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Gawker and others blamed for trivialising news

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

April 18, 2011 | 2 min read

A new study conducted by American journalist James Fallows has raised concern upon an undermining of online news reporting by a desire to maximise ratings.

In ‘Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media’ for the Atlantic Fallows deplores the quick fire attributes fuelling the growth in new media after paying a visit to the head office of Gawker Media, an online news giant which has developed its own techniques for distilling popular stories.

Here Fallows observed live feeds of traffic shown on screens within their newsroom. Fallows observed, "the stories switch places on the screen, each with a green arrow if it's trending up or a red arrow if it's heading down.

“When I arrived, 'Your Horoscope May Have Changed' still led the chart for all sites but was heading down, while 'The Horrible Life of a Disney Employee' was in second place and on the way up."

Overseeing everything is a floor manager with sole responsibility to monitor those stories which are trending up (and down) and to bring pressure to bear on any journalist writing material in the latter camp.

Fallows expose follows AOL’s much publicised internal memo which was leaked to the outside media and explicitly set out to boost traffic at the expense of other considerations.

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