I get that with the proliferation of outlets, and free media, compensation and quality have gone down.
But I’m not commenting on quality of the writing as much as the structure of what is written. The structures have changed away from the communication of a reasoned argument marshaling facts to support a point.
But I’m not commenting on quality of the writing as much as the structure of what is written.
That structure is a major element of the “quality of writing”.
Plus, of course, the incentives changed somewhat. If you are going out of business, clicks/eyeballs become more important than the reputation of a respectable publication.
It’s not really that people were trained differently. (May or may not be). Instead, market conditions have changed, and therefore what the market produces has changed.
Evidence and argument takes time. Stories and stream of consciousness can be churned out. Whether that trade off is better to survive in current conditions is dependent on the particulars of the conditions.
I can see an argument that with the barriers to entry in publishing removed, the proliferation of outlets means fewer eyeballs for each. In that environment, revenue goes down.
Also, the number of people who want a reasoned and evidenced article is limited. Their tastes were probably overly accommodated in the past, because of the meritocratic competition for the few chairs at the table left smart, talented people at the table making decisions. With the click democracy and proliferation of outlets, the mass who have relatively little interest in reason and evidence will have more outlets more suited to their tastes.
See another current story on the fall of Salon which goes into some details about how quality first slipped and then went into free fall. Notable quote:
“The low point arrived when my editor G-chatted me with the observation that our traffic figures were lagging that day and ordered me to ‘publish something within the hour,’” Andrew Leonard, who left Salon in 2014, recalled in a post. “Which, translated into my new reality, meant ‘Go troll Twitter for something to get mad about — Uber, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Tea Party Republicans — and then produce a rant about it.’ … I performed my duty, but not without thinking, ‘Is this what 25 years as a dedicated reporter have led to?’ That’s when it dawned on me: I was no longer inventing the future. I was a victim of it. So I quit my job to keep my sanity.”
When you hire as cheap people as possible, and make them write every day as many articles as possible, you get neither reasonable jurnalists nor reasonable article structure.
My country is far behind the most current wave of clickbait journalism, but things have been reliably going downhill for years. I know a person who worked for one of the most respected newspapers in the country. Their job description was like this: “at morning, the boss gave them a random topic; till 4pm they had to write two long articles for the paper version, and two more short articles for the web version”. Every day way like this; after a year most people were fired because they were burned out, and they were replaced by fresh ones. Mind you, this was one of the serious newspapers.
Now imagine yourself, that you get a task to write four articles about a topic you know nothing about. What can you do? Use google to get some background, then pick up the phone and call a few random people, ask them some questions, and write as fast as you can. Most people will refuse to answer the phone because they already have experience of being misrepresented by media. However, there are a few people who are willing to give you a simplistic opinion on any topic; any experienced journalist has a list of them, because when everything else fails and your boss is screaming at you, these people can save your day. So, you get some background by reading articles in English about the topic (yeah, we are stealing shamelessly), you invent a probable story, then you fish for some quotes, and then you hurry writing the text because you barely have time. Four stories a day, about a topic you previously never heard about.
When I write blog articles, I usually spend much more time writing an article than a journalist could afford.
You and Lumifer pointed out the economic aspects, by which I see that:
It’s not really that people were trained differently. (May or may not be). Instead, market conditions have changed, and therefore what the market produces has changed.
I get that with the proliferation of outlets, and free media, compensation and quality have gone down.
But I’m not commenting on quality of the writing as much as the structure of what is written. The structures have changed away from the communication of a reasoned argument marshaling facts to support a point.
That structure is a major element of the “quality of writing”.
Plus, of course, the incentives changed somewhat. If you are going out of business, clicks/eyeballs become more important than the reputation of a respectable publication.
Ok, I think I’m catching on.
It’s not really that people were trained differently. (May or may not be). Instead, market conditions have changed, and therefore what the market produces has changed.
Evidence and argument takes time. Stories and stream of consciousness can be churned out. Whether that trade off is better to survive in current conditions is dependent on the particulars of the conditions.
I can see an argument that with the barriers to entry in publishing removed, the proliferation of outlets means fewer eyeballs for each. In that environment, revenue goes down.
Also, the number of people who want a reasoned and evidenced article is limited. Their tastes were probably overly accommodated in the past, because of the meritocratic competition for the few chairs at the table left smart, talented people at the table making decisions. With the click democracy and proliferation of outlets, the mass who have relatively little interest in reason and evidence will have more outlets more suited to their tastes.
See another current story on the fall of Salon which goes into some details about how quality first slipped and then went into free fall. Notable quote:
When you hire as cheap people as possible, and make them write every day as many articles as possible, you get neither reasonable jurnalists nor reasonable article structure.
My country is far behind the most current wave of clickbait journalism, but things have been reliably going downhill for years. I know a person who worked for one of the most respected newspapers in the country. Their job description was like this: “at morning, the boss gave them a random topic; till 4pm they had to write two long articles for the paper version, and two more short articles for the web version”. Every day way like this; after a year most people were fired because they were burned out, and they were replaced by fresh ones. Mind you, this was one of the serious newspapers.
Now imagine yourself, that you get a task to write four articles about a topic you know nothing about. What can you do? Use google to get some background, then pick up the phone and call a few random people, ask them some questions, and write as fast as you can. Most people will refuse to answer the phone because they already have experience of being misrepresented by media. However, there are a few people who are willing to give you a simplistic opinion on any topic; any experienced journalist has a list of them, because when everything else fails and your boss is screaming at you, these people can save your day. So, you get some background by reading articles in English about the topic (yeah, we are stealing shamelessly), you invent a probable story, then you fish for some quotes, and then you hurry writing the text because you barely have time. Four stories a day, about a topic you previously never heard about.
When I write blog articles, I usually spend much more time writing an article than a journalist could afford.
You and Lumifer pointed out the economic aspects, by which I see that:
Rest of my reply to Lumifer: http://lesswrong.com/lw/nnq/when_considering_incentives_consider_the/dbch