Newstainment

I thought newspapers wouldn’t survive the Internet but what happened next made me cry…!

(See what I did there?)

Last week, I was talking about how clickbaiting works and I thought that it would be interesting to further continue this line of thought focusing on what this increase of clickbaits across the Internet actually means for other "real" news outlets.

It's clear that it's tough for every paper across the globe to remain successful in times of directly available, free information online any time - but maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Most big newspapers have succeeded to build a more or less stable online presence (take a look at Spiegel Online or The Guardian), but the times they are a-changin'. 

Next to heavily emotional!, exciting! clickbait "news" those good old-fashioned news articles seem rather dull and tend to get lost amidst the masses of posts, they just don't stand out unless they are about some very recent big news (like Fukushima some years ago). Who, after all, would claim to be interested in depressing and frustrating news on politics and catastrophes after a long day of work? Yeah, you get the idea.

And while huge numbers of clicks are nice for those few big news sites that are “successful”, they don't help much to bring in money. Most users use adblockers and won't agree to subscriptions, they’d rather search for websites with free content (another way to compete – which is completely toxic to one's own work in the end). And real-life subscriptions of newspapers have been steadily declining these last decades anyway.

Will this eventually be the end for newspapers as we know them? The times they are a-changin' but the media tries its best to keep up.

About five years ago I started to be more interested in real news and in this short time so much has changed about what is considered “news”. It seems that the number of commentaries and “soft” news has not just increased, it almost exploded. Even those news sources that are (still) considered reputable, have long begun to publish articles on kitten that had been rescued (no offense, kitten – I still love you) and oh so tragic stories. Of course, sometimes it can’t be helped to search for “filler news” when nothing else is available that could be interesting in any way, but in times like these with rapid changes all about every single day?

I don’t buy it. Actually, it really feels as if “real” news sites try to mimic what clickbait sites have been doing for years – more or less subtly. But is it really the right strategy to just copy what everyone else is doing – and thus risking the quality of one’s own content. I highly doubt it.

Definition of Newstainment on the Urban Dictionary:

"Newstainment is the product of 24 hour news stations which are a combination of news and entertainment. The news portions fill in the space between the entertainment which is what gets the viewers. Some stations like to also use exaggeration, innuendo and deceptive practices like splicing stock footage of crowds into a story to make it look more newsworthy. They all have a slant to oneideology or another but that is mainly to appeal to their newstainment audiencewho do not like hearing confusing viewpoints that disagree with or are different than their own. Negative news stories about the ideological opposition is a staple of Newstainment."

How to be #heftig

We all know headlines like this:
"This boy will die in a few days. But you can't imagine what happens next..."

German Facebook users might instantly think of heftig but there are more than a hundred other examples across the globe in many different languages and variations. But they all have something in common: their formula for success always remains the same. They try to create suspense, to intrigue the reader, to manipulate emotions. In the end, it's all about the number of views a story generates. But let's take a closer look at how they actually do it.

Normally, there's a sort of classical structure for news stories:

• Headline: The actual core of the news story.
• Subheading: A couple more details on the story.
• Lead: The first sentence of the article. It contains all the necessary bits of information according to the six Ws.
• Source: The following sentences will give more information, especially on whom you rely for information (e.g. "spokesman XY said...").
• More details, offering further insight through a background story and how it might affect future developments.

The latter is not as necessary for good journalism - ideally your story will be constructed in such a way that makes it easy to "cut" your story's last paragraphs. Every article by a good journalist should be constructed like this, making it easier both for his colleagues to shorten the article if necessary and also for his readers - even if they don't read the whole story they will feel well-informed; and if your story is really great, they will feel compelled to read on. (On a side note, this is the reason why many online news sources tend to spread their articles over several pages, tempting the reader to click "Page 2" in order to find out whether the story is of good quality.)

But sites like heftig.co intentionally break this rule that has been tried and tested over decades - and big surprise, they are really successful! 

It's not far-fetched to say that some of their stories might get more clicks than those of big newspapers. By intentionally leaving out answers to the most essential w-questions they arouse curiosity. And in addition to this, they heavily rely on emotions: tragedy or strong positive feelings ("He was about to die, but what happened next will make you cry out of joy!"). The perfect combination to go viral. 

Interestingly enough, many of their stories go viral, even though it's far from being a secret that websites like this are the complete opposite of being reputable. But they have really optimised their "Social Media Game" - every single story is created to be shared in social networks, mostly Facebook. 

But why Facebook? Facebook is the social network to relax, to connect, to be entertained be it stalking your ex or that cute kitten... Most people don't use it for political news (that's Twitter's realm) but for pure entertainment. So yep, Facebook is just perfect for these stories while real news tend to remain noticed but not really clicked on. 

(Another side note: Facebook has a much higher percentage of older users while Twitter's users are remarkably younger. And as a matter of fact, younger generations tend to be more experienced with the Internet's tricksters and traps (digital natives) than the older ones (digital immigrants) who have just learned how to use it instead of growing up with it. So, they are more likely to fall for sites like heftig.co.)

Never telling the whole story is the main strategy for any sort of clickbait - but heftig.co has perfected it far more than any tabloid paper.