Great post, Katie. First, I'm surprised to hear news is not profitable, for the most part.
And then, in terms of news blurring with entertainment, I too, was not a fan at first, being at the bottom section of boomers and journalism in my blood. However, we have the GenZ and Millennials who insist on being entertained, probably starting with Comedy Central's The Daily Show. News doesn't have to be boring all the time. I think we're also on the verge of going from typical talking head with an insert over the shoulder to a much more visually dynamic presentation. At least I hope so. It doesn't have to be funny - but visually different and more interesting.
Personally, I love Substack as a way to find a journalist like yourself, who I trust and can get my news that way. Semafor and Axios are doing a great job too. I'm very curious to see how this potentially new way of consuming news for the general public will unfold.
IMHO - The platforms are designed for entertainment (e.g. optimizing for engagement) and until they fix that, they aren't appropriate for discussing serious topics as doing so on them turns them into entertainment. Arguably, that's what partisan publishers are doing, rather than actually informing people - because it does better on social media. I'd rather people went to sites designed for news vs. trying to get it on Tiktok.
Or alternatively, I applaud efforts to change the algorithms/systems for political discussions so that they aren't optimized for entertainment value (see https://neely.usc.edu/design-code for our recommendations there). But that likely would mean less news on these platforms since more engaging things will do better.
You're going right to the heart of the struggle I'm having. There are many downsides to having news and entertainment blur, but the reality seems to be that they are and have been for sometime. So do we need to stop fighting that and figure out how to work within it?
This is also where my trip down history has been a good reminder that the optimization for entertainment did not start with online platforms. It's been rooted in our information ecosystem for some time.
It's not black and white though and you can incentivize it more or less. We can make it worse (by optimizing all news for clicks) or make it better (by adding quality incentives) depending on the design choices you make.
Great post, Katie. First, I'm surprised to hear news is not profitable, for the most part.
And then, in terms of news blurring with entertainment, I too, was not a fan at first, being at the bottom section of boomers and journalism in my blood. However, we have the GenZ and Millennials who insist on being entertained, probably starting with Comedy Central's The Daily Show. News doesn't have to be boring all the time. I think we're also on the verge of going from typical talking head with an insert over the shoulder to a much more visually dynamic presentation. At least I hope so. It doesn't have to be funny - but visually different and more interesting.
Personally, I love Substack as a way to find a journalist like yourself, who I trust and can get my news that way. Semafor and Axios are doing a great job too. I'm very curious to see how this potentially new way of consuming news for the general public will unfold.
It's not that they weren't ever profitable. Baughman talks about how they were in the 60s. This is a great story looking at local news over the years where they also mention how newspapers were so profitable in the late 60s/early 70s https://www.propublica.org/article/local-newspaper-legacy-springfield-massachusetts
IMHO - The platforms are designed for entertainment (e.g. optimizing for engagement) and until they fix that, they aren't appropriate for discussing serious topics as doing so on them turns them into entertainment. Arguably, that's what partisan publishers are doing, rather than actually informing people - because it does better on social media. I'd rather people went to sites designed for news vs. trying to get it on Tiktok.
Or alternatively, I applaud efforts to change the algorithms/systems for political discussions so that they aren't optimized for entertainment value (see https://neely.usc.edu/design-code for our recommendations there). But that likely would mean less news on these platforms since more engaging things will do better.
You're going right to the heart of the struggle I'm having. There are many downsides to having news and entertainment blur, but the reality seems to be that they are and have been for sometime. So do we need to stop fighting that and figure out how to work within it?
This is also where my trip down history has been a good reminder that the optimization for entertainment did not start with online platforms. It's been rooted in our information ecosystem for some time.
It's not black and white though and you can incentivize it more or less. We can make it worse (by optimizing all news for clicks) or make it better (by adding quality incentives) depending on the design choices you make.