The State of Journalism
The latest Facebook trend has me thinking about something.
Take a look at this article.
Now look at the Tumblr post.
How do these pieces of internet compare to each other?
In my opinion, one is a artful piece of internet journalism, the other is an uninspired block of text. Sure, the article contains a small bit of added perspective towards the end, but it's mostly just a transcription of the Tumblr post.
But neither the Refinery29 author (never heard of that website before today) nor the blogger originally thought of the theory. It's credited to a completely separate tumblr user, whose blog appears to be defunct.
The information contained within the post is valuable enough by itself, enough to draw plenty of traffic to anyone's website or blog. 500,000+ people are just dumb-founded by the latest find in field of Disney research. I think it's also important to note that one aspect of the info, the bit about prince charming and chapter 3 is actually a community-built product, similar to a good comment on an internet article. That simile breaks down quickly in my mind though, because even though the reblog text is curated in the same way a top comment might be, a comment is still always regulated to the comment section, fighting to be heard against the white noise of the masses. In the Tumblr post, not only is the reblog text augmented with images, it is also form-fitted to the post to give a seamless and prominent position on the entire post.
That's what strikes me most and why I think the tumblr post is far superior to the press's regurgitation of it; the presentation. The tumblr post is far more concise, communicating nearly the exact same amount of information in far less time it takes to read the article. In fact the article takes this a step further, it wastes time by bothering to establish context that anyone actually reading it already knows. It has to, it's Journalism. And the visual (and moving (・о・)) aspect of the post's images is far more pleasing that the bland language of the article's journalistic prose.
Why do news-based websites feel the need to spit back out internet content that aligns with outdated ideas of reporting? I'm not against the short length, that's most of what Tumblr is and hell, even Buzzfeed has an occasional hit with groaners like me. But the horse is no longer the main mode of transportation. Why make articles like this now when a tumblr post can do the same exact thing faster and better?
This seems be just another entry in the battle for the media's legitimacy. Even though it is properly linked and credit is given, this is freebooting in my mind, useless plagurism of a clever tumblr post. We saw this most prominently with the infamous blue/gold dress last year, news outlet popping out stories we've all already heard, never adding any new viewpoints or nuance. However, this style of journalism may not ever fade away entirely like I think cable TV as we know it will, because clicks, the currency that the article is after, are so easily swooned by a provocative title.