How Journalism Got the Taste of Their Own 'Learn To Code' Meme #learntocode
Got fired is suck, but it will be more suck if many people are dancing on top of your grave that you called 'professional journalist'. This happened last week. When Buzzfeed and Huffington Post announced they fired about 15 percent of their staffers with total about 200 jobs lost and still continues, many people especially from the right wingers and Donald Trump supporters are very happy. Even Donald Trump chimed in with not so-subtle jab at these companies.
There is great Medium article by Jeff Giesea about why the #learntocode meme spreads like a wildfire in case of journalists layoff.
But I have another argument why #learntocode is spread and why the state of journalism is in dangerous path to extinction.
Clickbait Journalism DOESN'T Work
Anecdotally, Buzzfeed is the symbol of clickbait and listicles journalism. You must have seen ridiculous articles such "10 (insert here) that will make you (insert here)". At first, these articles are really fun to read but after thousand and thousand articles like this pop not just in buzzfeed but other media with more and more outrageous content, people will easily get bored and stop to read which in turn decrease page view of these websites.
Clickbait journalism also hurts the media itself, in pursuit of page view and those google ads, many mainstream journalists especially in digital media sacrifice the truth and content itself. One week before layoff, Buzzfeed published explosive article about Trump and Russian collusion that under 24 hours got debunked by Mueller investigation itself. And many falsehoods, retracted stories, and clickbait articles that doesn't provide full context hurt media credibilities.
The credibilities of journalism in America is in the new low. According to Colombia Journalism Review citing Gallup and Knight Foundation report almost 69% of US Adult have less trust in journalism each year. Especially among conservatives almost 9 out of 10 said they don't believe in mainstream media which they think is very left leaning.
But on the brightside many people will said the credibility of journalism can be restored as long as the medias don't bias and report the problem as it is and don't mask opinions as a news.
Journalism Become Commodities
This is maybe the second factor that many ignored. I watch some great analysis from Mike Cernovich, a controversial figure in America on his periscope and he said something like this: Journalism in digital era is become commodities. Which means journalism is not special anymore, anybody with a phone camera can do some sort of journalism. In the past people sort of amazed when they see the journalist on wartorn countries, but now even Syrian rebels can upload their side of war from the handphone straight to youtube.
And the funniest thing is many of these 'established journalists' are depending their sources from 'citizen journalist' who happen to be on the scene with their phone camera, and remember the media companies pay these 'established journalist' just to sit their asses in nice office ranting and writing in computer with a lot of money. This is not good business model in the era people can just go anywhere and do the reporting which bypass the mainstream media.
This is proven by Buzzfeed again when the company fired the 'Director of Quiz'. Although, quiz section provides large traffic to the site, but many quizzes in the section are created by Buzzfeed community readers FOR FREE, so from the business perspective why Buzzfeed needs to pay 5 to 6 figures salary to 'director of quiz' when Buzzfeed can ask for free? The answer is terminate that useless position.
Maybe now is the right time to tell these journalists who 3 years ago said coal miners should learn to code now is their turn to #learntocode