[mike_d]

> As a journalist I think it misses the mark somewhat by failing to account for the value of reporting.

At a revenue level how do you quantify that value? Unless you are a brand (TIME, Washington Post, etc) the only metrics are page views and time spent reading the article that eyeballs wander across ads.

Arguably a clear well written article may perform worse than an AI generated article that bleeds over on to a second page. Some of the most valuable content on the internet is not well written pieces on the political climate, but "OMG YOU'LL NEVER GUESS HOW THIS CHILD CELEB TURNED OUT" with a 75+ image one per page photo gallery.

[edavison1]

Edit: made a typo.

How do I quantify the value of reporting? As a writer and reporter, not a finance dude, I'm really not qualified to answer that. But it's interesting you say 'unless you are a brand' because I feel like the brand is what you get from building up years and years of trust with excellent reporting.

In your second paragraph, I don't think your assertion is correct. It isn't 2008. While you were correct at one time based on trends in the industry, "OMG YOU'LL NEVER GUESS HOW THIS CHILD CELEB TURNED OUT" content never cemented itself. It had a high-water mark and that kind of thing hasn't made good money in years. The New York Times is still the most valuable brand in journalism and it's thriving against its competition. Not only other legacy brands, but let's be real, look where Buzzfeed is at today. Shitty content lost revenue-wise as well as on a moral basis. The only way to reliably make good ad revenue is to spam articles but it's not a profitable (or serious imo) way to run a journalistic enterprise. I believe paywalls/subscription models will continue to dominate while the losers fight for scraps.

[mike_d]

> While you were correct at one time based on trends in the industry, "OMG YOU'LL NEVER GUESS HOW THIS CHILD CELEB TURNED OUT" content never cemented itself. It had a high-water mark and that kind of thing hasn't made good money in years.

The LA Times makes $380,116 per employee. Outbrain, one of the largest click farms makes $841,768 per employee. Taboola makes $784,780 per employee. Combined the latter two bring in enough revenue to equal 1/4 of the entire print media industry. That isn't even counting hybrid companies like media.net that do a combination of clickbait and traditional advertising.

(This is all 2022 data)

[edavison1]

Hey sorry, I thought we were talking journalism. Outbrain is an advertising/recommendation engine company right? Know zero about them but doesn’t look like they produce anything. Interesting you went with revenue per employee though because I think market cap tells a different story. They’re worth 256 million today and NYT is sitting at 6 billion. I don’t doubt clicky clicky makes money, just that brands in journalism that rely on clicky clicky don’t make as much as those that produce years and years of high-quality content.

I return to Buzzfeed because I think they’re a good example of a place that tried to do both but because they had so much low-brow clicky clicky, the brand ultimately suffered. Despite winning a Pulitzer in 2021 it really has a terrible reputation among non-industry folks who haven’t forgotten how the brand came to prominence.

[mike_d]

That was specifically my point. You can't quantify any value gain of good journalism. Hiring a 10% better writer doesn't earn you 10% more money. I quoted the revenue per employee numbers because they highlight the fact that hiring another engineer to build better click bait farms will earn you more than hiring another writer.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate good journalism. 90% of the world does not and they just want to be spoon fed garbage at a faster rate. Look at the most popular shows on TV for example, they aren't National Geographic documentaries, but instead trashy reality television.