Modern journalism

J.pilkington

Heard an interesting fact on newstalk regarding how the wage packet of a journal.ie journalist is mainly based on the number of clicks their article gets. Kinda makes sense to me now as most of their articles are click bait (eg poll asking do you like Enda kenny, articles with no relation to the sensationalist headline, typos, misinformation, copy and paste from the net etc etc).

It doesn't bear well for the future of journalism, can't see the likes of the Irish times being able to adopt such a business model, does this mean we will eventually lose "papers of record" which currently provide well researched and written articles and in their place get the standard of the journal.ie. Not good, while the likes of the journal.ie readers might think that their bashing of everything in society in the comments section is making Ireland a better place it is no replacement for proper investigative journalism.

I know this is a question being asked for a long time, just shocked at how the journal pay their journalists and how it motivates them to publish crap news

BoJack Horseman

makes sense I suppose.
It couldn't have been by accident the direction they chose.

Every 3rd article features an image of Ends Kenny gurning at the camera with a silly headline "this man wants to..."

Gets the online warriors frothing at the mouth.

haveringchick

I think a certain section of society will always demand proper journalism, there will always be a market for an accurate account of current affairs.

gramar

Modern journalism is gone to shít. The bullshít churned out daily is reaching epidemic proportions only added to by comments sections.

Cool_CM

I'd be happy to lose the Irish/Sunday Independent and the Daily Mail.

Poor Uncle Tom

Long gone is the notion of the days of unfolding the crisp sheets containing nuggets of beaming truths about every facet of life the beavering word warriors could sweep together overnight under the distaining gaze of some overweight cigar munching editor,,,,,

Just as well, tbh, but without the rags the riches couldn't shine....

Tombi!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Been doing this for decades, if not centuries.

Eugene Norman

Cool_CM wrote: »

I'd be happy to lose the Irish/Sunday Independent and the Daily Mail.

The daily mail is the world's biggest online newspaper. The Indo engages in click bait.

It's the Irish times that will go.

RickyOFlaherty

J.pilkington wrote: »

Heard an interesting fact on newstalk regarding how the wage packet of a journal.ie journalist is mainly based on the number of clicks their article gets. Kinda makes sense to me now as most of their articles are click bait (eg poll asking do you like Enda kenny, articles with no relation to the sensationalist headline, typos, misinformation, copy and paste from the net etc etc).

It doesn't bear well for the future of journalism, can't see the likes of the Irish times being able to adopt such a business model, does this mean we will eventually lose "papers of record" which currently provide well researched and written articles and in their place get the standard of the journal.ie. Not good, while the likes of the journal.ie readers might think that their bashing of everything in society in the comments section is making Ireland a better place it is no replacement for proper investigative journalism.

I know this is a question being asked for a long time, just shocked at how the journal pay their journalists and how it motivates them to publish crap news

Journal.ie, Irish times.ie unsubscribe problem solved. If enough people do it ...

Wolf Club

The most obvious change is the headlines, they are intended to be vague and sensationalist to make people click. A traditional headline in a sports section of a newspaper would probably read something like; "Paris Saint Germain make enquiries about potentially signing Lionel Messi", whereas the same story on the Journal would be something like "One of Barcelona's superstars could be on his way to a mega-rich French club".

A lot of people wouldn't click on the former one as they would already have the gist of the story.

Junkyard Tom

If we can't trust medical research that deals with the life and death of vulnerable people to be free of 'publication bias' (see: Ben Goldacre) why anyone would trust a mainstream 'Journalist' not to prostitute himself, wittingly or otherwise, to the establishment is beyond comprehension.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton

The_Valeyard

TheJournal.ie


The cheap whore of journalism.

valoren

There will be a notable increase in 'Blendle' type articles.
Where you pay a one time fee of say 20c to read an article, so no ongoing subscriptions.
The best journalists will be successful. The one's that are not so good won't get paid.
If an article doesn't charge a nominal fee then you get what you pay for i.e. clickbait BS

tritium

Well, I suppose it helps explain 'journalists' like Una Mulally...



That and the craziness, don't forget the craziness!!....

Dial Hard

valoren wrote:

There will be a notable increase in 'Blendle' type articles. Where you pay a one time fee of say 20c to read an article, so no ongoing subscriptions. The best journalists will be successful. The one's that are not so good won't get paid.

I rather suspect that "best" may get conflated with "most popular" in this scenario...

OldGoat

Reuters. I know their once lofty reputation has become tarnished but they are still amongst the best sources of NEWS rather that opinion.

Other press agencies are also available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_agencies

Caliden

Sure look at joe.ie and how little there was on it while boards was down. Pretty clear where they get most of their stories....

voz es

The Irish times are doing them selves no favor with their hard copy, its just too big. If they posted a metro edition with the same depth of journalism I see it as being a far more popular hard copy publication.
They have tried a number of times to get payment for their online section as i wold have to wonder how well this is working.
Still the paper provides the most worthwhile read and I would buy it more often if it wasn't for the enormity of it while trying to read it in the car.

RTE in fairness was never great but there seems to be 'new ideas' in there now seems to be turning our tax payers money into tmz.com or some other gossip site. Actually when I think of it who exactly is national broadcaster accountable to as we are funding it like.

languagenerd

Very few people want to pay for news content these days, and no-one has yet found a way to monetise online content. Newspapers used to get a decent sum in sales every day along with their advertising income, but now the paper sales income is gone and online advertising pays far less. So they either put up a pay wall, like the Irish Times (but that has limited success), or they find a wealthy backer (but that leads to problems of owner bias), or they fund themselves entirely through advertising, which leads to the click-bait nonsense.

It's quite sad, really. We're at a point where technology could allow journalism to flourish, with a bigger reach than ever, but instead it has diluted news to the lowest common denominator scandalous stuff. But we get what we pay for too. Investigative journalism takes time and money, and if we as consumers aren't willing to pay for the content, we can't really expect it to exist for free. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Uncle_moe

Really interesting video from the guy who started medium, online place for longform journalism i think http://futureof.news/episodes/steven-levy-2/
Basically he believes tech journalism will improve and clickbait could become a thing of the past.

voz es

languagenerd wrote: »

Very few people want to pay for news content these days, and no-one has yet found a way to monetise online content. Newspapers used to get a decent sum in sales every day along with their advertising income, but now the paper sales income is gone and online advertising pays far less. So they either put up a pay wall, like the Irish Times (but that has limited success), or they find a wealthy backer (but that leads to problems of owner bias), or they fund themselves entirely through advertising, which leads to the click-bait nonsense.

It's quite sad, really. We're at a point where technology could allow journalism to flourish, with a bigger reach than ever, but instead it has diluted news to the lowest common denominator scandalous stuff. But we get what we pay for too. Investigative journalism takes time and money, and if we as consumers aren't willing to pay for the content, we can't really expect it to exist for free. It's a bit of a catch-22.

I see the only way for them to survive would when the licenses are granted to media outlets and if they are going down the road of click bate or misinformation headlines to suspend or withdraw their license. This brings its own problems with censorship though. The only way I could see this being side stepped would be an appeals committee made up of a jury made of of a mix of journalists(similar with what happens in contract dispute law) and members of the public. Then you have the corruption manipulating it so how can we over come that.

I have no answers just lose ideas.

Free speech is good and well but if there is no platform for investigated journalism the truth will be with who ever shouts the loudest and manipulates things the most is what message the people who rely on the information will get.

Where is there a place for the reckless journalist to be made accountable?

Agricola

languagenerd wrote: »

Very few people want to pay for news content these days, and no-one has yet found a way to monetise online content. Newspapers used to get a decent sum in sales every day along with their advertising income, but now the paper sales income is gone and online advertising pays far less. So they either put up a pay wall, like the Irish Times (but that has limited success), or they find a wealthy backer (but that leads to problems of owner bias), or they fund themselves entirely through advertising, which leads to the click-bait nonsense.

It's quite sad, really. We're at a point where technology could allow journalism to flourish, with a bigger reach than ever, but instead it has diluted news to the lowest common denominator scandalous stuff. But we get what we pay for too. Investigative journalism takes time and money, and if we as consumers aren't willing to pay for the content, we can't really expect it to exist for free. It's a bit of a catch-22.

Good summary of events. Similarly to public health systems or state funded national broadcasters, it shows that there is always a need for certain services where the mighty dollar can't always be the only consideration, unless we want to live in a world with no healthcare provision for poorer people, wall to wall reality TV on the schedules.

Penn

You won't believe what Penn thinks of modern journalism! http://tinyurl.com/gmnqly8

chakotha

voz es wrote: »

The Irish times are doing them selves no favor with their hard copy, its just too big. If they posted a metro edition with the same depth of journalism I see it as being a far more popular hard copy publication.
They have tried a number of times to get payment for their online section as i wold have to wonder how well this is working.
Still the paper provides the most worthwhile read and I would buy it more often if it wasn't for the enormity of it while trying to read it in the car.

RTE in fairness was never great but there seems to be 'new ideas' in there now seems to be turning our tax payers money into tmz.com or some other gossip site. Actually when I think of it who exactly is national broadcaster accountable to as we are funding it like.

Agreed!

Tabloid sized Irish Times and Examiner with the same content as the broadsheet would sell well, and no dumbing down either.

The broadsheets are a PITA.

ScumLord

I stopped watching News and reading papers, it just seemed like such a pointless endeavour, I couldn't trust a word they said. I don't think they're flat out lying but the news is just one of the tools they use to construct a product for our consumption.

Breaking news is like watching a bunch of howler monkeys that thought they saw a predator. It's just a load of noise. The newspapers are trying to hard to make news sound interesting and it turns them into a farce.

I don't think you can get the truth inside the first week of a story, sometimes it takes months, even years, so I don't see any reason in following current events.

I wouldn't mind having somewhere I could get news that's in no rush to break a story and tries to find real truths.

Cool_CM

Eugene Norman wrote: »

The daily mail is the world's biggest online newspaper. The Indo engages in click bait.

Yes, and I'd love it if they both ceased to exist.

silverharp

I havnt bought a newspaper since about 2004. and I cant imagine anyone leaving school these days getting into the habit. Their readership will be mostly pensioners within a decade, a lot of the online stuff is so badly written though, the Journal.ie could be used in primary school to show kids how its done badly.

conorhal

J.pilkington wrote: »

Heard an interesting fact on newstalk regarding how the wage packet of a journal.ie journalist is mainly based on the number of clicks their article gets. Kinda makes sense to me now as most of their articles are click bait (eg poll asking do you like Enda kenny, articles with no relation to the sensationalist headline, typos, misinformation, copy and paste from the net etc etc).

It doesn't bear well for the future of journalism, can't see the likes of the Irish times being able to adopt such a business model, does this mean we will eventually lose "papers of record" which currently provide well researched and written articles and in their place get the standard of the journal.ie. Not good, while the likes of the journal.ie readers might think that their bashing of everything in society in the comments section is making Ireland a better place it is no replacement for proper investigative journalism.

I know this is a question being asked for a long time, just shocked at how the journal pay their journalists and how it motivates them to publish crap news

TLDR;


BTW, I suggest that if you'd titled you OP: '6 things you WON'T BELIEVE are wrong with modern journalism!', I might have read more then half your post....

Cool_CM

conorhal wrote: »

TLDR;


BTW, I suggest that if you'd titled you OP: '6 things you WON'T BELIEVE are wrong with modern journalism!', I might have read more then half your post....

Conorhal clicked on a thread - and you won't believe what happened next!

hullaballoo

You can't rely on the accuracy of the "information" contained in newspapers.

Journalists, even in the Irish Times, have an uncanny ability to distort facts so much so that they have no bearing in relation to the reality of the reported event. I have seen this first-hand any number of times now but it still surprises me just how wrong they get things.

I read the reports and think they must be the only person there who took that to be what was happening.

Earthhorse

It's interesting but lately I've read a few in depth articles on Buzzfeed of all places. They appear to be now using their clickbait income to fund in depth journalism which I'm okay with.

As someone else said there's a market for good journalism and you can find plenty of it in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times etc. My one worry is that Ireland is too small to support such quality as I would like to see more in depth articles on Irish issues, be it politics, business or culture.

languagenerd

voz es wrote: »

I see the only way for them to survive would when the licenses are granted to media outlets and if they are going down the road of click bate or misinformation headlines to suspend or withdraw their license. This brings its own problems with censorship though. The only way I could see this being side stepped would be an appeals committee made up of a jury made of of a mix of journalists(similar with what happens in contract dispute law) and members of the public. Then you have the corruption manipulating it so how can we over come that.

I have no answers just lose ideas.

Free speech is good and well but if there is no platform for investigated journalism the truth will be with who ever shouts the loudest and manipulates things the most is what message the people who rely on the information will get.

Where is there a place for the reckless journalist to be made accountable?

Ah, I wouldn't be up for censorship now. If there's a market for clickbait then leave them to it - the way there's always been a market for tabloids and celeb gossip magazines. But it's crap that clickbait is REPLACING in-depth or serious journalism.

Standards have definitely dropped. One of the first things you're taught on any journalism training course is that a news story has to be new. If another outlet has published it, you need a new angle or a reaction quote or a new photo to make it worth publishing. And yet I constantly see articles in national papers that a student would be given a fail for. A national paper recently had the whole front page dedicated to the story "BATACLAN SURVIVOR TELLS OF HORROR" (or similar), but every single quote in it was taken from an RTE interview the day before. Same paper has clearly fired their subeditors because it's now full of errors and more than once they've printed the exact same story twice in one issue. Or if you see a press release being issued from the Gardai (for example), you can watch as every website immediately publishes identical articles one after the other, with little attempt to reword the release, no additional info and no new quotes.

But like I said, it's kind of a vicious circle because if consumers don't want to pay for decent journalism, the papers and websites won't be able to afford to decent journalism and we won't read them because they're full of non-stories and then they have even less money to do ANY journalism...