How Stupid Do They Think We Are

The journalism death spiral just keeps spinning lately, with the rich ghouls who own the industry energetically stripping it for parts. Which of these parts is the most valuable seems to be up for debate–it isn’t the writers, whom they keep laying off, or the writing, which they farm out to AI or obscure behind ads or stop producing altogether once they lay off all the writers. The thing that seems to matter most to these people is the part that matters the least to the rest of us: the names. 

Last week, Vice announced it would be pivoting from writing, you know, actual news, into finding ways to “partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model.” A message from the company’s Director of Strategic Initiatives and Ops (a real job title a person can have?) further detailed this as meaning a pivot to social and video, “showcasing the quality and brand power Vice is known for.” Most of Vice’s staff–the people who created the above “quality” and “brand power”--are somehow extraneous to this plan, and have been or will be laid off.

Meanwhile, a message yesterday from the Sports Illustrated Union noted that The Arena Group, which publishes Sports Illustrated, is considering a deal to basically keep the SI name without any of the company’s unionized journalists, to whom it issued layoff notices back in January. The union’s message also cites a Washington Post story that details how SI’s owner, Authentic Brands Group, threw a massive SI-themed party at the Super Bowl, which the Post says “turned a profit of at least several million dollars.” The union wrote, “ABG needs to show that it is interested in more than simply milking Sports Illustrated’s name for profit.”

Except that’s exactly what ABG is interested in, and Vice’s new owner Fortress Investment Group, and the owners of other sites you used to love, like, say, every site Jim Spanfeller has his paws on. They bought these sites because they heard people liked them, but understanding what people like besides the name would require actually reading the sites, or reading anything at all, and they don’t want to do that. Instead, they think they can slap “Vice” or “Sports Illustrated” or “Deadspin” or “The A.V. Club” on anything they want, and readers will just keep coming.

If you wanted to be charitable, you could chalk some of this up to media strategy focused on search; sites that have been running for years have strong archives and good reputations that cause them to rank high in Google search results. Someone looking for a movie review will see, say, The A.V. Club pop up high in their Google results and click to the page. That’s as far as the Spanfellers of the world care to think; it doesn’t matter if the review is written by AI or illegibly slathered with ads because the company got its click, which translates into the ad revenue or visitor traffic that looks nice in the spreadsheets that are the only way these media owners actually engage with their own sites. 

This is, of course, a losing play. Readers start getting wise that your user experience is awful or you’re churning out mandated slideshows, and they stop coming. But the C suite doesn’t understand this; the name is the same, so the website must be the same. So it must be the writers who are at fault, and you–say for the sake of this example, the acting editor-in-chief of a major video games website–will then be subjected to sneering meetings about how little you and your writers understand your own jobs. You won’t be able to explain that readers don’t like the site you’re being forced to make; as Ed Zitron wrote yesterday, “Trust and authenticity are at the heart of media outlets, and readers are often highly sensitive to any change… [But if] you’re no longer concerned with loyalty, and only really care about people who stumble onto your page through a carefully-crafted Facebook headline or blurb, you don’t have to worry about alienating readers.”

But these corporate ghouls aren’t unconcerned with alienating readers just because they think there’s an endless supply of suckers to trick into clicking their Content. They also just think that readers are very stupid, because they are very stupid. They don’t know why you like anything beyond the name attached to it, which is what they liked about it when they bought it. They think you are a moron who will go to any website or party or TikTok with “Sports Illustrated” or “Vice” or “Deadspin” slapped on it, even if the things you find there are made by underpaid contractors or ad teams or wholly fake people. Any ability you might have to think critically, any desire you might have for actually good writing–the thing that brought you to these sites in the first place, and upon which the value of these brand names was created–are annoyances they wish they could do without.  

To be honest, I’m not sure the idea that you might want to read something good even registers in their brains. Maybe instead, they think you just want the child-like dopamine hit that comes from saying “I recognize that,” the same foundation that undergirds brand tie-ins and movie remakes and the metaverse, much of which is owned by these same small-minded rumpled suits. That seems, after all, to be the primary pleasure they derive from owning things: getting to say a word they know to other people who might know the word, people who might say “Ah, I’ve also heard of that!” and write them a big check when it comes time to offload the thing they’ve stripped all actual value from. 

But we’re not as stupid as they are. We know when the things we love become shells of their former selves. We know when the suits have made something worthless. We can refuse to let ourselves be made as meager and unimaginative as they are, through union action and independent sites, through seeking out good work and by making our own. The people at ABG and Fortress and Great Hill Partners might line their pockets in the short term, but eventually, all they’ll own is a bunch of names, while we get to keep the rest. 

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