Image via WikipediaSigh. Well, that little adventure in writing ended way too soon. It's a blog, folks. They can dress it up and put lipstick on it, but it's just another blog peopled by some good writers and a lot of complete lunatics.Why content farming is bad for journalism.
On any given day, these "writers" pound out a record amount of content, but (didn't you know there was one?) content is a generous word for it. With only momentary lapses into local news like this veteran's policy examiner. Examiner.com can't really be called anything other than a blogspot alternative.
This local gem is the Indianapolis Examiner for political buzz with his dysfunctional diatribe on his wife, a local lawyer, Women who abuse domectic violence laws . Examiner.com does background checks on their writers, but the question is do they check to see if they are writers. Keep in mind that these writers are paid per click. Readers will be contributing to the "farming system".
Writers today are watching an evolution of the business. Paper press and the old journalists of the past are making way for the digital rebirth of their industry. More and more content farms crop up each year, while fewer and fewer objective news outlets survive to provide their unique service, investigative journalism.
The question becomes; who will ask the hard questions of those in positions of power? Will local bloggers be a force to reckon with in the long term? Or will they only be white noise? With blogs out there in the political arena like Firedoglake and Redstate, it's easy to see blogger's influence in politics. What's harder to determine is if this is a good thing. Content farms would take their cues from the blog industry generating inflammatory, rhetorical articles by the hundreds because that's what sells.Without hard journalism to back up those articles, are bloggers merely gasoline on the fire?
The experience of writing for Examiner.com was thought provoking. Do writers want to write so badly they will write anything with any group of people? Is there a standard when the industry isn't even done changing? Where do writers find their opportunity to write good content? The answers to these questions escape this writer.
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