Are you the kind of person that prefers newspapers to news on television and the internet? Then you might well believe the following words*:
“The whole problem with news on television comes down to this. All the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.”
Damning words, which I reluctantly acknowledge to be true (I’m a former TV news professional after all).
But now with COVID-19 changing our habits, many of us are either not getting our newspapers or are not touching them. In the absence of this daily fix, we’re increasingly going online to the websites of our favourite newspapers.
But are newspapers online exactly the same as their own product in print?
No.
Here are at least two reasons why:
Poorer standards for publishing due to a flawed business model.
‘Chumbox’ stories which contain extremely clickable content (not journalism).
Let’s unpack these two issues.
1. Poorer standards
When several newspapers began creating online teams, they staffed them exclusively with ‘desk’ people, i.e., people who are not reporters. They have a variety of designations such as ‘sub-editor’, ‘copy editor’, ‘story producer’, ‘desk editor’ and so on.
No journalistic organisation can produce excellence without good desk people who make sure standards are met, facts are checked, writing is cleaned, and the right stories are told.
But newspapers figured (rightly so) that because they have reporters anyway, all they needed to do was hire editors to run their websites. So far so good. They figured that these websites, just like their print counterparts, should also generate revenue. Nothing wrong so far.
However.
The business model on the internet for news has favoured the production of low quality work. Here’s how it works:
The more the number of people reading a website, the more advertising revenue there is. —> The easiest way to attract more people is via sensationalist stories or the production of 100 stories a day (as opposed to 10 a day) —> In order to produce a 100 stories a day, each staff member has to produce five times or ten times their daily output.
Therefore: news is published at greater volume but with lower quality, i.e., without adequate attention to accuracy and the verification of facts.
In a printed newspaper however, the old economics still work, the old culture of news gathering and production still prevails, and so on. So the journalism you see in a newspaper is usually a notch above its online sibling.
Bottomline: When online, the reader doesn’t know whether they are reading newspaper journalism or content created by the online desk. This can be confusing. Over a period of time, the reader can lose trust in the organization.
Things are changing, however. More and more Indian newspapers who publish in English are abandoning this model. Or at the very least, they’re putting in place plans to reduce their dependence on this kind of content.
2. Chumbox stories
When you finish reading a news report online, you might come across extremely clickable content. Here is a sampling of the type of headlines you’ll see.
Woman Has No Idea Why Selfie Went Viral, Then She Sees She Wasn’t Alone
21 Celebs Who Are Gay - No. 13 Will Shock Men
40 Movies That Are Considered To Be Almost Flawless
These stories are designed to appeal to every conceivable emotion. Their goal is to get you to click on them. And when you do click on one of these stories, you are taken to a different website.
Almost without exception, these stories require you to click on a photo slideshow dozens of times. Each time you click ‘next’, the website registers a new ‘pageview’ which results in revenue for that website.
Newspaper websites get a percentage of this revenue. Which is why they continue to run these stories. (The company that provides these kinds of sponsored stories is Taboola. It is huge, and last year it bought out its rival Outbrain.)
So for at least two reasons, newspapers online are not exactly the same as their avatars in print.
Does this matter?
The answer is: So long as you know what you’re getting online, it shouldn’t matter. It also depends on which newspaper you’re talking about. The Times Of India online is a different experience from The Hindu online, which is in turn different from Deccan Herald or The Indian Express online.
Next week, I’ll do a case study of The Hindu along with a video. If there is demand for it, I’ll follow it up with case studies of other top Indian newspapers online.
Meanwhile as I stressed, things are changing rapidly. When I spoke with Ananth Nath, the Executive Publisher of Delhi Press and Editor of The Caravan, he said:
“For all of us, digital is becoming the primary play. What you serve digitally has a greater chance of going viral, so the stakes are higher now on digital. The online world is very brutal in terms of people calling you out. So it’s more important to get it right.”
This is an ongoing process, but for now, there are two things a reader could do: One, look for the e-paper which would be a replica of the printed product. Two, pay for an online subscription. If enough people do this, it will help newspapers veer away from a business model which rewards poor journalism.
Notes:
* The words quoted at the start of the article are from Neil Postman and Steve Powers’ book “How To Watch TV News”. See my post on it.
There are several websites whose only product is online, such as The News Minute, Scroll, The Quint, The Wire and so on. This newsletter issue obviously is not about them.
Image credit: Md Madhi at Unsplash
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Clickbait stories are a major problem. I only check editorial/opinion sections on news sites now.