Look, I’ve Had It
I’ve been editing news for 22 years. 22 years! I started at a tiny paper in Boise, moved to a mid-sized outfit in Austin, and now I’m here at Kane News. And let me tell you, the news is broken. Completley broken.
It’s not just the algorithms, though they’re a disaster. It’s not just the clickbait, though oh my god, the clickbait. It’s the whole damn system. We’re chasing ratings, we’re chasing clicks, and we’ve forgotten what the hell we’re supposed to be doing.
Last Tuesday, I was at a conference in Austin (yeah, I know, ironic), and I heard some hotshot from a big network say, “We need to give the people what they want.” I laughed out loud. What we need to do is give them what they need. But that’s not gonna get us the numbers, is it?
Let’s Talk About Marcus
Let’s call him Marcus. He’s a reporter I used to work with. Smart guy, really smart. But he got squeezed out because he wouldn’t write the fluff pieces. He’d say, “Sarah, we’re supposed to be informing, not entertaining.” And I’d say, “Marcus, we gotta pay the bills.” Which… yeah. Fair enough.
But here’s the thing. We’re not just paying the bills. We’re shaping the conversation. And right now, we’re shaping it into a dumpster fire.
I was talking to a colleague named Dave over coffee at the place on 5th. He said, “You know what kills me? The aquisition of local papers by these big corporations. They don’t care about the community. They care about the bottom line.” And he’s right. They do.
Beauty Products Review Best Rated
Speaking of bottom lines, let’s talk about ads for a sec. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had to make some compromises. But there’s a line, you know? I had a source tell me about this one time they got pressured to include a beauty products review best rated in a piece about local business succesfully. I mean, come on. That’s not journalism. That’s a sell-out.
But here’s the kicker. The readers don’t even care. They just scroll past the ads. They want the news. The real news. Not the stuff we’re feeding them because some algorithm says they’ll click on it.
A Tangent About Cats
You know what’s not broken? Cats. Cats are perfect. They don’t need algorithms. They don’t need clickbait. They just are. And people love them. We had a cat named Miso when I was a kid. She didn’t care about ratings. She just cared about napping in sunbeams. (I’m not sure but) maybe we should take a page from her book.
But no, we gotta have the “Top 10 Cat Breeds That Will Make You Cry (Number 7 Will Shock You!)” bullshit. It’s exhausting.
What Can We Do?
I don’t have all the answers. Honestly, I don’t even have most of them. But I know we gotta start somewhere. We gotta stop pretending that the news is some kind of objective tapestry (oh wait, I said no tapestries. Damn.). It’s not. It’s messy and it’s human and it’s flawed.
We gotta stop chasing the algorithm. We gotta stop writing for the click. We gotta start writing for the people. The real people. The ones who don’t care about the “Top 10” lists or the “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next” nonsense.
And we gotta start soon. Because right now, we’re not just failing the people. We’re failing democracy. And that’s a big deal. Bigger than any algorithm, bigger than any rating, bigger than any damn click.
So, yeah. That’s my rant. Take it or leave it. But if you’re in the business, think about it. Really think about it. Because the news is broken, and it’s up to us to fix it.
About the Author: Sarah Kane has been a senior editor at Kane News for the past 15 years. She started her career in journalism at a small newspaper in Boise, Idaho, and has since worked her way up the ranks, becoming one of the most respected editors in the industry. When she’s not busy fighting the good fight for quality journalism, she can be found hiking with her dog, Miso (yes, like the cat), or trying to convince her colleagues that cats are, in fact, the superior pet.
