3 ms·

At the vast majority of publications, there's intentionally no relationship between advertising-type decision-making and what the editorial staff decides to wri

by whakim 6y ago

At the vast majority of publications, there's intentionally no relationship between advertising-type decision-making and what the editorial staff decides to write about.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Except when they write submarine pieces, which are in fact just ads in sheep's clothing. But besides that, advertisers having no direct decision-making powers in news publishing doesn't mean journalism doesn't get corrupted by it. From the POV of the publisher, advertising can be seen as a magic button that makes them a little bit of money each time a visitor presses it. Having it as the main profit source, their primary driver now becomes ensuring as many visitors as possible press this button as frequently as possible. That's how we arrive at reputable publications serving clickbait, writing outrage-inducing noninformative articles, and embedding chumboxes in their articles. That's how the "invented pyramid" - the golden standard of news publishing that nobody cares about anymore - became dead and buried.
- whakim 6y ago
  I had to look up "submarine pieces" are, but they don't seem at all related to the effects of advertising on what editorial teams write about. In my experience that just sounds like shoddy journalism, and editors shouldn't be letting that pass (even though it happens). What you're describing isn't a new phenomenon: newspaper ads have been around forever, and getting more people to read your newspaper or click on your articles has always increased profit. That's why most reputable newspapers, when they get large enough, build strong firewalls between the business and editorial sides of the company such that publishers cannot exert pressure over their editorial team even if they were short-sighted enough to try.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I had to look up "submarine pieces" are, but they don't seem at all related to the effects of advertising on what editorial teams write about. In my experience that just sounds like shoddy journalism, and editors shouldn't be letting that pass (even though it happens). What did you find? I assumed the term meant something like a sponsored-content advertorial, but after actually Googling it, it looks like the term isn't a common one. All I get are hits about Grand Theft Auto V and Peter Madsen. It seems like the term stems from this article (http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html). If that's correct, I'm inclined to agree that it's just shoddy journalism, and the better publications don't let it through: > Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for "content" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles. > At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times. [3] > [3] Different sections of the Times vary so much in their standards that they're practically different papers. Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have been sent packing by the regular news reporters. One of the anecdotes later in the article really emphasizes to me how public relations is literally propaganda with a PR makeover: > Our greatest PR coup was a two-part one. We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this "fact" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market. It the mechanics sound similar to the Soviet propaganda/disinformation campaign that pushed the idea that the US military created AIDS/HIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo.
    - whakim 6y ago
      I, too, enjoyed skimming search results about Grand Theft Auto and Peter Madsen and ended up with the same article you did (via another HN thread). Unsurprisingly I drew the same conclusions you did.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I'd say this is a new phenomenon, to the extent people no longer read whole newspapers, but individual articles. Previously, there was no point in clickbait beyond optimizing the front page. If a reader bought the paper, that's about all the money you could get from them. In the Internet era, every single article is its own earning unit, so every one has to be optimized to maximize ad impressions. Hence clickbait, chumboxes, slideshows, and countless other forms of crap replacing actual journalism.
asdff 6y ago
Someone definitely had a short position make profit when Bloomberg was publishing that crap about TSMC a while ago
Nextgrid 6y ago
Just because you deny the existence of an intentional relationship doesn't mean there's an unintentional one dictated by the market, so the advertiser-friendly newspaper will thrive while the advertiser-hostile one will lose major ad deals, and potentially go out of business.

by whakim 6y ago

At the vast majority of publications, there's intentionally no relationship between advertising-type decision-making and what the editorial staff decides to write about.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Except when they write submarine pieces, which are in fact just ads in sheep's clothing. But besides that, advertisers having no direct decision-making powers in news publishing doesn't mean journalism doesn't get corrupted by it. From the POV of the publisher, advertising can be seen as a magic button that makes them a little bit of money each time a visitor presses it. Having it as the main profit source, their primary driver now becomes ensuring as many visitors as possible press this button as frequently as possible. That's how we arrive at reputable publications serving clickbait, writing outrage-inducing noninformative articles, and embedding chumboxes in their articles. That's how the "invented pyramid" - the golden standard of news publishing that nobody cares about anymore - became dead and buried.

whakim 6y ago
I had to look up "submarine pieces" are, but they don't seem at all related to the effects of advertising on what editorial teams write about. In my experience that just sounds like shoddy journalism, and editors shouldn't be letting that pass (even though it happens). What you're describing isn't a new phenomenon: newspaper ads have been around forever, and getting more people to read your newspaper or click on your articles has always increased profit. That's why most reputable newspapers, when they get large enough, build strong firewalls between the business and editorial sides of the company such that publishers cannot exert pressure over their editorial team even if they were short-sighted enough to try.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I had to look up "submarine pieces" are, but they don't seem at all related to the effects of advertising on what editorial teams write about. In my experience that just sounds like shoddy journalism, and editors shouldn't be letting that pass (even though it happens). What did you find? I assumed the term meant something like a sponsored-content advertorial, but after actually Googling it, it looks like the term isn't a common one. All I get are hits about Grand Theft Auto V and Peter Madsen. It seems like the term stems from this article (http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html). If that's correct, I'm inclined to agree that it's just shoddy journalism, and the better publications don't let it through: > Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for "content" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles. > At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Their reporters do go out and find their own stories, at least some of the time. They'll listen to PR firms, but briefly and skeptically. We managed to get press hits in almost every publication we wanted, but we never managed to crack the print edition of the Times. [3] > [3] Different sections of the Times vary so much in their standards that they're practically different papers. Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have been sent packing by the regular news reporters. One of the anecdotes later in the article really emphasizes to me how public relations is literally propaganda with a PR makeover: > Our greatest PR coup was a two-part one. We estimated, based on some fairly informal math, that there were about 5000 stores on the Web. We got one paper to print this number, which seemed neutral enough. But once this "fact" was out there in print, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market. It the mechanics sound similar to the Soviet propaganda/disinformation campaign that pushed the idea that the US military created AIDS/HIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo.
  - whakim 6y ago
    I, too, enjoyed skimming search results about Grand Theft Auto and Peter Madsen and ended up with the same article you did (via another HN thread). Unsurprisingly I drew the same conclusions you did.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I'd say this is a new phenomenon, to the extent people no longer read whole newspapers, but individual articles. Previously, there was no point in clickbait beyond optimizing the front page. If a reader bought the paper, that's about all the money you could get from them. In the Internet era, every single article is its own earning unit, so every one has to be optimized to maximize ad impressions. Hence clickbait, chumboxes, slideshows, and countless other forms of crap replacing actual journalism.

asdff 6y ago

Someone definitely had a short position make profit when Bloomberg was publishing that crap about TSMC a while ago

Nextgrid 6y ago

Just because you deny the existence of an intentional relationship doesn't mean there's an unintentional one dictated by the market, so the advertiser-friendly newspaper will thrive while the advertiser-hostile one will lose major ad deals, and potentially go out of business.