3 to read: ‘Pivot to video’ is stupid | Metrics: Measuring the wrong stuff | Why the Nat’l Enquirer loves Trump
By Matt Carroll <@MattCData>
July 11, 2017: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.
- Journalism’s “pivot to video” is cynical & stupid: Bryan Curtis at The Ringer savagely rips media companies for following the latest journalism buzz — video — at the expense of quality journalism. Instead of focusing on creating solid content, they are chasing whatever media they can wrap in some low-rent ads. His take: It’s dumb, ridiculous and has led to a strong of unnecessary layoffs. A good read.
2. Metrics: Driven by the past, newsrooms are measuring all the wrong stuff: A thought-provoking piece by Sam Ford for HenryJenkins.org about how a backwards-looking media has handicapped itself in an online world struggling to invent new metrics for measuring true engagement. Basically, media companies want readers and viewers to change their new consuming habits so that the media can measure its audience in ways that fit old revenue models. That’s lead to a mania for clicks and uniques. In a phrase: It’s stupid. Ford writes: “Nowhere in most of these calculations is a significant focus or accounting for depth of engagement…”
3. Why the National Enquirer goes nuts over Trump: A fun read on the delightfully crazy-like-a-fox owner of the Enquirer and his infatuation with our president. To anyone who has has every walked through at supermarket checkout line and wondered about those crazy tabloid headlines, this article by Jeffrey Toobin for The New Yorker explains a lot.
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Matt Carroll is a journalism professor at Northeastern University.
