Imitating or Quoting is Just Easier
Original information is as rare as non-sequel, non-comic based movies and it’s only getting worse
I always hated that “piggy backing off what he” said person.
A question is asked and someone takes the time to come up with a succinct answer covering all aspects of the question and evolves the dialogue only for the person after them to come along and rehash everything that was said (if you’ve ever seen The Price is Right, that’s the person who adds one dollar to every bid).
Come up with your own thought.
Sadly, that’s what media is now. Yet most sites claim to be annoyed about the rehashing of information…only to turn around and do it themselves. We won’t keep you long, but as Dr. Khallid used to always say, but we’re gonna be strong.
That Spider-Man meme has got to be one of my all-time favorites. Whether it’s the FBI investigating white supremacists, or congress questioning lobbyists, this meme taken from the 1967 Spider-Man episode “Double Identity” never gets old and is always applicable.
Most mainstream media outlets will have an article or series of articles that center around the cheapening of journalism (The latest enemy of journalism being the “pivot” to video). But then, whether it’s because managing editors see the beneift of the so-called cheap journalism, or they need to compete, every media outlet resorts to the same thing. I see it all the time.
This is how it usually works. I click on a reputable site. The title has some great click bait like, sdq says American media is useless (a little bit more sensational than that, of course). Intrigued, I go in to see what exactly sdq is saying this time.
The “article” is two paragraphs pulled from some other source. Sometimes it’s worst. Sometimes it’s an article…based on a tweet (sdq didn’t say media was useless, he only said that he was annoyed by piggy-back media). Press conferences morph into 1,000 word articles…even if the press conference is about sports.
(Futbol players have to cover their mouths when they talk like Pesci and Deniro in Casino, lip readers could turn their words into articles.)
Whatever the occurrence, an article can be drained out of it…and then reworded and reworked on another site with the end result being two pages of Google search essentially filled with the same article, and, if you’re not adept at sniffing this stuff out, you’ll be four pages in before you find the original.
You know who I jokingly blame? Malcolm Gladwell. Yes, I blame Mr. Tipping Point. Gladwell’s rise to stardom came as a result of his ability to take long, jargon-filled, peer reviewed articles, and transform them into entertaining, easy read, think-pieces.
In a world where everyone is a boss, workers aren’t merely employees. No. They are simply working on their “10,000 hours,” the supposed rule made famous in Gladwell’s Outliers, that, despite the fact that I doubt many of them read the actual book…or the many articles refuting the rule.
But what Gladwell does is a certain type of genius without question. So what if he gets one wrong. If not for his work, many of the revolutionary ideas that are published in hard to view journals would never be seen (access to them shits is expensive) with their impact only felt among scholars. And no disrespect to Anders Erricson, but that’s why ‘they’ pay Gladwell that good money.
When Gladwell started working at the New Yorker back in 97, journalism was still a who, what, when, where, and how business, back when you were judged on how strong your lead was (and boy, that’s some hard writing, whew).
Then came blogs.
Blogs, or web logging (how it was referred to back in the early aughts) was the place where people previously without an outlet could post their thoughts and opinions on the events of the day.
Originally, blogs were viewed as the rantings of mad men and women, conspiracy theories, and crackpot investigations. Someone calling you a blogger is just as much of an insult now as it was then.
What most people fail to realize is mainstream media started producing their own blogs long ago, often times blending their blogs into their ‘regular’ coverage. Here’s an example from The Guardian:
If I had to make a comparison of the modern blog, I would have to say that a blog in that regard closely resembles a 1920s invention — the op-ed piece. This is the op-ed description by its creator:
It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America. Herbert Swope
The New York Times introduced their op-ed page in 1970; it proved to be a highly popular, and most importantly, profitable addition to the “paper of record.” Soon, all the leading pages added their own version.
If you’re on the 4,5, or 6 train going downtown (those lines slice down the Upper Eastside), the average NYT reader will open to the op-Ed page, first.
But the style of writing that was once confined to one page in the back of the first section of the Times has now become the status quo. Opinions abound. Sure I benefit from the change, writing conversationally is my thang, and sure hard reporting still exists, it’s the abundance of lazy “reporting” that bothers me.
The point of having a publication in the past was to present original material. In my college journalism classes we were taught that a newspaper was measured by the split between original and syndicate reporting — the greater the original, the better the quality.
Now, whole sites are copies.
And don’t get me wrong, it’s not lost on me how we got here. I know advertising dollars for print has all but dried up. I know that sites are involved in the content arms race, with the concept being the same as Chris Brown releasing a project with 45 songs. You pick and choose what you want and it doesn’t matter if you discard the rest, someone else will latch onto it. More is better.
The direct translation — quantity is now more important than quality and anything can be content. In fact, the term for this form of journalism is content aggregation. It’s been huge for at least two years and in my estimation only takes away value from the original creation. Albums are not albums, they’re projects. Newspapers are not newspapers, just sections (which I hate). A season of a show, when binged watched, is just an extended movie (although I quite enjoy that).
Everything exists to be conversation…for a day. Case in point — a story was published in the New Yorker recently, a beautiful commentary was written about people’s response, and I’m sure, now, the commentary piece is going to have more answers than “Roxanne, Roxanne,” by people who, no doubt, may have never read the original story.
Content.
I leave you with Thom Yorke’s words, he saw this coming awhile and has the perfect definition of that content is.
They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this ‘content’ which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it? Thom Yorke
