HOW quaintly nostalgic to see this page from FIVE YEARS ago
to illustrate a piece on how clickbait is “killing journalism”.
Also included in the case for the prosecution were other
well-thumbed pieces of evidence that have previously amused the anonymous posters
of the mediarati.
But what is the truth about clickbait and listicles in the
regional press in 2016? This original research may surprise, irritate or even
disappoint the doom-mongers of journalism as we knew it.
It is a chapter from the same book as the original piece
above. Save up for your copy now. Lost
for Words: Can journalism survive the slow death of print? published
by Abramis Academic Publishing in January 2017.
---
JOURNALISM'S newest dirty
word is clickbait, now shorthand for anything that isn’t traditional, ‘proper’
journalism, especially but not totally confined to online media. But what is
really going on deep inside regional newspaper websites? ALAN GEERE gets his
hands dirty
THE
HEADLINES TELL THEIR OWN STORY
Departing
Northern Echo editor Peter Barron warns that future of local journalism cannot
be built on 'clickbait'
Spiked
column by star writer on Leicester Mercury railed against 'risible' standard of
clickbait online journalism
Online
journalists' survey: 'Public will soon live off attention-seeking, fact-free,
gossipy clickbait'
Once
we had comment. Now we have clickbait
WHAT
IS CLICKBAIT?
The academic community is
surprisingly united in its definition of clickbait and its desired effects. “Clickbaits
are articles with misleading titles, exaggerating the content on the landing
page. Their goal is to entice users to click on the title in order to monetize
the landing page. The content on the landing page is usually of low quality,”
say Biyani, Tsioutsiouliklis and Blackmer (2016) in their research paper "8
Amazing Secrets for Getting More Clicks: Detecting Clickbaits in News Streams
Using Article Informality”.
Similarly Chen, Conroy
and Rubin (2015) assert that “Clickbait refers to content whose main purpose is
to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular
web page and has been implicated in the rapid spread of rumor and misinformation
online”.
Chakraborty et al (2016)
maintain that Clickbaits exploit the cognitive phenomenon known as Curiosity
Gap. “Headlines provide forward
referencing cues to generate enough curiosity among the readers such that they
become compelled to click on the link to fill the knowledge gap.”
WHAT
ARE THEY SAYING?
Peter Barron left the
Northern Echo after 17 years as editor with a valedictory editorial. In it he
reflected on his successes but cautioned readers as follows: “The future of
local journalism cannot just be built on 'click-bait' – stories which attract
the biggest number of hits online.
“There will be those who
call me a dinosaur but if I see another 'stomach-churning compilation of the
best spot-squeezing videos' on a 'news' website, I may well take a hammer to my
computer. Exploding spots may get lots of hits, and that may attract digital
advertising revenue, but it isn’t news.”
In the Midlands Lee
Marlow, the writer behind the hard-hitting Fred Leicester column, also wrote a
piece when he was made redundant, but the editor at the Leicester Mercury chose
note to run it.
Edited highlights of that
column are as follows: “We have a website which is updated all day, every day,
constantly. Yet it’s a website festooned with so many ads that you try to
access it on your phone and it’s barely readable.
“And on that website there will be not just all of the news from the paper, but other ‘news’, too. Stories about Apple iPhone batteries. Product recalls. Some stuff about how people are comparing Leicester City to Donald Trump. (No, really. Apparently, they are.)
“And on that website there will be not just all of the news from the paper, but other ‘news’, too. Stories about Apple iPhone batteries. Product recalls. Some stuff about how people are comparing Leicester City to Donald Trump. (No, really. Apparently, they are.)
“This is ‘internet only’
news. Clickbait. You may have heard of it. It doesn’t have a good reputation
and its reputation is deserved, if you’re asking me.
“But you can also see how
these stories have been shared. This one had been shared more than 8,000 times
on Facebook and Twitter. Click, click, click, click. In this brave new world of
digital journalism, this is what counts. The click is always King. It doesn’t
matter that your readers are laughing at you when they click. It just matters
that they click.”
In South London, reporter
Gareth Davies took to Twitter after accepting his redundancy cheque from the
Croydon Advertiser to bemoan the direction his old paper was going. “A paper
with a proud 147-year history reduced to being a thrown together collection of
clickbait written for the web,” he tweeted.
He added: “What do
readers get? A website focused on live blogging everything, with reporters told
to ‘write like they speak down the pub’. Well, it breaks my heart. I couldn’t
stick around to watch the paper be destroyed & I would not help them do
it.”
THE
NEW NUMBERS
Online audience, not
unsurprisingly, continues to grow while print sales fall.
The latest figures for daily
average unique browsers in regional publications (Jan-June 2016) show Newsquest
with the biggest group-wide jump over the six months to the end of June, with a
24 per cent rise year-on-year to 1.575m daily uniques, 23 per cent up on the
last half of 2015.
Johnston Press was up by
22 per cent year-on-year while Trinity Mirror, which boasted the biggest number
of daily uniques at 2.471m, was up 19 per cent year-on-year. The Local World
Network, owned by Trinity Mirror, was up 13 per cent year-on-year to 1.393m
daily uniques.
THE RESEARCH
For the purposes of this
chapter we returned to scene of the crimes above to examine the websites and
determine just what sort of job they are doing. They are by definition a
snapshot and concentrate on the ‘splash’ page or opening page of the site where
by definition any clickbait would reside. Each site was monitored for quantity
and quality with a verdict delivered at the end.
NORTHERN
ECHO
Newsquest
Accessed Friday September
9 2016 at 09.12
Opening page has 25 news
stories, four videos, 20 in the Most Popular column.
Sport – 17 stories
National sport – four
stories
Four ‘others’ inc the
infamous Headline Challenge started by Peter Barron, who lives on it its blurb
[see illustration]
Ents (that’s what it’s
called) - seven stories
Echo memories – seven
Business news - seven
Trending across the UK –
seven stories from other Newsquest titles
National news – seven,
although the most recent was 9 hours ago
Most popular (again) –
top 18
Social
media
Twitter: 41.4k followers,
29.6k tweets, Followers Per Tweet (FPT) ratio 1.4
Very handy Twitter
directory of all staff, plus their number of followers, including the ex-editor
Peter Barron leading the way with 13.9k followers. The current editor Andy
Richardson is still listed as Business Editor with 0 followers, probably
because the Twitter name given @bizecho links to a baby supply store in
Indonesia.
23k Facebook likes
Verdict: Lots to look at
and lots to read, a la DailyMail.co.uk, with a big landing page that takes
quite a bit of scrolling through.
Clickbait score 0/10
LEICESTER
MERCURY
Trinity Mirror/Local
World
Accessed on Friday
September 9 2016 at 09.50
The top of the opening
page has three stories, which are not labelled, one Latest News and two
Editor’s Choices.
The lead is a timeline of
a fatal crash on the MI, which happened that morning, lively updates with pix
and maps.
Sport – seven stories
(all Leicester City)
News – seven stories
Entertainments: Features
- seven, events - five
Social
media
Twitter: 72.7k followers
from 75.3k tweets with a FPT ratio of 1.03
Facebook: 45k likes
(although link takes away from website)
In common with all
Trinity Mirror/Local World sites readers have to “Answer a survey question to
continue reading this content”. However, the advice on getting around the
survey is neatly provided by the paper on its Facebook page.
Verdict: Practical,
purposeful and if anything, a little understated. Plenty going on, but nothing
that jumps out at you. The ads are there but aren’t intrusive.
Clickbait rating 0/10
CROYDON
ADVERTISER
Trinity Mirror/Local World
Accessed Friday September
9, 2016 at 08.40
Splash page has three
stories plus another headlined Worth The Money?
The lead is a court story
with picture taken by reporter
Sport – seven stories,
all Crystal Palace
Editor’s Picks – two
More news – six local
stories inc ‘The insane giant milkshakes you can now buy in Croydon’ with one
comment, which was spam
Most read – five stories
(three Crystal Palace)
What’s On - seven
features, five events
‘9 things you'll know if
you were a regular at London nightclub Fabric’ was more than 1,200 lovingly
crafted words by written by a staff member and actually deserved better than
the lame listicle headline. Not local though.
Social
media
Twitter: 11.8k followers.
15.7k tweets FPT ratio .75
Facebook 19k likes
Verdict: Plenty to read,
well written and from a visit later in the day updated regularly. Sponsored
content (Staples back to school), some ads but nothing obtrusive.
Clickbait score: 1/10
just for that ‘9 things’ headline
--
In the interests of
fairness, we also looked at titles from the other two big groups, Johnston
Press and Archant – this time selected at random from a numbered list using
random.org number generator.
NORWICH
EVENING NEWS
Archant
Accessed Tuesday
September 6 2016, 12.34
Under ‘Latest’ 10 items –
crime, news, views, education, motoring, all time stamped
Mustard tv promo
‘More’ – five items, one
sport
Photo galleries – six
items
More ‘more’
Most read – top five
Revealed: The number of
parents fined at every Norfolk school for taking children out of class was a
super FOI story with comments, facts and figs
Social
media, reached by big, bold links not the usual tiny
symbols
Twitter: 39.7k followers,
59.6k tweets FPT ratio .66
Facebook: 13k likes
Verdict: Bright,
accessible page. Interesting to see sport mixed in with other content, although
readers can click through to a dedicated page.
Clickbait score: 0/10
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
TELEGRAPH
Johnston Press
Accessed Tuesday
September 6 2016 at 14.36
Hot Topics – seven items
Followed by Sky promotion
and ‘Supermarket price war’ credited to Offbeat
Sport – eight stories
What’s on – three stories
Essential daily briefing
from inews – five stories which open in new window
Lifestyle three stories
(two local)
Trending now nine stories
(all local)
Promoted stories (nine)
‘Promoted link by Taboola’
Social
media
Twitter: 12.1k followers,
39.2k tweets FPT ratio .31
Facebook 25k likes
Verdict: Register to
leave a comment clearly is a put-off with just four comments on whole of news
page. A neat story on organ donation surrounded by ‘sponsored links’. Felt far
more commercial that the other sites looked at.
Clickbait score: 2/10
SO,
WHERE ARE WE WITH ‘CLICKBAIT’ AND THE REGIONAL PRESS?
As this research shows
claims for the pervasive influence of clickbait appear to be exaggerated. All
the sites visited showed an honest commitment to providing local news, sport,
information, comment and entertainment to the highest standard.
If anything, they were
somewhat prosaic, lacking the, er, buzz of buzzfeed.com, the sheer breadth and
depth of dailymail.co.uk or the clickbait heaven (or hell) of
cosmopolitan.co.uk.
Perhaps because of the
eternal ‘time constraints’ or the effect of job cuts throughout the industry
engagement with the audience via website interactivity or through social media
was low. Perhaps it’s time for the regional press to get off its high horse and
start to realise the full potential of the ‘new media’ at its disposal.
Note on the contributor: Alan Geere is a journalist, academic and international editorial
consultant. He was editorial director of Northcliffe Newspapers South-East and,
as editor, led the Essex Chronicle to two successive Weekly Newspaper of the
Year awards.
As an editorial executive he worked in the UK, Canada, United States and the Caribbean and his consulting career has taken him into 200 newsrooms worldwide.
He was head of the Media, Communications and Journalism undergraduate degree course at Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda and taught journalism at City, Westminster and Worcester Universities. Alan was also a member of the board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).
As an editorial executive he worked in the UK, Canada, United States and the Caribbean and his consulting career has taken him into 200 newsrooms worldwide.
He was head of the Media, Communications and Journalism undergraduate degree course at Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda and taught journalism at City, Westminster and Worcester Universities. Alan was also a member of the board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).
REFERENCES
Biyani , Tsioutsiouliklis
and Blackmer (2016) 8 Amazing Secrets for Getting More Clicks": Detecting
Clickbaits in News Streams Using Article Informality. Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial
Intelligence (AAAI-16) pp 94-100
Chen, Conroy, and Rubin
(2015) Misleading online content: Recognizing clickbait as false news. Proceedings of the 78th American Society for
Information Science Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research
in and for the Community pp 15-19
Chakraborty, Paranjape,
Kakarla and Ganguly (2016) Stop Clickbait: Detecting and Preventing Clickbaits
in Online News Media IEEE/ACM
International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining
(ASONAM)
- This piece is a chapter from Lost for Words: Can journalism survive the slow death of print? to be published by Abramis Academic Publishing in January 2017.
