Social media's effect on journalism is greater than shift from print to digital

http://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/platform-press-how-silicon-valley-reengineered-journalism.php

by ptrptr • 9 years ago

144 72 9 years ago

Lxr• 9 years ago

More relevant than "social media" is the shift in journalism from reporting facts to "get as many pageviews as you can", driven by the fact that we pay with our attention and our data rather than our money.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 9 years ago

Page-views has always been the priority even for print media.

In agregate, there was no past where print media were know for reporting facts, where people and organisations didn't allow their biases to come through.

The only thing different now is the scale.

usrusr• 9 years ago

The sensational headlines of pre-radio print, yes, today's clickbait isn't half as fresh as we like to think.

But it's not just scale: Online has massively lowered the barrier of entry for the technical prerequisites of reaching people, but the barriers of entry for actually getting attention were still basically the same as before. Until social came along and added that skewed lottery of "viral" on top.

makomk2• 9 years ago

It probably doesn't help that journalists think they can literally just make shit up on Twitter because journalistic standards don't apply there, and it then spreads virally due to their reputation and other journalists retweeting it. It's even more unlikely people will see any corrections on social media too.

mirimir6• 9 years ago

Maybe "journalists" isn't the right word for them. It's closer to "comedians", I think. But there's a twisted way how lies can be tacitly acknowledged as lies. And yet considered truth. Not in a factual sense, but metaphorically, with a wink and a nod. In a word, lulz.

ekianjo• 9 years ago

shift in journalism from reporting facts

Erm, no, Journalism has been stuck in delivering biased information/junk facts for a long, long time, well before the Internet.

carlmungz2• 9 years ago

Depending on the subject matter, you're more likely to get more objective reporting from local/regional press than nationals because local journalists tend to live in the area they're covering, so it's in their best interests to be straight with their reporting.

matt40774• 9 years ago

The widespread assumption that the top brands in journalism today (NYT, WSJ, Economist...) were better in the past is simply wrong.

There never was a time where newspapers printed "just the facts". That wish stems from a misunderstanding both of the concept of "fact" as well as the role of journalism in a democracy.

Firstly, it's impossible on its face to print "just the facts" because the decision of what warrants news coverage itself is already a judgement call. Otherwise, the phone book would have been the pinnacle of journalism.

Secondly, journalists were never in the past expected to be the soulless automata people seem to idolise now. They were and are expected to be arbitrators of the political process, and they were and are allowed use their experience in that process.

In addition, your mechanism of "because of more page views -> more money, quality deteriorates" is just wrong on its face. Newspapers' income was always dependent on "page views" in that sense, yet that never meant that sensationalism was the only strategy. Maybe pressure increased somewhat because it can now be measured on a per-article basis, but good publishers are actually pushing back against that very idea with all their might. That's why they are unwilling to implement what people are now relentlessly asking for: single-article micro payments.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 9 years ago

Never underestimate the ability of people to romanticise a past that never existed.

Retric• 9 years ago

Try reading actual newspaper archives from the 80's or 50's. The real difference is manpower -> investigations. Small town corruption investigations where somewhat common, but we don't have nearly the news independent coverage which suggests people are simply getting away with more corruption.

caseysoftware• 9 years ago

People forget that "yellow journalism" was the baseline, not the exception.

I think much of the argument over bias could be settled by "journalists" having to disclose their political contributions and voting record for the last N years. When people see that a person contributes time, money, and effort to a particular candidate, glowing reviews of that candidate can be taken with a grain of salt.

makomk2• 9 years ago

Journalists seem to be pushing hard on the idea that what they report is is simply the facts and there is never any such thing as "alternative facts" - that is, that anything that goes against what they report is simply a lie. Probably because it's easier to sell their complaints about social media as fighting to protect facts than as an attempt to protect their control over the political process.

Pigo• 9 years ago

It seems like people's biggest problem with the new trends is their inability to take a pulse of the voting public, and maybe their inability to steer a narrative. The fourth estate has literally been in bed with the government for too long. I see it as a win for journalism, even if there's a heap of garbage to wade through during this transition.

acdha• 9 years ago

It wasn't perfect in the past but it feels like you're arguing against a straw man more than anything else. Nobody seriously claims that news was ever pure objectivity but in the past newspapers had far more money to support investigative journalism and, with so many more of them, that meant local issues which are increasingly ignored. Sure, every outlet had a bias but there was a key difference: a newspaper is an easily sued entity - no question of identity, local presence, etc. – and far more importantly the need to maintain subscribers in the general community placed a limit on how extreme any mainstream journal could get, especially in the news coverage as opposed to editorials. The WSJ might have been reliably Republican in its editorial endorsements but most liberals respected its business reporting, the NYT was roughly the same, especially on foreign coverage, from the center-left instead of center-right, etc. because they would check sources, print names and verifiable facts, etc. even if it was no more nobly intended than defense against a libel suit. Again, not perfect but there were multiple levels where there was a check on bad behavior for any major player. There were scandals like Jayson Blair but they were scandalous because they were rare and lead to people being fired.

In contrast the modern web of news sites are all chasing the same ad dollars and the barriers to entry are orders of magnitude lower. They get paid by the page view and don't need to be in a specific area, so the old check of needing to keep subscribers is gone and there's even a profit motive for running more outlandish claims. If someone were motivated to sue, it'd be an expensive and often international slog and the likely outcome even if successful is that a nearly asset-free company would fold before inevitably being replaced.

ghaff• 9 years ago

The biggest difference is probably that you now have more or less a handful of respected national US and international publications that still (in spite of cuts in many cases) spend serious time on reporting and investigations.

And there are various niche publications that have some combination of loyal subscribers and wealthy backers. (I don't mean the last point as a dig; lots of smallish publications are someone's labor of love.)

What's become much tougher is maintaining serious investigative journalism or even covering all the boring city council meetings in all the markets that don't have a New York Times or Washington Post. This is especially true because journalism looks like an increasingly precarious career choice. There may very well not be a job at the end of the tunnel for the budding reporter who would previously have paid his dues for a few years getting paid peanuts.

braveo• 9 years ago

This is a false dichotomy, there are more options available than "complete, 100% unbiased" and "completely 100% biased".

You can present things in a relatively objective way, even if you have a bit of a bias. You can do it by treating the other side fairly, and with compassion/understanding.

That is not what happens anymore, people have carved out their audiences and play TO those audiences, and they craft their narrative based upon what that audience wants, rather than a compassionate treatment of the other side.

pixelmonkey2• 9 years ago

Tim Wu wrote an entire book called "The Attention Merchants" documenting the long history (going back to the 1800s) of various forms of media being commercialized with attention and data.

The "penny press" -- starting in the 1830s -- offered low-cost newspapers, basically at a loss, which were then subsidized with advertising. (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_press) A similar business model was then used for most newspapers, radio, network television stations, national magazines, cable news/TV subscriptions and on, and on. At each stage, the level of demographic and geographic targeting became more sophisticated. The modern web-based media is basically the logical conclusion of this two-century evolution.

What's more, profitable subscriptions for media are at an all-time high. The issue is that the spoils go to only a few winners, like Amazon, Netflix, SirusXM, Spotify, Comcast/TimeWarner, etc. A real issue is that people are more willing to pay subscriptions for music & entertainment than for news & analysis. But that's changing.

NYTimes, WaPo, WSJ have large-scale digital subscriber programs, and mid-market publishers are following suit. But, it's never going to have as much scale as ad/attention-based monetization.

I tend to agree with the sentiment embedded in your statement -- that if media are subscriber-based, they tend to be better aligned with those readers. But people are definitely accustomed to free on the web.

I recommend you check out "The Attention Merchants" to learn a bit about how news and information has been paid for over time. You shouldn't blame measurement; you should, if anything, blame the media industry's unit economics: http://amzn.to/2osFiNz

losteverything4• 9 years ago

Thanks.

Any recommendations written by a historian instead of the author?

dragontamer• 9 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

The term was coined in the mid-1890s to characterize the sensational journalism that used some yellow ink in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal

Uh huh... yeah. 1890. I think this sort of crap has been going on for centuries.

_rpd2• 9 years ago

Platforms rely on algorithms to sort and target content. They have not wanted to invest in human editing, to avoid both cost and the perception that humans would be biased. However, the nuances of journalism require editorial judgment, so platforms will need to reconsider their approach.

Suppose Facebook embraces the fact that editorial power is political power. Could they develop this without splitting into Blue Facebook and Red Facebook like the television news networks?

H4CK3RM4N• 9 years ago

They already have though. My friends seem to draw political posts in their feeds from two different pools, depending on the user's affiliation.

_rpd2• 9 years ago

Interesting. I wonder if they maintain two different editorial teams.

cookiecaper3• 9 years ago

Yeah, it's a total fantasy that most people want to hear from the other side. They're loyal to their tribe and hate anything and everything having to do with the other one. It causes them anger just to see it, it's like flashing the rival's gang sign or flying an enemy flag. It's a psychological identity thing.

This is important for community admins to understand. This is not a dialogue problem. People are given a tribe to belong to or oppose, and these affiliations are used by strategists and propagandists to affect popular anger/resentment.

That means that users don't want to see a balanced feed. They want to see things that make them feel good things, and not bad things. And the other side is "bad things".

golemotron• 9 years ago

Suppose Facebook embraces the fact that editorial power is political power

If they have editorial power then it's time to do away with the Digital Safe Harbors and time to consider antitrust.

golergka3• 9 years ago

Why are people saying that social media is the problem? As far as I see, social media are just more effective at satisfying people's wants in their information consumption.

It's people's wants and preferences that are the problem. Everybody likes their echo chamber.

mirimir6• 9 years ago

It's because social media can deliver bullshit in a highly specific and targeted way. Only so many cable channels are possible.

golergka3• 9 years ago

It can deliver anything in a highly specific and targeted way.

It delivers bullshit because that's what people want the most.

metaphorm3• 9 years ago

catering to a pathological desire is pathological.

intended• 9 years ago

That's bs.

It's everyone's preference to want cocaine. Heck cocaine is designed to be everyone's preference.

That doesn't mean that a race to the journalistic or hedonistic bottom is valuable or unstoppable.

These are social hygiene and security issues that need to be handled.

debt• 9 years ago

"Social media" calls into question the entire current consumer tech landscape. What's the point of being always connected if the things we have access to or are connected to is garbage?

TheSpiceIsLife5• 9 years ago

Past Futurists where right, but for the wrong reasons, when they said that in the future the most valuable resources will be our garbage.

Facebook has a market cap that dwarfs what it cost to put the Philae lander on comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Mahn• 9 years ago

To be perfectly blunt though, social media is just a medium, what is garbage is what people are putting it in there. Being always connected just amplifies what was already there. So, I would argue that what social media really calls into question is our very society.

losteverything4• 9 years ago

Report is by a journalism school.

Their ecosystem has always believed they are more important than they are. A person can earn a living within their ecosystem and never leave it.

This report is an example of how their ecosystem thrives on talking about their ecosystem.

Yet I remain even more certain we are much better off now than the Cronkite days when it was 3 networks, a few newspapers and national enquirer.

ForRealsies• 9 years ago

Journalists in large media markets (NYC, DC, etc.) can literally not make a living with their paltry salaries. It necessitates that they come from rich families (ex: Anderson Cooper) to be supported. It is classism. The middle class choose to become doctors/engineers instead.

losteverything4• 9 years ago

Help me understand this

If I am a peraon who writes words that get published, at the daily news or NYT for example, I get paid, right? How much? 50k a year?

Or are some of the words published written by someone else not in their payroll.

hectorr• 9 years ago

This makes sense. Social companies now own eyeballs. They sell eyeballs to advertisers, something legacy media used to do. But legacy media didn't own eyeballs through the magic of journalism, it owned them through massive monopolies in print (local) and telecom (national). Journalists don't like to talk about this, because it hurts their ego.

rpazyaquian• 9 years ago

Pretty sure the latter was necessary for the former.

wu-ikkyu2• 9 years ago

Social media cuts out the journalist middleman and makes everyone a broadcasting journalist.

Print journalism was (relatively) one to many.

Social media is many to many.

pdelbarba• 9 years ago

It does, but at the same time also cuts out whatever was left of journalistic ethics as well.

wu-ikkyu2• 9 years ago

Perhaps, though it seems corporate profits have been prioritized over journalistic ethics in the mass media since at least the 1890s with the yellow journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer.

sbardle• 9 years ago

In the seventeenth century, media shifted from manuscripts to print. Now print has shifted to digital, but with the rise of Social some of the earlier dynamics of manuscript circulation are coming back into play, e.g "scribal communities" can be compared with "social media communities". What this means, I've no idea, but it could lead to a further polarising of political opinion as social media communities solidify and cross-community dialogue disappears.

KaoruAoiShiho• 9 years ago

Back in the day we used to call this "web 2.0"

ThomPete• 9 years ago

The only thing that changed was the readers illusion of newspapers somehow being the source of truth and objecticity.

People used to believe that journalism was about reporing facts and objective accounts of what was going on.

In reality the newspapers who used to position themselves as objective never where, they were however mainstream.

Thanks to the internet people are now seeing the reality of journalism which is that there are many different perspectives on any subject or put another way. The post-modernists were right all along.

Journalism has never been as factual as it is today it's just that people are uneasy about the reality that different facts can be used to create different angels to the same story.

The only piece of objectivity there is in any story is the event itself. "Plane went down", "Man committed of murder", "Trump won the presidency" once you step outside of these basic facts it's mostly up to interpretation. The whys, the hows, all based on interpretation.

Thanks to social media and then fact that you can't just get away with claiming one interpretation when there are more is what make social media disruptive, not to journalism but to the way we understand journalism.

Social media's effect on journalism is greater than shift from print to digital

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