4 ms·

I am not a fan of clickbait content written to meet quotas, but this article strikes me as a bitter employee spewing up on their former employer.

by joelx 10y ago

Touche 10y ago
Apparently she works for HuffPo now, aren't they in the same volume driven industry? Wondering how she feels about her current gig.
- rhizome 10y ago
  It may just be that BI is 5 articles per reporter per day, while HuffPo is overstaffed (5 reporters per story, say).
Bluestrike2 10y ago
The article seems to be in response to discussion elsewhere (the CNN article and Tanzina Vega's tweets) and is pretty reasonable. It describes her experiences there, how the workplace culture affected her, and why she ultimately left. A sad employee who leaves isn't the same as a bitter one. Besides, she's a journalist. If she wanted to rip into BI, she could have gone straight for the jugular. Here's my take on bitter for comparison: Journalists are used to short deadlines and writing fast. We've been doing it ever since the daily newspaper became a thing, and we're used to the pressure. But BI takes that pressure to an entirely new level by focusing on clicks at the expense of good journalism. The end result is a bastardized parody of journalism. It doesn't inform society, it swindles it. As BI's reporters hammer away at their keyboards, pumping out article after article day in and day out, they slowly hammer away at the very ideals that first led them to fall in love with the written word. Morale is low, because the reporters know deep down that they're little more than monkeys striking keys at random. They don't matter, their stories don't matter, and their responsibility towards society doesn't matter. On the rare occasion that a halfway-decent article manages to slip onto the BI homepage, it's quickly buried under the weight of the meaningless drivel that's churned out while the reporter who wrote it is brutally berated by the editors. Quality is irrelevant. Only quantity matters. We are prostitutes, pimped out by BI to focus solely on manipulating readers into clicking our damnable titles. The numbers are clear. BI represents the future of journalism. It's not a bright one. It's not a good one. But it's the one we deserve, as sad and disheartening as that may seem. Now that's nice and bitter :D. Compare that to the linked article.

I am not a fan of clickbait content written to meet quotas, but this article strikes me as a bitter employee spewing up on their former employer.

by joelx 10y ago

I am not a fan of clickbait content written to meet quotas, but this article strikes me as a bitter employee spewing up on their former employer.

Touche 10y ago

Apparently she works for HuffPo now, aren't they in the same volume driven industry? Wondering how she feels about her current gig.

rhizome 10y ago
It may just be that BI is 5 articles per reporter per day, while HuffPo is overstaffed (5 reporters per story, say).

Bluestrike2 10y ago

The article seems to be in response to discussion elsewhere (the CNN article and Tanzina Vega's tweets) and is pretty reasonable. It describes her experiences there, how the workplace culture affected her, and why she ultimately left. A sad employee who leaves isn't the same as a bitter one. Besides, she's a journalist. If she wanted to rip into BI, she could have gone straight for the jugular. Here's my take on bitter for comparison: Journalists are used to short deadlines and writing fast. We've been doing it ever since the daily newspaper became a thing, and we're used to the pressure. But BI takes that pressure to an entirely new level by focusing on clicks at the expense of good journalism. The end result is a bastardized parody of journalism. It doesn't inform society, it swindles it. As BI's reporters hammer away at their keyboards, pumping out article after article day in and day out, they slowly hammer away at the very ideals that first led them to fall in love with the written word. Morale is low, because the reporters know deep down that they're little more than monkeys striking keys at random. They don't matter, their stories don't matter, and their responsibility towards society doesn't matter. On the rare occasion that a halfway-decent article manages to slip onto the BI homepage, it's quickly buried under the weight of the meaningless drivel that's churned out while the reporter who wrote it is brutally berated by the editors. Quality is irrelevant. Only quantity matters. We are prostitutes, pimped out by BI to focus solely on manipulating readers into clicking our damnable titles. The numbers are clear. BI represents the future of journalism. It's not a bright one. It's not a good one. But it's the one we deserve, as sad and disheartening as that may seem. Now that's nice and bitter :D. Compare that to the linked article.