The journalist blame game needs to end.

Ever stopped and thought “Lazy journalists!” and muttered about how they just produce fluff and don’t do the work and don’t cover important things? Yeah. We all have. But the problem is by doing that we are ignoring what is actually going on and blaming the wrong people (most of the time).

I know a bunch of journalists. A large bunch. I’ve worked with many of them, and have for about 20 years now. So I’ve seen this far too up-close. The root of the problem is two-fold:

1) The people in charge of sites/magazines/etc need money. So they push for quick fluffier bits that gets hits and eyeballs. They have a much higher return on investment when looked at across what they pay for them versus what they bring in in ad revenue. That’s simple truth. Journalism should be above such things! I can hear you think it. And I agree! But they aren’t above paying rent, print costs or server costs and staff. Journalists don’t work for free (well some do and they shouldn’t and the ones that don’t should be paid more really but this is not my topic) either.

So if journalism should be above such problems, but Stuff Costs Money how do you fix it? Gov subsidized journalism? That’s a slippery slope of panic and woe. You fix it by reading the second problem!

2) We are the other half of the problem. I’m sorry guys. We are. We click the shitty top 5 lists over the long in depth articles more and more. Now, yes, you’ll rise up and tell me “I do the opposite!” and that’s great. But numbers-wise you don’t, we all don’t. I like to think I do, too. And I try to. But those tiny quick hits, man, they get you. They are designed to get you. And the more we fall for it the more of them they do. The more of them they do the less they will do anything else. We create the problem we lament. We need to recognize that.

I know very few career journalists who are dumb or lazy. Every one I know, in fact, wants to do longer in-depth coverage of events, books, culture and so on. It tears them up to have to gloss over the world. But many of them do it so that they can then have a short at doing a deeper job once in a while. If your site needs 15 posts a day and you do 14 of them in quick hits you can get away with one longer bit that won’t get the big hits. So they sell slices of their soul in hopes of making it back, while knowing it doesn’t work that way. And they KEEP TRYING. Remember that. This isn’t the world they signed up for, either. They didn’t bust ass so they could write top ten lists that pay shit. They wanted to explore and report on the world.

And they stay in it for that rare chance to do so.

The only way to ever change this is to not read the quick hits and drive up hits wildly on the big things. I don’t know how to organize such a thing, or if it is possible. But it is the only way to stop this landslide. I don’t know how to hold back the cliff forever.

But I do know that blaming the people in the trenches, still trying to be Journalists-with-a-capital-J, just causes the landslide to come down faster. Because when you smack the people trying to find a way to sneak you the real goods they start to be even more disheartened. I mean first they get beat up for trying by their bosses, then they get beat up for not magically being able to change the universe by the people they are taking the hits for in the first place. You’d want to give up, too. And when, and as, they do give up – the landslide gets faster.

So please. Stop blaming them off-hand. Yeah there are bad apples. Blame them by name, don’t fire hose and destroy the people trying to fight it.