Hard News by Russell Brown

The Herald claims vindication for its own converged newsroom.

” In the hour after it was revealed yesterday that bomb threats had been made against several New Zealand schools, its lead story was the weirdly irrelevant tale of a woman in Texas who “publicly shamed” her racist father on Twitter, lifted whole from The Daily Mail.”

Yes, that was an embarrassment. The Daily Mail has its own website, and not sure why we need to be force-fed its clickbait tripe on the other side of the world. The New Zealand Herald should NEVER lead with a Daily Mail story. Period. "In the mix," sure, but using Mail clickbait blather as your lead indicates contempt for New Zealand readers.

Never mind the content, feel the format!

I see the Herald has, next to its logo on its website, "search for content....".

Who says the MSM don't do irony?

I don't think clickbait is a long term thing.

One thing that will kill it (and Facebook) is AI. We're not very long away from a world where huge numbers of AI agents indistinguishable from real people invade social networks with a mission to disrupt. Once that happens, the value of online advertising will dive (is the traffic you're buying real, or are you paying $$$ to entertain web-bots).

The New Zealand Herald should NEVER lead with a Daily Mail story

Also, the Guardian should never syndicate a Fairfax/APN story.

The bomb threat story just shows the nice quiet place that NZ is. I recall from the 70s my school being evacuated at least once for a bomb hoax - it was right next to an airbase and the IRA were active. We didn't even make South Today.

This was the front page of the herald on Monday evening. I actually refreshed the site as I thought I must have been directed to a "lifestyle/entertainment/trivial shit" section - but no, these were the three lead articles.

It is indeed a brave new world

On the surface, that is. Dare to learn too much about it, and you start encountering the apparatus of 1984.

Lost in translation…

…and, apparently, run it through a translator and back. My tweet came out like this:

looks like some sort of anti-plagiarism / thesaurus substitute type programme, the other quotes had similar problems (why any news medium would think it acceptable to alter a “quote” is beyond comprehension – as was the translation) – so just to help things along the Chinese Whispers path I dropped their translation through a ’gangster’ translator:

Mark jennings, greatest n’ most influential information supervisor o’ his muthafuckin’ era, has left mediaworks. dat seems like greata than da top o’ an period.

No, don't thank me....
it was nothing.

That auto translation of your tweet hit the spot. I call it auto-pilot publishing. And it seems to be default mode. Auto-correct seems to make the problem even worse in most cases. I guessed the story about “racist father” was a Daily Mail headline. I just wish Herald would put the source at the top left rather than the bottom so I don’t have to scroll down first.

The other night I watched an old Bruce Lee film where all of the audio was apparently dubbed in later. In some cases English over English. It was 1972 they had an excuse. Despite it being terrible it was actually so bad that it was entertaining and then the fight scenes were magic and I usually hate those.

This is not the case with current MSM.

And this from a TED talk Alain de Botton gave back in 2009.
———
A few years ago, I was thinking about this, and I went to “The Sunday Sport,” a tabloid newspaper I don’t recommend you start reading if you’re not familiar with it already.
10:09
(Laughter)
10:10
And I went to talk to them about certain of the great tragedies of Western art. I wanted to see how they would seize the bare bones of certain stories, if they came in as a news item at the news desk on a Saturday afternoon.
10:22
I mentioned Othello; they’d not heard of it but were fascinated.
10:25
(Laughter)
10:26
I asked them to write a headline for the story. They came up with “Love-Crazed Immigrant Kills Senator’s Daughter.” Splashed across the headline. I gave them the plotline of Madame Bovary. Again, a book they were enchanted to discover. And they wrote “Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic After Credit Fraud.”
10:43
(Laughter)
10:44
And then my favorite – they really do have a kind of genius of their own, these guys – my favorite is Sophocles’ Oedipus the King: “Sex With Mum Was Blinding.”
10:53
(Laughter)
10:56
(Applause)
10:58
In a way, if you like, at one end of the spectrum of sympathy, you’ve got the tabloid newspaper. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got tragedy and tragic art.”

————

The whole click bait process has now made most daily newspapers parodies of themselves but not in a good way.

Just yesterday I saw a travel story which referred to Jetstar as Jestar in the actual heading. I’ve included it below (actually displays at the top). When no-one proof reads even the headings then you are in trouble. Not so long ago a sub editor might have made a pun out of the mistake but now ?

And TV – well the big thing there is that with the deluge of excellent back catalogue from online sites there is no need to watch current broadcast TV ever if you don’t want to and if the newshub new team is going that way then its all over red rover.

looks like some sort of anti-plagiarism / thesaurus substitute type programme,

Ah, yes. That makes sense.

Not so long ago a sub editor might have made a pun out of the mistake

as in, Jestar = son of Virgin?

Jetstar as Jestar

Spooky, I just thought the same thing today as I flew Jetstar for the first time, man that company is parsimonious with useful customer information, it's as if they want everyone to be anxious and fearful.

Oh, I am ashamed to have missed that obvious one. Of course.
Court disaster with Jestar, the fool’s choice.
Where the customer service is a joke.

The irony being that the anti-plagiarism has been applied to a quote - the stupid is strong in that implementation !

We live in the age of spin, mass manipulation and dumbing down, the mainstream media try to feed in with social media, and are setting new trends and reaching new levels, so no wonder we get nasty, self loving, insulting, loose cannon rich men like Donald Trump being considered a serious and valid contender for becoming the next US president.

The journey into the future has just become a little more dangerous.

Having followed the reports on the US primaries and caucus votes, I despair, but find myself proved right again, here is Mr Oliver's take on it, that is the Drumph phenomenon:

The internet has not led to more enlightenment and intelligence, it has proved to be nothing more than an extra communication channel, which just as well serves the ends and interests of those that want to dumb down ever more people, welcome to the not so bright future.