Tim Sprinkle

In Online News, Burnout Starts Younger

News has always been a high pressure business, but I can see how 24-hour deadlines would add a little something extra to the mix. Via The New York Times:

Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages. Some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles.

Once only wire-service journalists had their output measured this way. And in a media environment crowded with virtual content farms where no detail is too small to report as long as it was reported there first, Politico stands out for its frenetic pace or, in the euphemism preferred by its editors, “high metabolism.”

What do we think? Is this sustainable? Will this just contribute to the use of "content mills" to fill the gaps? (I don't think that's an option at Politico, by the way, since it is so focused on exclusive news. But at some point the online new cycle is going to need a release valve. I guess that's what turnover is for.)