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> once-objective mainstream journalism is now about writing content to please target audiences and catch trending topics on social media, as well as keep fast c

> once-objective mainstream journalism is now about writing content to please target audiences and catch trending topics on social media, as well as keep fast cycles going to appease the algorithms on news aggregation sites and search engines. This is spot on. The major problem here is that content is now largely generated based on maximizing ad revenue. News publications developing content aren’t all that different from SEM campaigns. When editors and publishers use article clicks as a performance benchmark, as many do these days, this is bound to happen.

benlumen 6y ago
> News publications developing content aren’t all that different from SEM campaigns. Exactly - the have to please the same platforms and systems.
dimitrios1 6y ago
This is also true from the other angle as well: SEO-driven content marketing companies are now becoming the "new media"
zentiggr 6y ago
Hooray for Goodhart's Law... Now all we need to do is convince marketers and advertising that it applies to them as well.
raxxorrax 6y ago
It is an attention economy. That is why news for nerds are dead, not only slashdot. They just use too much ad blockers and ate tio greedy to pay.
Sgt_Apone 6y ago
> The major problem here is that content is now largely generated based on maximizing ad revenue. When has news content not been about maximizing ad revenue? That's been the model for decades before the internet.
- philipkglass 6y ago
  Newspapers used to have very geographically limited competition in advertising for things like apartment rentals, for-sale listings, and job listings. They also got a fair bit of national brand advertising, even after TV eclipsed them. The lack of competition enabled them to do things that don't make money -- like in-depth investigative journalism. A newspaper that contained only meaty investigative journalism could not cover its costs with advertising, even back in 1990. This is similar to how today's high-margin advertising funded companies (e.g. Google, Facebook) can afford to pursue out-there projects with no prospect of making money in the short term. Investigative journalism was a vanity/halo product that usually didn't make money, funded by people overpaying to advertise in the newspaper. In a case of perfect competition and low barriers to entry, newspapers have to prioritize minimally expensive content as a supporting scaffold for advertising. Newspapers are much closer to this "perfect competition" case now than they were in 1990. (A very few newspapers like the New York Times achieved "escape velocity" to reach a national audience on the strength of their reporting.) Likewise, if Google were up against a dozen other nearly-as-good search engines, neither it nor its competitors would have the luxurious cash surpluses for "moonshot" projects. The golden ages of AT&T and IBM were also back when they enjoyed monopolistic pricing power. They could afford to do Nobel Prize winning research instead focusing slavishly on cost efficiency. They overcharged everyone, and a bit of that surplus money was reinvested in scientific research and product quality that was higher than what an equilibrated competitive market would converge on. I wouldn't give AT&T a telephone monopoly again just to bring back Bell Telephone Laboratories. But certain kinds of positive externalities seem to emerge only from businesses enjoying fat margins and high pricing power. One of those positive externalities, in the case of newspapers in the 20th century, was deep reporting.
xondono 6y ago
> The major problem here is that content is now largely generated based on maximizing ad revenue. This has always been true. But “old media” was the same for everyone, so maximizing ad revenue was achieved through capturing the middle of the distribution (engagement is lower, but there’s much more people). Now we can tailor for every individual, which means maximizing ad revenue is about pandering to the tails of the distribution (where people are super engaged even if the numbers are more limited).

benlumen 6y ago

> News publications developing content aren’t all that different from SEM campaigns. Exactly - the have to please the same platforms and systems.

dimitrios1 6y ago

This is also true from the other angle as well: SEO-driven content marketing companies are now becoming the "new media"

zentiggr 6y ago

Hooray for Goodhart's Law... Now all we need to do is convince marketers and advertising that it applies to them as well.

raxxorrax 6y ago

It is an attention economy. That is why news for nerds are dead, not only slashdot. They just use too much ad blockers and ate tio greedy to pay.

Sgt_Apone 6y ago

> The major problem here is that content is now largely generated based on maximizing ad revenue. When has news content not been about maximizing ad revenue? That's been the model for decades before the internet.

philipkglass 6y ago
Newspapers used to have very geographically limited competition in advertising for things like apartment rentals, for-sale listings, and job listings. They also got a fair bit of national brand advertising, even after TV eclipsed them. The lack of competition enabled them to do things that don't make money -- like in-depth investigative journalism. A newspaper that contained only meaty investigative journalism could not cover its costs with advertising, even back in 1990. This is similar to how today's high-margin advertising funded companies (e.g. Google, Facebook) can afford to pursue out-there projects with no prospect of making money in the short term. Investigative journalism was a vanity/halo product that usually didn't make money, funded by people overpaying to advertise in the newspaper. In a case of perfect competition and low barriers to entry, newspapers have to prioritize minimally expensive content as a supporting scaffold for advertising. Newspapers are much closer to this "perfect competition" case now than they were in 1990. (A very few newspapers like the New York Times achieved "escape velocity" to reach a national audience on the strength of their reporting.) Likewise, if Google were up against a dozen other nearly-as-good search engines, neither it nor its competitors would have the luxurious cash surpluses for "moonshot" projects. The golden ages of AT&T and IBM were also back when they enjoyed monopolistic pricing power. They could afford to do Nobel Prize winning research instead focusing slavishly on cost efficiency. They overcharged everyone, and a bit of that surplus money was reinvested in scientific research and product quality that was higher than what an equilibrated competitive market would converge on. I wouldn't give AT&T a telephone monopoly again just to bring back Bell Telephone Laboratories. But certain kinds of positive externalities seem to emerge only from businesses enjoying fat margins and high pricing power. One of those positive externalities, in the case of newspapers in the 20th century, was deep reporting.

xondono 6y ago

> The major problem here is that content is now largely generated based on maximizing ad revenue. This has always been true. But “old media” was the same for everyone, so maximizing ad revenue was achieved through capturing the middle of the distribution (engagement is lower, but there’s much more people). Now we can tailor for every individual, which means maximizing ad revenue is about pandering to the tails of the distribution (where people are super engaged even if the numbers are more limited).