Yesterday, at the 140 Character Conference, Jeff Jarvis criticised the newspaper industry and their online communities.
The conference looked at what Jeff Pulver calls “The State of NOW” – which is about how social media affects traditional industries.
Here’s some select quotes from what Jarvis presented:
“I defended [newspaper] comments for years. But the problem is that comments are too often the voice of assholes.”
“Newspapers don’t like to hear the voice of the people, and they are especially disturbed by the voice of assholes.”
“We allow comments only after we are done with what we’re doing. It’s inherently insulting. We finish our work or stories and say, ‘Now you can talk about them.’”
Shocked? I was. Let’s address his points:
“Comments are too often the voice of assholes.”
Now, that’s not strictly true. As with any situation where you put people together, there will be those who shout the loudest, and those who make their point quietly and succinctly. With online communities – as with comments on newspaper websites – we gravitate to the comments of twats. Why? For pure psychological reasons.
Those loud comments by ‘assholes’ are entertaining. And they make us feel superior because we’re not getting involved with the news story on that type of level. God, if we’re going to discuss the story, we’ll do it at a dinner party.
So let’s think a little deeper about the people who write comments on newspaper websites. Who are they?
If you’re reading this blog post right now, I can guarantee you’ve never written a comment on a newspaper website. Or if you have, you’ve done it once or twice. No more. Why do I say that? Because you’re just like me. You work in the digital industry, you probably live in a city, you definitely own at least one Apple product, and if you have children born in the last couple of years they’ll have a retro name. I’m generalising, obviously, but you get my drift.
So if it’s not you – or me – writing those comments, who is it?
We (and I mean you and I) like to think that the people writing these comments are the type of people we’ll never be. We assume these people are probably overweight, support the BNP, have issues, live in suburbia, use a PC, and are poorly educated because they can’t spell and don’t care that they can’t.
We like to think these ‘newspaper assholes’ have dubious personal politics. They want to shut our borders, hate the way the government wastes the ‘tax-payer’s money’ (even though they’re on benefits), and even if they’re not sure where they stand on breast-feeding in public, they want to make sure they comment on it.
But this simply isn’t true of the majority of people interacting with newspapers online.
How do I know this? Well, I’ve been in charge of the communities for The Daily Mail and The Sun, and I’ve seen that yes, while there are comments written by people who fit the stereotype I wrote above, there are also other ones. They’re sensible, intelligent, and add value to a debate.
Yes, comments can be written by assholes, but the majority of them aren’t. And you shouldn’t let your vision of this be clouded by the loud ones who write the most attention-seeking remarks, or insult everyone who interacts with a newspaper online. Great way to encourage debate, Jeff. Impressive stuff.
“Newspapers don’t like to hear the voice of the people, and they are especially disturbed by the voice of assholes.”
1. I can guarantee that newspapers are NOT disturbed – especially or even vaguely – by the voice of ‘assholes’ (commenting on their sites). They find the more outrageous comments quite funny. Remember, newspapers have always had a letters page, so they’re used to seeing a wide-range of thoughts from their readers.
2. Newspapers DO like to hear the voice of the people. And I don’t understand why Jarvis thinks otherwise.
Take, for example, The Sun. Okay, so the paper may not be as influential or as ground-breaking as it was in the 80s, but it still does a fantastic job of claiming to not only listen to the voice of the people, but being that voice. The Sun has a 24/7 community and moderation team that actively encourages debate, and gets their readers involved in the latest issues. When I worked there the opinions of the people interacting on the site were taken to Conference, and The Sun even recently launched SunVote, to find out even more about what their readers are thinking. So how can Jarvis say that ‘newspapers don’t like to hear the voice of the people’?
And one more thing on this. Jarvis helped write Murdoch’s legendary speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 2005, when Murdoch said:
“Success in the online world will [be achieved by] listening more intently to our readers.”
Upcoming pay-wall or not, The Sun has always listened to its readers, and will continue to do so – which is why they’ve invested heavily in online community, and why most of the other nationals do so, too.
“We allow comments only after we are done with what we’re doing. It’s inherently insulting. We finish our work or stories and say, ‘Now you can talk about them.’”
Or, actually, what’s more insulting is suggesting that a newsroom can’t produce articles of a decent quality without readers (or, as Jarvis calls them, ‘assholes’) getting involved.
Let’s be clear here. Journalists write the story, and readers/users/consumers/’assholes’ (whatever you want to call them), consume and then debate them. That’s the traditional model of news, albeit on radio, TV, or the web.
I don’t understand why – with more interactive technology – this should change.
When the bombs went off on 7/7, I encouraged people from around the world to tell their stories on the Mail website. The BBC did the same, and from that came phone footage of the bombs, and some shocking – but valuable – insights into what happened.
When the evil volcano ash cloud happened this week, you could see people from all over the world sharing their stories about being stranded. Again, it’s added-value, and it’s part of the story.
What it isn’t is that main story itself.
You can’t rely on your readers to write that story for you. How could you? They don’t have access to the wires, they don’t have investigative journalists working with them, they don’t have the money or the resources or the contacts to write something credible and truthful. (OhMyNotNews, anyone?)
So for that very obvious and basic reason alone, that news story has to be written by the newspaper itself.
And again, Jarvis is wrong in saying that once that story has been written, that it’s over, and it’s only when it’s over that people can comment on it. Okay, so perhaps that used to be case when people got their news from the paper edition, and then wrote a letter to the editor about it and popped it in the post.
But journalists constantly update their stories online, and more often than not they take the points – and possible leads – presented to them by readers, and follow up on them. I’ve seen it in action at the Mail and The Sun, and I’ve seen exclusives come out of it.
So again, what’s Jarvis talking about?
I absolutely agree that no national newspaper has cracked the full benefits of newspaper interaction. There definitely doesn’t seem to be an obvious ROI for the thousands spent on it, other than it being a feature readers want.
But why diss the people who work for those newspapers, and those who are in charge of doing their communities?
And, fucking hell, why call the readers who do get involved assholes’?
Have a bit of respect for people interacting with newspapers – and brands – all over the web. The future of news is going to be more interactive, more on-demand, more personalised. So why be rude about the trailblazing users? They’re making history right now. Even if a minority of them are ‘assholes’.
This post originally appeared on the Spoke Digital Blog.
