I commented on a sports blog this week that I was disappointed in their lack of coverage in a particular area and I was shouted down in the comments by a bunch of people saying that area I was talking about wouldn't get enough clicks. And while I understand that clicks has to inform coverage in some way... it must not and cannot DRIVE coverage. What drives coverage must be an underlying set of values, a worldview, a perspective, a non-neutral set of assumptions about what is important and worth discussing, regardless of whether anyone reads it. We're losing that perspective in general all across the media. Perhaps we've already lost it entirely and I'm just screaming into the void.
Thanks, as always, for your trenchant perspective, Will.
You are so right about the numbers that matter - it is the same for me in radio. Everybody else is obsessed with twice a year ratings - why are we down half a point, what happened? In my (too) many years in this business, i have learned to look at each set of ratings once, smile or frown, then toss them into a file cabinet and start to plan what comes next. You have to be a shark - swim forward or you die.
I commented on a sports blog this week that I was disappointed in their lack of coverage in a particular area and I was shouted down in the comments by a bunch of people saying that area I was talking about wouldn't get enough clicks. And while I understand that clicks has to inform coverage in some way... it must not and cannot DRIVE coverage. What drives coverage must be an underlying set of values, a worldview, a perspective, a non-neutral set of assumptions about what is important and worth discussing, regardless of whether anyone reads it. We're losing that perspective in general all across the media. Perhaps we've already lost it entirely and I'm just screaming into the void.
Thanks, as always, for your trenchant perspective, Will.
Will Leitch is the best thing I see online! I only wish I could get more content from him up here in the "wilds" of Nova Scotia!
You are so right about the numbers that matter - it is the same for me in radio. Everybody else is obsessed with twice a year ratings - why are we down half a point, what happened? In my (too) many years in this business, i have learned to look at each set of ratings once, smile or frown, then toss them into a file cabinet and start to plan what comes next. You have to be a shark - swim forward or you die.