APP = Rag

[Docendo discimus]

This is an interesting topic.

I don't know how true this is, but someone once explained to me that the reason you'll see five Snooki stories on the APP, Star Ledger, Courier News, Daily Record, etc. etc., news websites is because these websites have some kind of metric programmed in, where it can tell which stories are being clicked on and read the most (i.e., the most popular). It automatically will move those up to the front/top of the website as the "Top Stories". More views & more clicks means more money made for these newspapers/websites (in ad revenue, I guess?). Therefore, put the most popular ones in front/up top...because the goal is to get as many clicks & views as possible.

So, I guess, we can't put all the blame on the papers themselves? It's kind of a chicken-egg conundrum. People will naturally read what's on the front page. But the stuff on the front page is there because that's what people want to read (not entirely because the newspaper itself thinks these are the important stories).

Maybe the medium...i.e. the INTERNET...is to blame. At least in part. The internet, web culture and the nature of web browsing make it inevitable that Snooki, Beyoncegate and Not Quite Foot Longs are gonna be the top stories.

With paper & ink newspapers, you had journalist editors deciding for you that the front page news was for hard national and state stories. Then there'd be international news. Then county news. Then business/economic news. Science news. And then all the way towards the back of the newspaper, the Snooki, Beyonce and sammich gossip fluff would be contained in the Entertainment section.

Now, a computer discerns that all the people are clicking on the Snooki stories and automatically moves those up top.

That's the bad thing about internet newspapers as opposed to their paper predecessors. But on the other hand, the advantage of internet news is that you can instantly get 10 different articles from 10 different, diverse sources for any given story (also, no recycling, haha).

But I do miss the integrity of paper newspapers. For one thing, people cared a hell of a lot more about spelling, grammar and fact checking because once it went to ink, that was it...no more chances to fix mistakes...your mistakes would be immortalized in hard print forever as a shrine to your carelessness. Today, well, first of all, people rely on spell check too much and it has become a crippling crutch, so they can't spell to begin with. However, it doesn't matter, because in the digital world, you can go back and fix spelling errors with the click of a mouse at any time after publishing. You can be as careless as you want. Same goes for grammatical errors and even factual errors.



Here's an example I saw recently in the Star Ledger that made me shake my head:







I underlined "joined" in red because originally, the author had written "jointed". As expected, someone in the comments harped on the mistake right away (see below) and the author corrected the mistake.






The kicker is that despite the reader pointing them back to that paragraph to fix the "jointed" typo, the writer/editor STILL managed to miss the "NOVATRIS" typo...AGAIN! At least, I'm hoping that was a typo, and not, you know, some really green kid being ignorant of one of the biggest and well known corporations not only in NJ, but in the WORLD, and s/he thinks NOVATRIS is the correct name.

In addition to NOVATRIS, I have seen other, factual, atrocities like incorrect street addresses being reported.

So, in that respect, yes, I wholeheartedly agree that journalism is going down the terlet. If these papers have done away with, at the very least, typesetters, printing press operators and paper delivery drivers (not to mention probably off shoring most of their IT work), you'd think they'd at least shell out for some proper copy editors.

One last note about the aggressive push to maximize views & clicks--my theory is that THAT is the real reason for letting people anonymously comment at the end of every article. All the commenting (really mostly trolling) increases views & clicks exponentially. Personally, I HATE 99% of the comments people post to articles. Even after a moderator removes all the racist, homophobic and bigoted ones, the majority remaining are still insensitive and uncivil, cracking jokes and making stupid puns about tragedies because it's the internet and errrrrrrybody has to be an attention whoring comedian jockeying for the most "likes" and upvotes. I preferred the days when people would read a piece in a paper newspaper, and if they really felt the need to flap their gums about it, they'd either do it honestly and CIVILLY with a real live person, face to face, OR, they'd write a letter to the editor with their name and address attached so everyone would know who was flapping their gums.