Re:How a Newspaper Dies
by intended on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @02:29AM
(#17080395)
TLDR: News media has tried desperately for many years to innovate. The internet killed what was left.
Finally – thinking about “news” is outdated. News are previous era artisanal bread bakers, vs modern factories which A/B test and mass produce sliced bread (engagement).
Underlying it all is the mistake in assuming that truth matters, in an advertising revenue based system.
Longer -
If you pay for specialist news sources, even today, you will immediately see a massive difference in detail and quality of information.
For at least 70+ years, if not centuries, the News world has tried to stop the effect of advertising on media.
Media targets human brains, and human brains care for rewards more than “truth”.
If a newspaper sells salacious gossip for cheap, they obtain a huge readership. This in turn provides them with advertising power and thus revenue. This also translates into political power. Take a look at Murdoch’s empire other than Fox news.
All of this generally came under the name “the faster news cycle”. Once we as a species switched to 24/7 news, human attention spans came under increased pressure.
This forced news channels to move towards even more sensational (engaging!) news in order to keep their place.
And then came the internet. The internet destroys the paid classifieds section, the only thing allowing many smaller news papers to stay afloat.
The internet and coders also create tools to perfectly answer other questions “which format ensures maximum engagement, and time on site”. Which font, which design. Which words?
An unwholesome amount of human experimentation is done, from game design to UX/UI design to best create addictive sites.
This further saturates the average human attention span, and at this point overwhelms it.
In todays day and age, News websites are…. Not about traditional news. Everything is about “hacking” the human brain to make it do something.
This is all “content”, which has to be “engaging” or “viral” or “addictive”. We are dealing with the industrialization of thought, and the actual product is just “content”.
So to ask for Innovation, is to ask a dead man to act. You could have them innovate all you like, but the moment they land up on some sub reddit it just gets converted into echo chamber fodder.
Underlying it all is the mistake in assuming that truth matters, in an advertising revenue based system. Longer - If you pay for specialist news sources, even today, you will immediately see a massive difference in detail and quality of information. For at least 70+ years, if not centuries, the News world has tried to stop the effect of advertising on media. Media targets human brains, and human brains care for rewards more than “truth”. If a newspaper sells salacious gossip for cheap, they obtain a huge readership. This in turn provides them with advertising power and thus revenue. This also translates into political power. Take a look at Murdoch’s empire other than Fox news. All of this generally came under the name “the faster news cycle”. Once we as a species switched to 24/7 news, human attention spans came under increased pressure. This forced news channels to move towards even more sensational (engaging!) news in order to keep their place.
And then came the internet. The internet destroys the paid classifieds section, the only thing allowing many smaller news papers to stay afloat. The internet and coders also create tools to perfectly answer other questions “which format ensures maximum engagement, and time on site”. Which font, which design. Which words? An unwholesome amount of human experimentation is done, from game design to UX/UI design to best create addictive sites. This further saturates the average human attention span, and at this point overwhelms it. In todays day and age, News websites are…. Not about traditional news. Everything is about “hacking” the human brain to make it do something. This is all “content”, which has to be “engaging” or “viral” or “addictive”. We are dealing with the industrialization of thought, and the actual product is just “content”.
So to ask for Innovation, is to ask a dead man to act. You could have them innovate all you like, but the moment they land up on some sub reddit it just gets converted into echo chamber fodder.