How Anna Nicole Smith's death hit Page 1

LAT: How Smith's death hit Page 1
TIM RUTTEN
February 10, 2007

....What was different here was the way in which she made the leap from tabloid covers to the front pages of ostensibly serious newspapers.

The mainstream journalistic coverage of Smith's death is among the first such stories driven, in large part, by an editorial perception of public interest derived mainly from Internet traffic. Throughout the afternoon Thursday, editors across the country watched the number of "hits" recorded for online items about Smith's death. These days, it's the rare newspaper whose meeting to discuss the content of the next day's edition doesn't include a recitation of the most popular stories on the paper's website. It's a safe bet that those numbers helped shove Anna Nicole Smith onto a lot of front pages.

What makes this of more than passing interest is that serious American journalism is in the process of transforming itself into a new, hybrid news medium that combines traditional print and broadcast with a more purposefully articulated online presence. One of the latter's most seductive attributes is its ability to gauge readers' appetites for a particular story on a minute-to-minute basis. What you get is something like the familiar television ratings — though constantly updated, if you choose to treat them that way.

There's no point belaboring what the ratings preoccupation has done to broadcast news, particularly the once-promising 24-hour cable news channels....The point is that the transformation of cable television news into a snarling verbal food fight with a scant informational component happened because the people running it decided to let the numbers run them....

***

Standing on the cusp of this inevitable transformation, it's a good moment for American newspapers to take a reflective breath to consider just how they want to play this numbers game — or, more important, whether they want to play it at all....

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/cl-et-rutten10feb10,0,4288851.story?coll=la-home-headlines

How does it escape those tasked with informing the masses that "news" means it happens and you put it out there, after vetting,verification, etc.?

This new habit of not reporting things to not appear "political" or "influence elections" is horrifying. Now, the online community will ad hoc dictate the "hot" stories, as well. This can't be good.

If real time, real news was reported, the blogosphere would follow that news. However, "news" is manipulated to acheive a certain response or rating.

MKJ

Has anyone heard of such a thing? Maybe we can win this numbers game if that's what news is to be now- A game.

It's a "feedback loop" - in the GoogleAge, the coverage is being driven by hits - the more hits, the the more coverage - and the more hits, the more money for the Corporate Media. We have met the enemy, and he is us. Not all of us, just most of us.

As a consequence of this new Electronic Age, we have the 24 hour news cycle, and an explosion of news outlets. The resulting competition for readership, for eyeballs, has resurected William Randolph Hearst from his grave. The "news" becomes... whatever sells - integrity takes a back seat to financial solvency.

I hate to say it, but in this environment, the "dumbing down" of America is only gonna accelerate... It's gonna be left to those of us without a financial stake, to follow and report the issues that really matter. It's been happening right in front of us all along, but we just didn't understand what we were witnessing. It's a economically driven evolution: the CM are becoming the supermarket tabloids, because tabloid journalism is what sells.

The ANS story is the unveiling, the debutante's ball, of what the future holds.

Oh jeez. It's obvious. It's been obvious.

The CorpMedia, seeking higher profits, is increasingly covering "topics of interest" for the great unwashed. Yesterday's "CorpMedia" is simply the transitional form between TradionalMedia and the new TabloidMedia.

And yep, AnnaNicoleSmith is the emergent moment for the new TabloidMedia.

Like the butterfly shedding the chrysalis - the metamorphosis is complete. TabloidMedia takes wing, leaving TraditionalMedia but an artifact, an empty hull, of its earlier self.

We have met the enemy, and he is us. Prepare for more coverage of ANS, and less coverage of traitors in the Whitehouse. Hey, it's simple... nobody really cares about traitors - too difficult to understand for most folks, so why bother to cover them at all? There's just no money in it.

....especially when they show ET and Insider or Extra at the same time as the local and/or national news...these shows are a *happy place* to morons who can't be troubled and bothered by what's happing in the world that directly affects their lives...instead it's watch the trainwrecks of celebrities lives and gloat about how screwed up their lives are even with all that money...or la la la land and how incredibly wonderful it must be to be famous and rich...mind control workin' like a f'n charm. :nopity:

That said...I'll say this again...RIP Anna Nicole...the media won't ever let you...but hopefully you will regardless now.

but I think it had started well before that.

But has anyone seen it on page 1 of a print newspaper?

I'll have to go and look at mine. I think I pay more attention to news on the internet now, too, and that is probably common. I don't watch TV news, so I'm probably not getting any Anna Nicole interest except from DU, in fact.

Interesting how we might all have different perspectives just based on what we choose to be exposed to.

For a fact, ANS has been "above the (virtual) fold" in the online WaPo. I can't testify to NYT or others.

It's about the money, of course, but the "tabloid effect" is being facilitated by the explosion of media outlets in this electronic age, and in particular, the increased competition among these outlets for viewership. In this intense competition, the outlets seek ways to establish that they're persuing the "right" stories, the stories that bring readers.

The technology also provides these competing outlets with the ability to track what their readership is viewing, i.e. "what's selling". In a very real sense, every time we click on an ANS article, we help to ensure there will be further ANS articles. From the publisher's perspective - that's what the numbers dictate.

It's kinda scarey, really. In this electronic age, the "feedback loop" - the publishers recognition of readership interest, is virtually real-time: it's the "hits" on a particular online article, or "overnights" for a cable news program. That's a great environment for gossip, but not for following complex news stories.

Alot of people I talked to...perhaps paranoid or
just devoid of trust about anything...
They are wondering if this is a deversion and
really plan on paying attention to backstories in the
next few weeks...
See whats happening? No trust at all in this
administration...
And I have heard/read that there is some
connection b/w the old husband that
died and the ******.
:tinfoilhat:

Let's you and me go somewhere civilized and have ourselves a good HARRUMPH, whaddya say?

*

...and what the future holds in store.

Traitors in the Whitehouse? Who cares - that doesn't "click" with consumers - there's no money in it for Corporate Media. The people want ANS: entertainment is what sells. Expect CM to deliver more of it, lots more, because that's where the money is. It's as plain as day.

American newspapers, as we know them, are a dying breed.

Neal Postman sure got that right - and his book was written more than 20 years ago.

it periodically.

From the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death :

Postman objects to the presentation of television news as it is conveyed in the form of entertainment programming. He cites the inclusion of theme music, the interruption of commercials, and "talking hairdos" as the basis for his argument that televised news is presented so that it cannot readily be taken seriously. Postman further examines the differences between written speech, which he argues reached its prime in the early to mid-nineteenth century, and the forms of televisual communication, which rely mostly on visual images to "sell" lifestyles. He argues that politics has ceased to be about whatever ideas or solutions a particular candidate may possess, but instead whether or not they come across in a favourable way on television. Television, he notes, has introduced the phrase "now this", which indicates a complete absence of any connection between one topic and the next. Larry Gonick used this phrase to conclude his Cartoon Guide to (Non)Communication, instead of the traditional "the end".

Postman also examines the relationship between learning and television. He acknowledges that school curricula are integrating television and computers into their classrooms with increasing frequency. He argues that these uses of media do not equip the student with the ability to question the nature of media; they merely provide the student with study guides that are amusing and entertaining--something that Postman argues is fundamentally against the process of learning. Postman draws from the ideas of the media scholar Marshall McLuhan— slightly altering McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" into "the medium is the metaphor"—to describe how oral, literate, and televisual cultures radically differ in how information is processed and prioritized. He also argues that different media are appropriate for different kinds of knowledge. The faculties necessary to sustain rational inquiry simply are not normally encouraged by televised viewing. Reading, a prime example cited by Postman, is a subject of intense intellectual involvement, at once interactive and dialectical, unlike television which limits involvement to passivity. Moreover, as television is programmed for maximum ratings, its content is determined by commercial feasibility, not critical acumen. Television in its present state, he says, cannot sustain any of the conditions needed for honest intellectual involvement and rational argument.

Given this analysis, Postman regards television as a useful entertainment medium, but questions the efficacy of its use in such intellectually demanding areas as political argument, education and the news.

from the book I'm reading now: "Anglomania: A European Love Affair" by Ian Buruma. This is a paragraph from a section on Voltaire's reaction to England in the time he spent there in the 1720s:

"The British press is still relatively free, but for sheer crassness and vulgarity there is nothing in Europe to match the British tabloids. It is indeed the taste of the mob at Bear-garden, or whatever its modern equivalent would be - the nastier sections of video rental stores perhaps. Fastidious French or Germans or Dutch look at the British tabloids with horror. European politicians and bureaucrats - 'UP YOURS, DELORS!' - are easily offended by them. The mixture of prurience, hypocrisy and xenophobia is not a pretty one. But Voltaire recognized the link with his idea of England: 'Tis great pity that your nation is overrun with such prodigious numbers of scandal and scurrilities! However one ought to look upon them as the bad fruits of a very good tree called liberty.'"

Even in America, interest in ANS-type fluff has always been around. It's my impression that in past decades (20s through 50s say) newspapers in fact had MORE stories about the lives and lifestyles of the very rich - more "society" news. Today there are just a few iconic, publicity-seeking rich folks, like Donald Trump or Paris Hilton, who get a lot of press. It used to be that the news of marriages, divorces and other scandals of countless, long-forgotten Social Register millionaire types was widely disseminated.

It's quite literally a different epoque in terms of the physical media needed to reach the public - electronics have sounded the deathknell of print media. It's just so much easier, and cheaper, to "prepare and serve" the news electronically, as well as pursue an larger clientele.

It started with CableTV (OJ Simpson, GulfWarI) but has quickly rushed into the Internet. The result is not only more potential viewers and profits, but also - greater competition among the expanding and competing group of "news outlets". Unfortunately in this environment, it's a "race to the bottom" in pursuit of viewship.

Tabloid journalism resurrected, and facilitated, by electronic technology.

Sensationalism trumps substance and voyeurism substitutes for serious analysis.

I see it happening here in Canada, although not nearly as bad as in America.

Walter Cronkite is dead (although not literally) and O'Reilly, Matthews and Zahn rule. If Keith O wasn't there, the media would be a complete write-off.

Not too many other wealthy media whores with no career left to commiserate with. Sigh....

"Throughout the afternoon Thursday, editors across the country watched the number of "hits" recorded for online items about Smith's death."

Is there any evidence to support this assertion? Is there something new about this point in time where this statement would have been untrue, back in 2006, but somehow in 2007, we've all of a sudden reached a point where editorial decisions are based on a metering of "hits". Is there a new piece of software that was recently made available to news editors to tell them what stories to pump on the basis of hits?

Anybody with a financial stake in their website, has embedded "hit counters" - an invisible (to you) mechanism for tracking traffic to, through, and from their website.

In fact Google itself is, in part, a gigantic hit counter "engine": everytime you google some subject, Google tracks and records not only what you googled, but which hits you selected as a result... this info is rolled-up into a giant database of info that can serve many purposes, among them - helping electronic "retailers" reach target demographics and maximize return on marketing dollars.

Welcome to the electronic age.

Anyone with a paid hosting account can read their server logs. Those logs will tell the account holder how many hits a site or page receives. How many times an image was downloaded. Where each surfer came from. Whether or not the visitor has opened a page for the first time or the tenth...

I would imagine that all media outlets with web sites are paying very close attention to traffic and editing content, based on the habits of website visitors.

By trying to report what is recieving the most hits on the net the papers are trying to appeal to market demand. Thats not news. That is not the roll the media is supposed to represent. That is just marketting. And rampant marketting to a closed system results in an echo chamber which deafens everyone in the end.