The perils of journalism in the online age

The perils of journalism in the online age

Now, before I get into this, let me first acknowledge that I am not a Buzzfeed-hater. Their political coverage, for example, rocks. So this isn't a "we hate Buzzfeed" story. It is, however, a story about my growing concerns about online journalism.

Buzzfeed's account documented the previous week's contest between Idaho and New Mexico State, devoting over a thousand words to a meaningless game with no competitive interest (both teams were a godawful 1-10 entering the contest). If the post had a point, it's that it had no point: Neither university has a large or marketable fan base, none of the players had particularly good or bad performances, and the teams aren't even rivals.

The writer didn't even go so far as to ironically suggest that the game was interesting due to the sheer magnitude of its irrelevance, which the title more or less suggests. It's almost as if he wrote the title and then found a thousands words to substantiate it, with little regard for whether or not there was any value in writing the piece at all.

So why do I care, aside from the letdown I'm feeling after getting my hopes up over an article that I thought might be funny?

http://americablog.com/2013/12/saying-first-becomes-important-getting-right.html