Just an ironic aside from the reaction to our December issue.
I used a click-bait style headline for our article denouncing click-bait journalism. Yesterday I pulled the readership stats for the first 36 hours (basically, Saturday and Sunday) after launch.
Most-viewed article (in MFO history): Reduce your 2020 risks by 50% with this one move! 27,000 views
Second-most viewed article in the issue: the issue's homepage, 3,000 views.
I'm guessing that bots, Russian or otherwise, are involved. I'm guessing that there's an algorithm that trawls the internet looking for a certain style of headline, then scrapes it. Where the scrapings go, I know not.
Or, more optimistically, we're sparked a revolution in online media literacy and people by the tens of thousands are holding reprints of the article close to their hearts.
Yup, that's what I'm guessing. Yes indeedy.
David
Comments
@David - your algo bet is probably correct. Some algo or hedge fund AI is looking for hot stock or fund tips and scours the net for such articles to throw into its data pool to analyse.
(As I’m certain David knows, he employed an imperative sentence as his header, which likely has a lot to do with the excellent reception by bots.)
1. There wouldn't be much click-bait journalism if Google/Facebook/Amazon hadn't killed journalism and basically bankrupted many publications.
2. Publications are now desperate for clicks to sustain their remaining ad revenue.
3. Readers, including--at least in the past--many on this site, assume news should be "free" with the implicit assumption that journalists don't deserve to get paid. They happily cut and paste entire articles and show other readers various means around paywalls.
4. Many pubs are now so broke they pay journalists pennies per word.
5. Shoddy click-bait journalism often exists because pubs are so broke/greedy--both, really--they hire writers who are really professionals in another industry seeking to promote their own businesses and journalism is really an advertisement for their businesses, be it financial planning or money management. Those writers come cheap because journalism really isn't their end goal when they write an article. It is self-promotion.
6. Journalists at mainstream publications generally don't write their own headlines. I know I don't. Headlines are written by a team at the pub seeking "search engine optimization" or SEO to generate clicks.
7. Investigative journalism is expensive, time consuming and often draws negative backlash from powerful interests, be they corporate or government, or both. It rarely leads to additional ad revenue for a publication. Pubs are thus less interested in doing it.
And so good journalism is dying.
Had a nice letter from a media relations person whose greater lament is not that bots scrape our content, it's that they appear to be writing much of the Yahoo Finance content. Her suspicion is that the article about Leuthold that I called out might well have been automated.
Yahoo Finance articles have become a joke, yeah. 24/7 Wall Street is one such example whose articles I presume are bot-written. IMO it's pretty easy to find the bot-written finanical articles since they're often talking just technicals, trends, and presented in a very formulaic manner.
Yahoo was a pioneer in internet search in the 90s. How far they’ve fallen.
If you’re still with me ... I’m reminded of a short story, “The Portable Phonograph” by Walter VanTilberg Clark I used to use with students back in the 70s. The story depicts the existence of a few “post-civilization” survivors holed up in a cave following a devastating war. Each clings to some great literary masterpiece or other relic from the past. The title is a reference to an old man who treasures a collection of aging phonograph records:
“The records, though,” said the old man when he had finished winding, “are a different matter. Already they are very worn. I do not play them more than once a week. One, once a week, that is what I allow myself. ...More than a week I cannot stand it; not to hear them,” he apologized.
Link to brief summary of story: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/short-story-portable-phonograph-why-author-634741
Link to complete story (5 pages):
http://www.mscruz.yolasite.com/resources/The Portable Phonograph.pdf
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Some added thoughts re the points Lewis made so articulately.
I obtain / read all my subscription periodicals through Amazon’s Kindle service. I’d feel better sending my money directly to publishers. On the other hand, I assume they are being adequately compensated (big assumption) by Amazon or they wouldn’t agree to have their publications re-sourced. Here’s why I use the Kindle editions:
- Add-free. I wouldn’t mind if online papers included static “print-type” ads that didn’t detract from my reading (as hard copy newspapers did for a century or more). However, invariably these ads flash, blink, flicker, change color and dance about. I cannot read text with such distractions.
- Ease of starting and stopping subscriptions. Amazon allows you to cancel a subscription at any time and refunds the unused portion of any subscription amount paid. By contrast, I’ve encountered much difficulty cancelling online subscriptions from Barron’s. Once, I had to have my bank pull my charge card and issue a new one as it was the only way I could keep from being charged monthly after repeated attempts to cancel through the publisher.
- Formatting. In my opinion nobody does this better. Amazon pioneered the e-reader and remains miles ahead in providing a format (suitable for many different devices) that’s easy to access, fine-tune, read and navigate.
- One-stop billing and ease of accessing / changing account settings,
Just a few thoughts. I’d say Amazon ranks relatively low on the list of factors damaging the free press. I’d cite a continued dumbing down of the populace, addiction to internet, TV and electronic media, free-loaders who pay nothing, and attacks from the far right as more influential causes of journalism’s plight.
The Kindle edition NYT costs about $5 more monthly ($20 vs $15). Not only the absence of distracting ads, but smoother layout / format and less data consumed on downloads are appealing. (I’m still on a data-capped internet plan.) Willing to pay the added cost in exchange for convenience and a better reading experience. The higher subscription fee should allow Amazon to compensate publishers fairly.
Overall, I believe Amazon increases circulation for many publications above what they would otherwise enjoy in this day and age. Let’s face it: Newspapers face intense competitive pressures from the likes of cable news and free websites, albeit the quality of these pales in comparison. Amazon’s Kindle site serves essentially as a top-notch marketing platform for hundreds, if not thousands, of quality publications, both domestic and global.
Oh, I pay for the WSJ, WaPo, and NYT ... but prefer to pay for a quality viewing experience with less distractions and better 'flow' of articles. Ergo, I pay to provide that desired experience I use my geek-fu to deconstruct/reconstruct pages/page sections and block/enable scripts to ensure that.
PS - Not sure, but I think a lot of direct newspaper apps continually update throughout the day. If you’re on a data restricted I-Net plan, that’s the last thing you want or need. Kindle editions do not normally update once published.
@BenWP - At least we still have Tim Skubick. When he retires, we’ll really be in the dark. Maybe have to call up @rono to find out what the h*** is going on in Lansing.
as an ex-newspaperman I try and support local print pubs also, but I understand why they are dying, the triumph of free over anything that costs
More to the point, there is research that indicates communities that have lost newspapers vote less on average and have more political corruption on average because people are just less engaged and less in the know as to what's going on:
https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Losing-the-News_Executive-Summary.pdf
Yet there is no question that news spreads faster on Facebook. Whether it is useful news or thoughtful in depth analysis is another question entirely.
outside boston as local papers have been glommed together or turned into adsheets chiefly, we have not had anything resembling thorough local coverage for many many years
there are newsy forums (yahoo, now moving to io) and email chains that do this with the most substantive and important and divisive issues
(1) Where’s the accountability?
(2) Who checks the accuracy of the information?
(3) Who ferrets out those sources bearing a personal grudge, conflict of interest, or posting surreptitiously on behalf of a well funded special interest group ?
There is none. It is self-policing, mostly effectively so. Not talking about social media in general, just community postings and bulletin boards and such. Lots of good back and forth. Like this forum at its best. Except people use their actual full names most of the time, ime. Suggest you see if there is a f/b or yahoo group for your town or neighborhood or some local issue. Voter networks, that sort of thing.
You can assume bad faith about anything, of course.
For access to news and information, I’d rather pay for a good daily newspaper containing all those listings, minutes of govt. meetings, upcoming ballot issues, polling places and election dates along with local sports and weather. Throw in some Letters To the Editor and lots of good in-depth investigative reporting. Guess I’m just old fashioned.
Obviously the electorate is better informed today than when we had decent local newspapers?
what you want is largely unavailable in many towns and cities, though not all
I meant see if you can get some of what you wish for from a local civic or regional or town group online
no one is saying wide-open social media is the solution, but it is remarkably, oddly effective at some things, but most as a service (reliable pols, reliable plumbers)
Even in a city with the size and wealth of San Francisco it's becoming less and less available. The SF Chronicle, while still capable of some really excellent reporting, gets thinner and thinner by the week. It's gonna be a close call as to whether it lasts as long as I do.