Did you know that even the most popular YouTubers only make one penny per page view? One penny! At Business Insider, an employee making $60k a year needs to produce 1.8 million page views a month, every month, or else they are fired. At Gawker, there was a board in its offices that showed the stats for all the writers and their stories. If a writer saw himself at the bottom of the list, he knew he was in danger of getting fired. This practice is happening in many online publishing offices. Apparently, earlier experiments with highly paid, seasoned journalists didn’t work because those writers failed to produce clicks. From a New York Times job posting earlier this month: “We are looking for reporters who can tell image-driven stories focusing on subcultures using tools like Instagram, Snapchat, photography, video and more.”
Digital sweatshops are what the publishing and news industries look like now. It’s not about what’s good, it’s about what spreads. How many unethical decisions are driving the goals of media companies and online journalists? The press is in a pretty shitty position.
Since the headline is the first thing you see when scrolling through your social media feeds, it needs to be as catchy as possible to pique interest. What are some of the most popular headlines? Questions. You’ve probably seen tons of these online:
“Does Being A Bedwetter Make You Destined To Be A Serial Killer?”
“Does Dry Shampoo Cause Hair Loss?”
The reason headlines are written this way is to deceive you. If the headline was written as a statement rather than a question, that would make it a lie. Usually, the answer is no if you actually take the time to read the article.
The top headlines and articles are the most divisive ones. In fact, one could argue that the headline is more important than the actual content of any article. This is because majority of people will share, react and comment on an article based on the headline itself. Few will actually go in and take the time to read. According to a 2010 study done by Jonah Berger, a virality expert at The Wharton School, “the most powerful predictor of online virality is how much anger an article evokes.” Sadness is an extreme emotion but it ranks pretty low when it comes to engagement. Making people sad doesn’t entice people to comment and share. And if it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.
Is all of this media manipulation bad? Not necessarily. It’s not a perfect system but it’s the one we have to exist in. When it comes to my own posts, I’d like to think that I’m spreading a good message and getting people to think critically about pop culture, society and race. Not stirring controversy for controversy’s sake.
*I will be speaking on the Defending Press Freedom panel at the National Summit for Human Rights & Democracy in the Philippines on Saturday, April 6th at 9:45 AM. The summit takes place at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. I’ll be talking about political and press repression and its effects.
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I usually do a write up of the events I’ve organized or hosted and my most-read articles at the end of the year. This was an unusual year (obviously, there is no need to go into it here) so I didn’t bother. Instead I want to highlight a project of mine that I am particularly proud of — it’s my new podcast show, Unverified Accounts, that I cohost with my frequent collaborators, Chris Jesu Lee and Filip Guo. If you're a big movie/TV/book buff, have leftist sympathies, but can't stand 'wokeness' dumbing down our culture, then we're the podcast for you. So far in our 25 episodes, we’ve covered a range of contentious topics.