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An idea whose time has come: #localnews publications should eliminate opinion columns and editorials from their content mix (A manifesto by tweet 1/)
One of the starkest takeaways from a wave of new research that’s come out the past couple years is that trust in “the media,” broadly, is NOT HIGH. 2/ https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/235796/americans-misinformation-bias-inaccuracy-news.aspx
The numbers for trust in local news outlets are higher than for national outlets — but even those numbers are nothing to crow about 3/ https://knightfoundation.org/reports/state-of-public-trust-in-local-news/
Compared to other local institutions, local news outlets hang at the bottom of the pack in terms of trustworthiness 4/
There’s a strong argument to be made that the kinds of content practices that became common in the era of free online news were a major contributing factor to the decline of trust in the local press 5/
Clickbait headlines that didn’t pay off or that totally distorted the main facts — whatever it took to get you to click so that the publisher could serve you an ad. Readers caught on and could detect the cynicism, and lost trust in the process 6/
Those practices obviously extended to the opinion section as well, where a publication might choose to publicize the most provocative, controversial take on an issue to generate traffic and clicks 7/
So, that's where we are today 8/
But that model — juicing people for clicks, clicks, clicks — just isn't working, particularly at the local level. So what's going to replace it? 9/
There’s a growing consensus that the future of local news business models is going to be one built largely on reader support — either through subscriptions or memberships or donation campaigns. (I'm a big proponent of this idea!) 10/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/11/paywalls-can-be-a-big-lift-for-smaller-publishers-here-how-the-shawnee-mission-post-is-thriving-two-years-into-it/
That business model is one that has completely different incentives for publishers than the ad-only, free content, clickclickclick model that’s been dominant the past decade or so. It's one where you have to RESPECT YOUR READERS AND NOT GO OUT OF YOUR WAY TO PISS THEM OFF 11/
If you’re going to ask your readers to support you financially, you’ve got to show them respect. That means taking on the most odious parts of “the professional culture of the press” 12/ https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1195795036417462273
That means establishing channels that allow your readers to help guide your coverage mix 13/
And that means doing everything you can to become your community’s common source of knowledge — so that THEY can formulate opinions and debate where to steer things 14/
I think one of the utilitarian functions of opinion content during the print newspaper era was to give readers a sense that someone out there was feeling the same way they were about an issue 15/
That, in the absence of an easy, direct channel to publicly air your own opinions about an issue, at least you could hope to find someone’s similar opinions showcased in a column or editorial 16/
That function no longer has any utility. People now have LOTS of easy, direct channels to publicly air their own opinions 17/
In journalism school, students are drilled with the idea that there’s this impenetrable wall between the newsroom and the editorial page, and that the bias you detect in the latter is completely separate from the content that goes out on the front page. 18/
As a practical matter, most publications do a very good job at separating news and opinion. But, as @Adriana_Lacy noted recently, that separation is anything but obvious to readers 19/ https://twitter.com/Adriana_Lacy/status/1166358792843472897
The news stories and opinion columns are all part of the same product to them, and they bleed together 20/
Is there a place for local opinion content? OF COURSE! But if we as publishers are going to start asking our readers to make our businesses viable with their $ we need to focus on our key task, which is INFORMING, not PURSUADING 20/
END MANIFESTO
