And outlets are desperate to retain a user base that has long since outgrown the monoliths that remain.
In a connected world, we are beyond the current position of news. On every street corner in the western world, there are people armed with the power of a computer, complete with camera, microphone and document creation software, all in the palm of your hand. In this new world, everyone is a reporter, able to snap a picture of anything faster than a professional can arrive at the scene. And once it's online, it's shared among the new distribution network. Not newspapers or TV, not even blogs, but social media.
That is the new frontier, that everyone in classical media and the new wave of bloggers are trying to ride. As we, the people, get more options to broadcast our lives from anywhere, everything that came before trembles with fear at its ultimate demise. And in those death throws, mistakes are being made. It won't get better from here unless the world as a whole stops craving information at the rate it does... which I don't see happening any time soon.
