I share your disappointment, Laura, over another great crop of journalists losing their jobs.
Not sure I agree with anyone’s argument, though, that SEO is to blame for the demise of the journalism business model. How else to help drive traffic to online content?
The rise of crummy clickbait is a symptom, not the disease.
You make a good point that publications must find their readers somehow -- we're no longer in the era of print publications and newsstand displays or direct-mail subscription offers. In the digital world, search engines dominate. The problem is when companies lean too hard into it -- we get the clickbait, and the belief that good journalism can't draw readers.
From my experience -- at Condé Nast Portfolio, we consistently saw our most highly-trafficked pieces being those that came from our best writers, like Michael Lewis, John Cassidy, and Tom Wolfe. The more commoditized content ranked far behind these quality (and very expensive) pieces of journalism.
I share your disappointment, Laura, over another great crop of journalists losing their jobs.
Not sure I agree with anyone’s argument, though, that SEO is to blame for the demise of the journalism business model. How else to help drive traffic to online content?
The rise of crummy clickbait is a symptom, not the disease.
You make a good point that publications must find their readers somehow -- we're no longer in the era of print publications and newsstand displays or direct-mail subscription offers. In the digital world, search engines dominate. The problem is when companies lean too hard into it -- we get the clickbait, and the belief that good journalism can't draw readers.
From my experience -- at Condé Nast Portfolio, we consistently saw our most highly-trafficked pieces being those that came from our best writers, like Michael Lewis, John Cassidy, and Tom Wolfe. The more commoditized content ranked far behind these quality (and very expensive) pieces of journalism.