Link Bait
A quick meta point on this absurd Charlotte Allen business.
This and a few other particularly silly pieces in otherwise august publications have made me wonder if the major newspapers have realized that in the networked public sphere creating fodder for conversations-- i.e. getting that essential link from blogs all the way down the long tail -- is one of the best ways to drive traffic. And therefore, if you're trying to live on a big budget from the old days, maybe you should just publish a bunch of link bait to "provoke." The Allen piece can't have been good for the WaPo's reputation as a serious publication, but it's probably been good for their bottom line.
Update: 243 links and counting.
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Comments (4)
Papers used to publish dumb articles like that just to breathe new life into their Letters sections. I've seen it again and again, especially in the smaller dailies. Now that there's an added revenue angle, expect to see more and more really dumb op-eds.
March 3, 2008 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's my explanation for Kristol at NYT. Traffic trumps content. Money now trumps consistent product identity for the long haul.
March 3, 2008 7:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
A keen observation, Andrew.
March 3, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Neither the WaPo nor the NYT have been "august publications" for a long time, Andrew. The reporting is shoddy and has been shoddy. The Outlook section in the Post has been awful since Eugene Robinson was the editor, the NYT since the days of Howell Raines. The Whitewater smear, the Judith Miller propaganda pieces, the Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd lunatic rantings about Gore and the Clintons, the McCain love affair (and I'm talking about his love affair with the press) the just plain bad reporting of Ceci Connolly and Kat Seelye just to name two - for the last fifteen years it is getting worse and it was never very good.
What interests me, yet again, is your failure to recognize how offensive these articles are to women. The fact that you find this article "absurd" just as you found the Shuster suspension over the top really causes me concern. It's as if no one at TPM gets it. If you substituted the word "Jew" or "Black" for "woman" would you claim that it was a piece to provoke linkage and traffic? Would it be "absurd" if they had paid David Duke to write a silly little provocative piece for the outlook section, maybe generate a few links, more traffic? What will it take to get you to understand this?
March 3, 2008 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink