This Post Is Not About GamerGate

from the it's-about-ethics-in-journalism dept

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: as you'll quickly see, there is no way to write this post without someone accusing us of being hypocritical -- so we're going to just get it out of the way upfront and note that that's absolutely true, as the article we'll be linking to also admits that such hypocrisy is occasionally necessary in reporting. We hope that the reasons for why we're doing this post are clear in the text below, so going hogwild in the comments claiming hypocrisy won't be particularly productive. We know. We get it.



This post really is not about GamerGate. It is really about ethics in journalism (I know, I know). We have no real interest in writing about the whole GamerGate thing at all, because almost none of it is interesting and almost all of it is incredibly, mind-bendingly stupid, no matter what position you're arguing. So, I'm really hoping -- while recognizing this hope will likely not be realized -- that the comments on this post won't actually be about GamerGate or any sort of debate about the merits of one side or the other, but rather about what this article is really about, which is the journalism coverage.

The dirty secret here is that, unlike a story about Ebola or Monica Lewinsky or basically anything else anyone writes about, writers and editors can be assured that their GamerGate coverage gets a disproportionate amount of traffic. As far as online journalism gambling goes, it's one of the safer bets you can make.



That's because GamerGate story readership isn't the general public: It's the people who are in the movement itself. For proof of this, look at the fact that the vast majority of GamerGate coverage have hundreds and even thousands of comments—almost all of them from people in the movement.

Apple announcing an iPhone is news, sure. But Apple announcing an iPhone and breathlessly writing 50 blog posts and a ~live blog~ and an instant analysis and hot takes is when reporting stops being reporting and starts becoming the journalistic equivalent of putting chips on every single number in roulette hoping Reddit or Facebook or someone else picks your story to win that day’s internet traffic lottery.

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With that out of the way, as noted, we haven't been covering "GamerGate" at all, in part because the whole thing is just kind of ridiculous. There are a lot of wild accusations being thrown around on all sides, and a lot ofactions and statements by a lot of people, leading to lots of other wild accusations. Some of the accusations are true, some are not true, many are wildly misleading. But the other reason we haven't been covering it is because it's covered to death everywhere else -- to an almost insane level. Andwhat we're talking about today, based on a great article by Jason Koebler over at Vice's Motherboard, noting that so much of the coverage exists because writing something about GamerGate appears to drive a ton of traffic . And in the stupid click-driven world that many publications live off of these days, you do what brings in the traffic (disclaimer: see point 1 at the very top of this post):But it's not just about GamerGate. It's about the way that online news has developed into this traffic-whoring stage, with lots of publications all rushing to cover "the thing that will bring traffic."And, you know, it's not just tech journalism either:They're all attempts to "win the social media lottery" to have a story go "viral" and suddenly have a lot more traffic.Frankly, this is stupid. And it's something (again, disclaimer above) wetry to avoid. There are a few of our regular critics who accuse us of being traffic whores ourselves (and I imagine a few of them may be rushing to comment as such on this article). They claim that we write what we write to get traffic. But here's a dirty little secret for you: if you want a lot of traffic, writing about intellectual property law, free speech, international trade agreements and regulatory capture. We've never covered a big Apple event. While we'll occasionally attend an event, we tend to write about it a day or two later, after we've had a chance to let things sink in. And we(though we don't always succeed) to provide a different take on things. We add our opinion (or, as the critics explain, we "spin" or report things in a "biased" way). We try to only write about stories that we(and, even then we only get to about a third of the stories we actually think are interesting).As a result of that, Ithat the people who read this site tend to beand actually more interested in what we have to say (and often more willing to join in the discussion and join the larger community). But, that's not howmedia publications work today. It's all about the "metrics" -- the number of visitors, and with the social media firehose so big, the focus has been moving aggressively towards that viral lottery. That's not to say we don't keep tabs on our own traffic -- because of course we do. But we know that getting a big story on Reddit means a flood of people who visit for 30 seconds and move on. Our loyal readers are the ones who stick around, and hopefully it's because we're not providing one of fifty different stories about the same damn thing with the same "journalistic" take (i.e., without any color, without any opinion and without any heart). Our position may not be great for advertisers. I've had discussions with potential advertisers, explaining how we have a reallycommunity, and most of them don't seem to care. They just want bigger numbers, even if those bigger numbers are meaningless, because the audience doesn't give a shit. I would think that having a loyal, interested and committed community would be a lot more interesting to advertisers, but so many play the same stupid numbers game, and that leads so many publications to do the same.There are a few publications that have clearly recognized that the hamster wheel chase of rewriting the identical story over and over again while adding nothing new is not worth it. It's been great to see and I've been encouraged by some publications that have really focused on building a loyal audience through doing something different and providing more value. But, for many, it's all about a single metric: traffic. Then it starts to feel a lot less like journalism or something socially valuable. It just feels like... well... a game.For years, we've talked about how few seem to recognize that real journalism is about the community , not about "the news." I'm hopeful that more people begin to recognize this. And for all the hypocrisy in this post (disclaimer 1), consider part of this hypocritical post to be an attempt to share why we do what we do -- and why wedo certain other things that we'd consider to be just cynical clickwhoring.If we want to have a discussion about "ethics in journalism" perhaps it should start with a discussion about all of this.

Filed Under: advertising, clickbait, community, ethics, gamergate, hypocrisy, journalism, traffic