The New Left Review publishes Emilie Bickerton’s review of Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. This in particular caught my eye.
AOL’s guidelines for the new-model Huffington Post suggest the orientation of the future: editors are to keep their eyes glued to social media and data streams to determine trending topics, pairing these with search-engine optimized titles—often barely literate, but no matter if they top results lists—and drawing on thousands of bloggers as well as staff writers to push out a non-stop stream of condensed, repurposed articles. Those determining the content of the magazine are already locked in a ‘most popular’ feedback loop. Meanwhile, the rapid-fire output of news agencies that run to a ‘hamster wheel’ tempo—wire-copy writers may be expected to churn out ten stories a day—is becoming the only source from on-the-ground reporters around the world. Agency journalists may be good reporters, but their remit is to stay faithful to the neutrality commitment of their employer and only say what someone else, usually in an official position, has said already.
It’s vivid – editors as computer sweatshop employees. The journalists as desperately writing hacks, tinkering with new ways to make cats cute and Ted Cruz appealing. I can see members of both professions coming home at the end of their workday, eyes glazed over.
It’s appalling – the free press may encompass such a vision of how to run a free press, but I’m wondering just how it serves my interests, because I see the press, or what are now called news organizations, at its best when it’s bringing to my attention important, unnoticed topics; new information about those topics; and some analysis of those topics.
The description here is of the monetization of the news cycle. Of course, it’s old news (and I’ll just apologize right here for any more inadvertent puns) that the journalism profession is in deep trouble as the Web has taken away the function of the traditional news organizations and made geography irrelevant, thus making redundant many journalistic jobs, but it’s certainly worth re-stating a point that comes up more and more often in my mind:
Capitalism is not a religion, and not a goal; the same applies to money. The application of oneself to doing a job well is what makes for a good life; the corruption of a good societal system for the sake of money will come out ill in the end.
This applies to journalists, teachers, and just about any other profession. This is something I’ve covered before when Science magazine permitted itself to be corrupted by publishing an approving article about tired, disproven treatments for the old moolah. Sullivan, cited in my prior article, was I think worried that readers would come to distrust the articles published by a magazine indulging in such corrupt practices, and that would gradually end the magazine. The firewall between advertising and editorial exists for the good of the news organization.
Those who believe in karma will believe that doing a job well is not only its own reward, but will result in rewards for you. I’m not always so certain, but I think we can certainly hope so.
(h/t berfrois)
