This post is gonna make me sound like an old man. The guy who says "when I started in this business..." a lot. And I'm trying to accept that.
I sat on in some web-training at work today. It was a refresher course for posting news on the television station's website. I'm all for that -- I completely understand the importance of it. You don't have to sell me on the reasons providing online content is crucial for traditional television newsrooms. In my first television job, we'd post our stories on the web -- no video, just text versions -- after the newscast had aired. This was the 1996/97 and it was pretty forward-thinking.
When I started in television (see, there I go), a newsroom's philosophy was "get it on the air first, then, maybe, post it on the (world wide) web." As a reporter, you devoted all your attention to making sure the story "made page" -- which means it was ready when its time came up in the newscast. Now, reporters need to be posting information and photos to twitter and making sure information is available to update the station's website the moment they've information to share. News waits for no one. People who look to us for news (they're not just "viewers" anymore) expect to get that news almost instantly.
Again, I get all that. I agree with all that. The way people get their news and information is changing and we've got to keep up with those changes. My fear is that news becomes less and less about good journalism and strong storytelling and more and more about search engine optimization and getting clicks by using keywords, providing lots of links and posting attention-grabbing photos. I understand the reality: clicks = ad views = money = success. But I hate to see news sites starting to lean on the "click-bait" that seems to be clogging Facebook these days. "Click here to see the rest of the story, you'll never guess what happens next..."
Call me old fashioned, but I still want to believe "Content" -- not "Click Bait" -- is still "King."
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Of course, It probably doesn't help that I still FEEL like an old man (#StupidACL). My recovery from surgery is going well, but it's still pretty painful and the more time I'm spending on my feet, the more swollen and sore my leg gets. It's kind of a vicious cycle -- the better I feel, the more I do... the more I do, the worse I feel...
Alright.. now that I got all that old guy out of my system, I need to go play a video game. Or post a Snapchat. Or... what are young people even doing these days?!?
Today's Title: This song, released the year I was born, by a guy who's about turn 69-years-old
I am selective about what I like to hear from the news. To me back in the day there were no stories during that time. Captioning was horrible, bleak - as bad as YouTube computerized subtitles are today. I rather enjoy getting the weather on my FB - I do not enjoy a newscaster or weatherman talking about the news vaguely on their posts. I would prefer they give the news out straight - they caption themselves. Often times the APP notifications is muted so I will miss a notification or two. However, my Facebook APP is always on and as someone who relied on looking at icons once upon a time, to have the words out in front of me is equivalent to people huddling around a ham radio to listen to the news. My cell phone is my ham radio and I am always huddled to it and I prefer this method because well - I feel it is more personalized news. I don't mind stories here and there just so long as the basic needs are met. I do have to admit that negative news is something I can also get from my news feeds, I don't really need it from my television network news. It would be nice to have good things reported and news kept local. When I refer to "local" I mean I do not want to find a Facebook link to an interesting story from anyplace NOT where I am. It's a pet peeve of mine that I am developing. I hate thinking I am reading a story about my state when oppose, not my state. That goes for the "Click" factor you were talking about versus the actual quality of the the story.
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