4 ms·

Relevant... I got told a few days ago that: "Buzzfeed writers have to generate at least 1 article per day. There is no minimum limit on words on the article, a

Relevant... I got told a few days ago that: "Buzzfeed writers have to generate at least 1 article per day. There is no minimum limit on words on the article, and the topic can be anything (within reason)." Once I knew this, the prevalence of low-quality Buzzfeed links all over the web suddenly made sense.

stephengillie 9y ago
Publish or perish?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- auggierose 9y ago
  They publish and society perishes.
claudiulodro 9y ago
That's how it is for the average writer in digital media. Small daily articles keep the lights on and fund bigger investigative articles and feature content.
- brokentone 9y ago
  I've been in some newsrooms where this becomes a slippery slope... they're saying the small daily articles are just there to fund the rest, but those get sensationalized headlines, misleading social images... but it's okay because it's just paying for the real journalism... which somehow just never seems to get prioritized.
reaperducer 9y ago
One per day? I had someone at one of Vox's regional properties tell me they had to do 12 a day (combination of local and national)! One per day seems pretty light. TV reporters in medium and small markets are usually required to turn out two a day (one package, one VOSOT). Radio reporters sometimes five or six or more, depending on market size and whether they're unionized.
- jabretti 9y ago
  Cranking out one buzzfeed-grade article a day doesn't seem like much work. I'm pretty sure I've already put more thought into this comment than they put into most of their articles.
  - ge96 9y ago
    Automate it, a mad libs job haha, pick a random topic from the news, fill it in with data, wonder how poorly written it would come out.
    - serhei 9y ago
      You may laugh, but it seems scarily plausible to develop a machine algorithm that generates 12 articles, have a human go through to pick the 3 least-ridiculous ones and do some light editing, and push it out to the news.
      - jabretti 9y ago
        Motley Fool seems to be the leaders in this -- if you search google news for any stock you're interested in then you'll find that Motley Fool seems to be cranking out largely-boilerplate articles about it; sometimes they seem to have had some human intervention, other times they seem to be fully computer-generated.
        ghaff 9y ago
        Routine financial news, sports... Anything that can be largely churned out in boilerplate fashion based on some standard facts. This has been done for a while now and it will only increase as long as there's a business model for quickly published, largely undifferentiated, rote stories. It's a low-cost, high-volume game.
        dredmorbius 9y ago
        I was seeing credible copy produced for financial reporting in the late 1990s. The underlying data are available, the vocabulary is distinctly limited, and the reporting was already highly pro-forma. Mad-libbing a few variants of language and selecting the best of the lot does work fairly well. That actually raises the underlying question: why publish narrative copy at all in cases such as this, rather than data tables or charts? News and journalism are curiously allergic to data or presenting it in a usable fashion -- I've seen tables essentially written out over several paragraphs that could have been expressed in a few grid squares.
Romanulus 9y ago
Although Buzzfeed and the similar ilk are all terrible, you cannot blame them for doing what they do. They are all merely a symptom of the burgeoning idiocracy they pander to.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Parts of Buzzfeed are quite bad. Others are actually quite good. At least Buzzfeed are balancing this and funding real journalism with the fake crap. This from someone who'd been a very harsh critic. Some of their coverage of the TPP, ISDS, and international lawsuits in particular struck me as excellent.
CM30 9y ago
It makes sense because a lot of social media sites and search engines seem to reward 'quantity' more than quality, with those who post content on a regular basis doing better than those who don't. Unfortunately, that means the 'best' way to become popular in the media business is to throw quality out of the window and try and write as much shallow, junk as possible to cash in on the latest news trends and social media fads.

stephengillie 9y ago

Publish or perish?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
auggierose 9y ago
They publish and society perishes.

claudiulodro 9y ago

That's how it is for the average writer in digital media. Small daily articles keep the lights on and fund bigger investigative articles and feature content.

brokentone 9y ago
I've been in some newsrooms where this becomes a slippery slope... they're saying the small daily articles are just there to fund the rest, but those get sensationalized headlines, misleading social images... but it's okay because it's just paying for the real journalism... which somehow just never seems to get prioritized.

reaperducer 9y ago

One per day? I had someone at one of Vox's regional properties tell me they had to do 12 a day (combination of local and national)! One per day seems pretty light. TV reporters in medium and small markets are usually required to turn out two a day (one package, one VOSOT). Radio reporters sometimes five or six or more, depending on market size and whether they're unionized.

jabretti 9y ago
Cranking out one buzzfeed-grade article a day doesn't seem like much work. I'm pretty sure I've already put more thought into this comment than they put into most of their articles.
- ge96 9y ago
  Automate it, a mad libs job haha, pick a random topic from the news, fill it in with data, wonder how poorly written it would come out.
  - serhei 9y ago
    You may laugh, but it seems scarily plausible to develop a machine algorithm that generates 12 articles, have a human go through to pick the 3 least-ridiculous ones and do some light editing, and push it out to the news.
    - jabretti 9y ago
      Motley Fool seems to be the leaders in this -- if you search google news for any stock you're interested in then you'll find that Motley Fool seems to be cranking out largely-boilerplate articles about it; sometimes they seem to have had some human intervention, other times they seem to be fully computer-generated.
      - ghaff 9y ago
        Routine financial news, sports... Anything that can be largely churned out in boilerplate fashion based on some standard facts. This has been done for a while now and it will only increase as long as there's a business model for quickly published, largely undifferentiated, rote stories. It's a low-cost, high-volume game.
      - dredmorbius 9y ago
        I was seeing credible copy produced for financial reporting in the late 1990s. The underlying data are available, the vocabulary is distinctly limited, and the reporting was already highly pro-forma. Mad-libbing a few variants of language and selecting the best of the lot does work fairly well. That actually raises the underlying question: why publish narrative copy at all in cases such as this, rather than data tables or charts? News and journalism are curiously allergic to data or presenting it in a usable fashion -- I've seen tables essentially written out over several paragraphs that could have been expressed in a few grid squares.

Romanulus 9y ago

Although Buzzfeed and the similar ilk are all terrible, you cannot blame them for doing what they do. They are all merely a symptom of the burgeoning idiocracy they pander to.

dredmorbius 9y ago
Parts of Buzzfeed are quite bad. Others are actually quite good. At least Buzzfeed are balancing this and funding real journalism with the fake crap. This from someone who'd been a very harsh critic. Some of their coverage of the TPP, ISDS, and international lawsuits in particular struck me as excellent.

CM30 9y ago

It makes sense because a lot of social media sites and search engines seem to reward 'quantity' more than quality, with those who post content on a regular basis doing better than those who don't. Unfortunately, that means the 'best' way to become popular in the media business is to throw quality out of the window and try and write as much shallow, junk as possible to cash in on the latest news trends and social media fads.