Typical pattern: “Scientists find something strange when they look at a common whatever - and it’s not good!”
This kind of crap used to be the style of little blurbs at the side or the bottom of an article, but it’s in the headlines now. Until you click the headline you don’t even really know what the article is about anymore - just the general topic area, with maybe a fear trigger.
Clicking on the headline is going to display ads, but at that point the goal isn’t to get you to buy anything yet, it’s just to generate ad impressions, which the content provider gets paid for regardless of whether you even see the ads. It’s a weird meta-revenue created by the delivery mechanism, and it has altered the substance of headlines, and our expectations of what “headline” even means.
Lemmy user SLAMS mainstream media, you will not believe what the comment section said
OP is on BLAST after reading this one comment.
SHOCK reaction as bait comment fallout nixes OP campaign success chances, experts warn.
slam
Da dah dah
and welcome to the JAM!
Yeah I made c/savedyouaclick in the hope of getting people de-clickbaiting stories, but I was the only poster afaict. I wonder if calling it newssummararies could help.
Oh I’d be up to help if I could
Maybe a link or two a day
I’ll also contribute a wank or two a day.
Thank you for your service
For what, cutting down?
It could be worth posting about it in [email protected] and [email protected]
Nah that community name is fine, it just needs to be promoted. Someone else linked some communities where it can be advertised.
How do you “do” c/savedyouaclick? I’ve summarized links in a comment before, but I don’t know what would be the point of also mentioning c/savedyouaclick when I do that.
I don’t click those any more. I assume they’re completely written by AI and not fact-checked in any way. They just suck knowledge out of me instead of adding more.
Exactly. If the headline is garbage, I assume the story is, too. Real journalism that’s worth reading doesn’t need to resort to clickbait.
No other choice than sticking with the few reputable media that still don’t do that. Gotta support them so they don’t fall into that too.
Sometimes the articles themselves are fine, and it’s just the editorial department that adds the sensational headlines. I don’t know if it’s worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
If the marketing has the power to go over the journalism to change the titles, isn’t it a symptom that things are going downward for this media?
Haven’t the titles always been traditionally written by someone other that the articles author?
As long as journalism quality is respected that’s not an issue.
Whenever people ask this question, I do this one thing.
NPR and the BBC still aren’t doing that.
- I think the Associated Press is in the clear here.
- Seems Reuters so far is good too.
- And The Guardian
- Mother Jones
- ProPublica
- Ars Technica for tech news
- The Conversation (always written by subject-matter experts)
- Deutsche Welle
- Etc.
Thankfully there are still a lot of amazing news sources that have held onto their integrity. Click here to see even more. Number 17 will surprise you!
That’s a very good list. I just threw out the first couple that came to mind, but it is worth calling out the organizations that are still trying to do real journalism.
I give small sustaining donations to NPR, ProPublica, and The Guardian. I hope to add a few more when I can.
There’s something I hate more than clickbaity headlines, click here to find out!!
I hate them. I hate that everything is always trying to sell you something or trick you into generating profit somehow. It makes me want to burn down a bank.
it’s infuriating
Readers hate this one simple trick – Do this every day!
I miss objective news in general
Everything has a spin on it, even if it’s subtle
MAN THREATENS TO NOT READ NEWS ANYMORE over clickbaity headlines
It’s the news that Starship Troopers and Idiocracy both parodied. Except it’s not future fantasy, it’s real and here now.
While we’re at it, does anyone on Lemmy hate capitalism? I never see anyone mention it.
And that Trump guy is really not turning out well.
Iconoclast!
I don’t hate it, but it’s been allowed to go uncontrolled for too long and it has become cancerous to the successful advancement of society.
It’s not new, it’s just adapted to the media format.
Getting people to read the news and the ads between articles is how the game is designed.
Journalism classes has always educated this.
If you had been an adult during a decade or two before the Internet you would know that a headline used to sum up the basics of a story. For example, picking a random 1980s headline: “Six US embassy aides escape from Iran”. Nowadays that would be more like, “US admits Iran plot.”
I took some journalism classes in the 90’s (and then decided it wasn’t for me), and my SO was a journalist around the same time.
Congrats, I’ve been reading news headlines since I was a kid in the 60s.
I’m not annoyed by them (I simply don’t read them, why would I want to waste my time?), I’m saddened by them.
Edit: that’s also the reason why I read so few newspapers/periodicals. And why I pay for them. I want to support quality work.
