Her.ie .... disappointing website

rustyzip

I started reading joe.ie when my brother would send me funny links/stories..

So I was quite hopeful & optimistic that her.ie would be like joe.ie but obviously with a female slant..

Holy moly.. it's terrible!
Clever people behind it, I know that. They're paying about ten staff (if not more) so are making millions from advertising revenue but Jaysus... could they not come up with some original content?!

Everything on it comes from the dailymail or the journal (usually about three hours after the original source)

And they rely heaving on people sending in 'tips'
'Look at my son falling off a horse, hilarious' type videos.. and general drivel..

How long can their bubble last!?!?!?
And they're always deleting opinionated comments..


Jesus Wept

speedboatchase

rustyzip wrote: »

I started reading joe.ie when my brother would send me funny links/stories..

So I was quite hopeful & optimistic that her.ie would be like joe.ie but obviously with a female slant..

Holy moly.. it's terrible!
Clever people behind it, I know that. They're paying about ten staff (if not more) so are making millions from advertising revenue but Jaysus... could they not come up with some original content?!

Everything on it comes from the dailymail or the journal (usually about three hours after the original source)

And they rely heaving on people sending in 'tips'
'Look at my son falling off a horse, hilarious' type videos.. and general drivel..

How long can their bubble last!?!?!?
And they're always deleting opinionated comments..


Jesus Wept

There is no "bubble". This is how web journalism - the future of journalism, basically - works: viral, aggregated content.

Saying that Her.ie content comes from Daily Mail or The Journal is irrelevant because aside from investigate journalism from both (quite rare), those websites are repackaging content in the same way, usually from Reddit. In general though I think Her fills a gap in the market and when you consider that a would-be rival like Fanny.ie has been 'under construction' (completely halting a website is inexcusable, unless it has completely folded and they won't admit it) for months, you have to wonder if there genuinely is any competition.

Agree with your point about wanting more original content but unfortunately that original content will usually take a lot more time to produce and if it doesn't go viral within a couple of hours, it's basically a waste of time from the point of view of the lost hits that would've been met if 3-4 viral stories were put up in its stead. I think that if Her keeps growing and hires more staff you'll see more opportunities to have fully original content.

My advice would be to look for an aggregated site that you feel is 'curated' more to your tastes or has what you would deem a higher ratio of original content; something like Buzzfeed or Jezebel, though they won't have an Irish slant.

missdavis1986

I know her.ie is a new aggregator and most the content is recycled but I like it! I would never directly go onto her.ie but from their facebook page if I saw something interesting I'd definitely give it a read. It's lighthearted and Irish!

Femme_Fatale

Hate it. Talks to women as if we're all vapid bimbos.

LoonyLovegood

I've made a point of ignoring it. It's vapid, filled with celebrity gossip and nothing journalism. Which is disappointing, because someone I admired in a previous journalistic post works on it now.

Femme_Fatale

Similar story with TheJournal.ie. Couple of people in there who would never have dreamed of being involved with a publication that draws such hate-filled nutters... that wasn't the intention with it initially though, I've no doubt.

Da Shins Kelly

I'm not a big fan of it, but I see loads of friends posting articles from in on Facebook and what have you, so it seems pretty popular. As was said already, the stuff they write about is by and large pretty meaningless. I'm sure sites like that don't start out intending for their website to end up a that way, but I just don't think enough attention is paid to the quality of writers on these sites by whoever is running them. Journalism is really making waves online now, which on one hand is kind of exciting because it gives a window of opportunity to great writers who might not have gotten that chance before, but on the other hand, it means there are a lot of very mediocre writers getting chances they probably don't deserve. Buzzfeed is amusing from time to time, but I think it suffers from this problem too (this idea of just writing articles that are endless lists, with no real writing involved is just laziness). There is a lack of vetting with writers and articles on these websites a lot of the time that just drags down the overall standard, I think.

A website I like is Cracked. It's a humour website that actually puts a lot of effort into the quality of writing and the brand of humour they're going for and are quite particular about what kind of ideas they give the green-light to and who they let write (there's a whole process you have to go through to get picked). I think it effectively weeds out the boring or just not very good writers and it means all the articles on the website are of a similar standard.

LoonyLovegood

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

Similar story with TheJournal.ie. Couple of people in there who would never have dreamed of being involved with a publication that draws such hate-filled nutters... that wasn't the intention with it initially though, I've no doubt.

I find the Journal to be good, as long as you don't read the comments.

Femme_Fatale

I'm sure the writers would like better moderation. I've noticed BreakingNews.ie (similar dregs in the comments section) is moderated now.

Anyone can be a journalist/columnist today though - and there are people on Boards who are infinitely more talented than some professional journalists.
But the negative is that any auld dross passes for journalism now in this digital age.

I expected Her.ie to be irreverent like its "brother" site Joe.ie. It never was though, it was always like one of those gossip mags. Sure, there are bits in it that I enjoy, but overall it's terrible IMO.

speedboatchase

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

Anyone can be a journalist/columnist today though - and there are people on Boards who are infinitely more talented than some professional journalists.

I strongly disagree, but it depends on the standards upheld by the website. Journalism is an incredibly crowded market and most people who work full-time had to pay a lot of dues to get there. An intelligent and articulate forum poster needs a lot more skills to become a full-time journalist, though admittedly the bar is lower at certain websites. However, as there is so much demand within the industry, the lesser websites still get very talented writers, usually as unpaid interns.

In the case of aggregated websites, sometimes you have four-star chefs making hamburgers, but don't blame them - we all have to make a living and it's what the customers want, unfortunately. If you see something poorly written or with an obvious typo, blame the subeditor, but the lesser aggregated websites don't even bother hiring them at all.

Femme_Fatale

Yeh, did a bit of journalism myself - it's not easy. Being a good writer is certainly not enough to make a living. You need to have a nose for a good story too. I may have had the former but I didn't have the latter. Feature-writing was my forté, but forget about making a decent living out of that... for a long, long time anyway.

ivytwine

Hope that none of this comes across as bitter before I start :P

I am a journalism graduate and I suppose one would say, a failed journalist. After almost a year and a half of failing to even get an internship in media I recently decided that I was going to do something, anything else. It's a bit of a comfort to know I'm not alone. Less than half my class are still in journalism.

Her was one of the million and one places I applied to during my search- I think I applied to them four times in total and I was acknowledged once (anyone in media circles will know how often Joe and Her are hiring, a bad sign in itself as my mother would say).

Joe/Her in my opinion are a symptom of the disease in Irish media. The establishment are terrified of the rise of digital. No-one has really figured out a way to make money out of digital, unless you are Buzzfeed or similar (a word in Buzzfeed's defence, their long-read features are often excellent). I continue to write for a number of websites, and it's all voluntary, the domains come out of the editors' pockets, and any money you receive from advertising is a pittance.

I don't have it and I won't be able to find it online, but I did read recently in the Phoenix that Joe/Her are suffering heavy financial losses. This leads to a caution, a reluctance to take editorial/creative risks, and is essentially why they will put up a picture of Michelle Keegan that has already circumnavigated around Twitter twice instead of getting the (very talented) girls working for them to actually write a thought-provoking piece.

Ilyana 2.0

I don't mind Her.ie; it's by no means innovative or intelligent journalism but it serves a purpose. If you want random tidbits of celebrity gossip and a bit of lightheartedness then it's not the worst. And a lot of women enjoy that kind of writing. But I do think that bigger sites, such as those for magazines like Glamour and Cosmo do it better.

I'm interested in getting into fashion/beauty journalism (good luck to me :P) and I can't say that writing for a site like Her.ie would be at all fulfilling for me. It would be a stopgap, something from which to gain experience rather than a career goal in itself. But there is relatively little fashion and beauty content on Her.ie anyway.

But the odds of me getting an internship, let alone a job, are fairly slim anyway :pac: