Kinky Sex In L.A. Hospital Operating Room

Made you look, didn't I?  Today's New York Times talks about how journalism and its business profitability are increasingly defined by the internet and its voracious appetite for page views.  Journalists used to be caricatured as boozy, tobacco stained, unshaven men working the trenches to expose nefarious activities of human society.  They're up all night chasing down their sources in dark alleyways while attempting to beat the deadline before the paper goes to the presses.  Edward R. Murrow comes to mind.  But now a journalist's day starts before the break of dawn.  Every minute is a potential deadline.  The time for investigation and reflection is nonexistent.  Errors are made in reporting that is corrected in an "update" about twenty minutes later, after the original article has already captured its requisite eyeballs.

The NYT interviewed the editors of Politico, the Washington gossip website, on the frenetic pace of modern day web journalism.  Their work day begins before 5:00 AM.  The key to a political web site is to be the first to get the scoop on the latest policy or personnel issues.  Success is measured by the page views each journalist gets for his article.  Over at Gawker, they have a giant video screen updated every hour of the most frequently viewed web page. At Bloomberg, the journalists' pay are based partially on the frequency of their page views.  Eventually the writers will have to resort to ever increasing sensationalistic headlines to grab a readers attention, like "Kinky Sex In L.A. Hospital Operating Room", in order to get recognized and paid decently.

This is a really sad development for journalism.  Unfortunately because of their pace and the Web's 24/7 qualities, these sites will become the go to places for breaking news.  Already attention grabbing news have been broken by the web, including the death of Michael Jackson by TMZ and Tiger Woods's affairs on RadarOnline.  In Los Angeles the sequence of news gathering starts with gossip websites, which is then expounded by the LA Times, followed by the broadcast media who are left rereading the headlines from the newspaper, with one or two original stories about puppy adoptions thrown in.  The most viewed articles each day in the LAT usually include one or two involving some celebrity in legal or ethical trouble (I'm talking about you Mel Gibson).  Is this how journalists will be compensated, by whomever can write the most exaggerated headline that feeds the capricious celebrity appetite of the public?  It is quite pathetic.  I'm glad I only write a humble blog about anesthesiology, a subject that maybe only 0.0001% of the U.S. population cares about and even fewer know how to spell correctly.  I'm thrilled if I get ten page views a day.  I would not be able to make a living in this business and I'm relieved I don't have to.

One of my patients recently told me she was heading off to college soon to start her journalism major.  She was a bright young patient who had done much work for her high school paper.  Her enthusiasm for her career choice was evident in the way she talked about interviewing at the different journalism schools around the country and how she couldn't wait to get started.  I hope when she reads this article (like all good journlists will) that she won't get discouraged by the sweatshop characteristics of a modern day "news" room.