Writing With Your Adrenal Glands

Jeremy Peters, In Online Journalism, Burnout Starts Younger

Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

Tracking how many people view articles, and then rewarding — or shaming — writers based on those results has become increasingly common in old and new media newsrooms. The Christian Science Monitor now sends a daily e-mail message to its staff that lists the number of page views for each article on the paper’s Web site that day.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times all display a “most viewed” list on their home pages. Some media outlets, including Bloomberg News and Gawker Media, now pay writers based in part on how many readers click on their articles.

Once only wire-service journalists had their output measured this way. And in a media environment crowded with virtual content farms where no detail is too small to report as long as it was reported there first, Politico stands out for its frenetic pace or, in the euphemism preferred by its editors, “high metabolism.”

>The top editors, who rise as early as 4:30 a.m., expect such volume and speed from their reporters because they believe Politico’s very existence depends, in large part, on how quickly it can tell readers something, anything they did not know.

I wonder if some psychologist is studying how journalism is being reshaped by faster perceived clockspeed?

Yes, more ‘news’ gets broken, but does it have less impact in a world filled with howling voices, reporting on every sidelong glance of politicians, or every nuance of a senior executive’s university convocation address, or every implication of a house committee’s hearings on Indian affairs?

I am not suggesting the world should slow down, or even that it is going faster. But the background music is played at a faster tempo, our hearts beat faster, and the perception of time may be all that matters.

When the news cycle trends to instantaneous in a world geared to something chunkier, there will be repercussions. One is that most writing will become like the wall paper in hotel chains: who notices?

My bet is that we will accommodate these changes by tuning out the background din, like becoming used to the background noise of a city. We will filter more, and read no more than we ever did, even if cadres of laptop-bound 20-somethings are typing their hearts out at 4:30am.

They will burn out, and will will tune out. Curation will become more important that writing, because there is an ocean of writing begging to be read.