Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–17 of 17 posts

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#11

Post by lvoudour »

>Data have turned journalism into a commodity, something to be marketed, tested, calibrated. Perhaps people in the media have always thought this way. But if that impulse existed, it was at least buffered. Journalism’s leaders were vigilant about separating the church of editorial from the secular concerns of business

I understand the author's frustration with the current state of affairs but let's be honest, the only reason journalism was not an aggressively marketed "commodity" in the past is because competition was lower. 40-50 years ago very few people could afford to own and operate widely circulated newspapers/magazines. You could write anything you liked and you would have guaranteed readership, the public had very few options. But as we saw in the 80s/90s when printing and distribution became cheaper and more widespread the public turned more and more towards tabloids, gossip columns, sensationalist stories and partisan viewpoints. Nowadays there are millions of sites offering more or less the same content and the only way to stand out is to be even more aggressive, viral, sensationalist, tabloid-esque than the printed tabloid era.

The problem is not data driven content, the problem is that everyone has access to the same "stories" and the ability to publish it. Go to New Republic website right now and see what the main stories are: Trump, even more trump, the dnc, game of thrones, some bs liberal article about police/sexism/hollywood, something about instagram, etc.

What insight will you get if you read the n-th article about the latest Trump antics or the i-th article about sexism or social media? Does it matter if the author is an intern at buzzfeed or an journalist with 30 years of experience? You won't get any wiser on the subject even if the author is Ernest Hemingway. The content is now trivial and no amount of good intentions, idealism or journalistic craftsmanship is going to help you.

Want to stand out and not be tormented by "data"? Find a niche and write about specialized subjects that few can write about. Trivial subjects are a mass consumer commodity and there's no turning back

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#13

Post by augustocallejas »

sevensor wrote: post #10

The Atlantic itself, where this piece was published, had its own rocky transition to the digital world. I was a longtime print subscriber, and around 2012 or so I found that the cover of the book was becoming more and more offputting. Not the art, but the titles of the articles. They were deliberately provocative, to the point of being irrelevant to the actual content. Clickbait without the clicks. I got so tired of…

> By shady antics, I mean requiring a credit card for subscription renewal, so they could auto-renew you every year thereafter. I had been happy to send a check for several years' worth of the Atlantic in advance, but I'm not going to sign up for automatic charges to my credit card.

I've been a print subscriber since at least 2009. I see nothing shady by requiring a credit credit for subscription renewal. This is standard practice for recurring services like this.

> Not the art, but the titles of the articles. They were deliberately provocative, to the point of being irrelevant to the actual content

I have to agree unfortunately. Perhaps they are trying to get the attention of airport travelers? They have my subscription, so they don't need to get my attention that way. Either way, I pay for the content, and thus have been exposed to many topics and ideas I wouldn't have otherwise.

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#14

Post by sevensor »

augustocallejas wrote: post #13
sevensor wrote: post #10

The Atlantic itself, where this piece was published, had its own rocky transition to the digital world. I was a longtime print subscriber, and around 2012 or so I found that the cover of the book was becoming more and more offputting. Not the art, but the titles of the articles. They were deliberately provocative, to the point of being irrelevant to the actual content. Clickbait without the clicks. I got so tired of…

> By shady antics, I mean requiring a credit card for subscription renewal, so they could auto-renew you every year thereafter. I had been happy to send a check for several years' worth of the Atlantic in advance, but I'm not going to sign up for automatic charges to my credit card. I've been a print subscriber since at least 2009. I see nothing shady by requiring a credit credit for subscription renewal. This is sta…

I'm probably being unnecessarily reactionary about the recurring credit-card charge. I was a subscriber from 1999-2015. At the start, you paid by sending them a check. For a long time, you could add three years to your subscription at a low cost by paying in advance. I forget when I sent them my last check, but it can't have been later than 2010 or 2011. The accumulated subscription years kept me in The Atlantic for quite a while after that. I know the recurring charge is standard practice now, but it wasn't always so, and I still think it's kind of underhanded. But that may just be me not keeping up with the times.

I got a lot of value from the content, and I may subscribe again someday, but they're going to have to win me back.

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#15

Post by matt4077 »

pedrocr wrote: post #4

It's a good view but fairly one-sided. I think the digital transformation also showed some pretty severe flaws underlying the model of journalism. I can think of at least these: 1) When the entertainment and information alternatives are much poorer the bar is much lower. Newspapers were used to this and then the internet raised the bar quite high. Whereas a bunch of friends might get their banter on by reading a spor…

Those stories are everywhere, but it doesn't make them worthless. I think it's often overlooked that these stories do take a lot of work to discover, and that losing those resources could become dangerous. Case in point: the Trump Jr meeting with a Russian delegation came out because the New York Times invested months tracking it down. Or, more recently, this story about Icahn, that probably lead to his resignation: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/28/carl-icahns-fai..., and this rather impressive and extremely long expose on a single real estate deal in Georgia: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/trumps-business...

> The kinds of things I'd really like an investigative journalist to do are just not done and probably never were. I don't see anyone going through the published laws explaining things,

Those things aren't "investigative" journalism, but there are lots of examples. Here's an interactive version of the President's budget proposal: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/23/us/politics/t.... I'm pretty sure that if you spend 30 to 40 minutes daily scanning through the NYT or WSJ, or read the Economist cover-to-cover every week, you'll have a well-rounded knowledge of world affairs.

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#16

Post by rdlecler1 »

kbenson wrote: post #6
rdlecler1 wrote: post #2

The standard assumption is that you need to make money through advertising which favors maximizing clicks and page views over quality. But at least in a number of cases, thought(ful) leadership by platforms is overlooked as a source of serious journalism. Goldman Sachs and McKinsey put out a lot of free research because this thoughtful leadership help establish them as an authority for their main business.

> Goldman Sachs and McKinsey put out a lot of free research because this thoughtful leadership help establish them as an authority for their main business. That is, those departments are the advertising and PR branches for their main businesses. How can I trust the veracity of their claims knowing that their ultimate goal is to give me a favorable opinion of their parent organizations? This is the exact problem news…

Reputation and honest signaling.

Re: The pursuit of digital readership at the New Republic

#17

Post by kbenson »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #16
kbenson wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Goldman Sachs and McKinsey put out a lot of free research because this thoughtful leadership help establish them as an authority for their main business. That is, those departments are the advertising and PR branches for their main businesses. How can I trust the veracity of their claims knowing that their ultimate goal is to give me a favorable opinion of their parent organizations? This is the exact problem news…

Reputation and honest signaling.

In general, or are you implying that I should trust Goldman Sachs because of their reputation and honest signalling? Because if it's the latter, the company as a whole has a lot to answer for reputation wise[1], regardless of how this division has behaved. I'm not sure I would be able to overlook what appears to be a company management and culture problem of that degree and believe it would leave other divisions entirely unaffected.

1: http://fortune.com/2016/04/11/goldman-sachs-doj-settlement/

Post reply on HN