Abstract
An ambitious young journalist discovers the secrets of survival in the new, digital world
How far would I go to get my writing to a new audience? “Earn $5 for every 1,000 uniques”, is the enticing offer in front of me as I sit staring at my less-than-spotless computer screen contemplating joining the recruits programme of the popular culture/gossip website Gawker. “Uniques” means the number of separate visitors to the website, so I would be getting $5 for every thousand people who, if they don't actually read, at least “visit” the article I file. The recruits programme aims to give new writers exposure using Gawker’s media hold, but relies also on the writer's social networking abilities to bring traffic to the site. There's a bonus for “1,250,000 uniques per month”. That is 10 times the number that read the UK edition of Esquire each month. It's a bizarre world when a highly publicised magazine with a history of pioneering journalism history is so far behind an insular website that gets exposure only through word-of-mouth distribution.
The programme may promise an online audience of millions, but is the size of readership to be the only criterion? The fastest way to get people to click on the site is probably sensationalism rather than a solid story. Is the recruits programme championing new voices, – or looking for writers who can produce the click-bait window-dressing that entices readers but does not necessarily reward them for staying?
Professional journalism has entered a new age of collective confusion, the crystal ball that once held the answers to a successful career being smashed in front of a generation used to the old certainties of print. The Web 3.0 age has spawned readers with two-second attention spans who demand large bullet points in articles written by people so desperate to carve out a career that they are too scared of asking to get paid. And if they do raise the question of money, they soon learn there are more than enough people to take the commission for half the price. What if humans aren't even required to write the news any more? Wired magazine recently wrote on the sophisticated computers that use algorithms to construct the body of an article. Happily, when these robots of the future were unveiled, they were a few commas short of making much sense, mixing headlines into the body of the text and being a little too liberal with punctuation.
Some may call this the death of traditional journalism, and what of it? There's certainly a sense of whimsical nostalgia when journalists like the New Yorker's Gay Talese talk about being able to spend three weeks getting acquainted with everybody within Frank Sinatra's inner circle before he even typed a word for an Esquire piece. Those who were part of the New Journalism age, like Tom Wolfe and Talese, would base stories on verbatim conversations and on handwritten notes. Nowadays, in the age of digital recorders the size of children's pens, most interviews can be done over the phone or even email, providing a deeper sense of detachment from any form of narrative reality.
A curse and a boon
Websites like Buzzfeed, Gawker and Vice are the industry's curse and at the same time its saviour. Take Buzzfeed, a social entertainment site with a focus on the engagement of their content rather than on their stories. When an article is produced it rather transparently lists the various statistics on where exactly it was popular and by what specific demographics. This in turn lets Buzzfeed produce scarily targeted “listicles”, an article produced in the format of bullet points. Listicles such as “23 problems only children of immigrants will understand” or “99 things you should never say to an English person” produce an instant emotional connection, getting the reader to believe that Buzzfeed is talking directly to them. This targeting is helped by the Buzzfeed community members who create the articles, mining their own life experiences to do so. The articles may be written for fun, but when they attract impressive social media figures from being shared, they provide a little fame to the writers and boost their careers. The company is also recruiting hard-news journalists for the politics section, to produce in-depth reports such as the recent profile of Nigel Farage's history before Ukip. Freed from the pressure of going to print the next day, these pieces are often balanced and offer a captivating narrative. This mix of the content generated to draw people in, combined with long reads to reward those who stay, has helped Buzzfeed attract a loyal and diverse fanbase.
Gawker is a little more highbrow, while still being rooted in entertainment. The recruits programme has proved partly successful in gathering writers on Gawker's myriad blogs from food to video games. The site is laid out more like an online message board than the conventional picture splash layout that assaults the eyes with too much information. The articles range from the upmarket snark and gossip of the New York literati to behind the closed doors of Capitol Hill, picking apart the most essential political stories of the day. In an interesting new rule that harkens back to a pre-internet culture, Gawker released a list of overused or internet words that would be banned from the site. In the words of Gawker editor Max Read: “Internet slang. We used to make an effort to avoid this and now I see us all falling back into the habit. We want to sound like regular adult human beings, not Buzzfeed writers …” The banned words include “massive” (Read offered writers a long list of synonyms), OMG (oh my God) and lulz (a plural variant of “laughing out loud”). The initiative is an attempt to preserve a certain standard in the language used within the vast expanse of the internet. The company was started by Nick Denton, the internet entrepreneur and co-owner of tech site Gizmondo (which attracts six million visitors a month) and each staff writer on the site operates on the basis of being paid $7.50 per thousand views. The site's most popular is Richard Lawson, with 1,208,704 page views earning him $9,065 in one month. This may sound like a good deal, but when your income is based solely on how many people seek out your work and you have to compete with all the other staff writers on the site, it is a far-from-guaranteed income.
Then there is Vice, a Canadian zine that has ballooned into a mammoth media company in its own right. When I interned at the company I was struck by how much of the website was produced by young journalists interning without payment and producing pieces for which freelancers were paid. There were around 20 editorial interns at any one time, made up of a mix of journalism graduates phoning and emailing cordially for interviews, and clueless bedroom bloggers. The office was open-plan and had a communal table for interns and freelancers to interact, with the editors only a metre away. The opportunities to network and pitch straight to editors were there for those writers with the initiative to do so. Weekly pitch meeting were held to pool the interns’ ideas, with many stories making it to the front page the week after – stories that didn't make the intern writer money, but would a freelancer. It's tough, but the benefit is that it helps build a portfolio and a good “in” for freelancing after. While interning there I was intrigued by how little people knew about journalistic essentials such as ethics or even the practice of using a digital recorder: most were content to use their phones with an air of nonchalance.
New writers get a look in
The exciting thing about these changes in the industry is that new writers can work on an equal level of recognition with those who have devoted their lives to perfecting the craft, each gaining a new perspective through collaboration. My love of writing started in the dawn of blogging, so the instability of the period was something I only thought about later. I was influenced by different styles old and new: the bite of a tabloid expose, the pose of celebrity profile pieces and the searing “did they just say that?” honesty of music and lifestyle bloggers with no hope of making a stable career – and all the better off for it.
The Guardian recently finished its Generation Y week, giving “young new writers” (all old enough to remember the dial-up internet of the 1990s), a takeover of the G2 section. The writers selected tended to be those with a strong social media account and people who value exclamation marks over good syntax. But there was a wealth of new voices that needed to be heard. If all organisations could take such a risk then the pool of writing talent would be bigger and would avoid a reliance on the same tricks and techniques.
Back to the recruits programme: the terms and conditions make it clear that entry relies not on a conventional application, but on Gawker headhunting the applicant directly through an established media profile. I sigh and set out to find new ways of promoting my stories in an age of uncertainty and opportunity. Every writer must now become an eager self-promoter, offering rent-a-quote tweets with little to no perspective. I can see I must become my own personal spokesperson, make my own luck in using every opportunity to better myself and take more chances.