“But there was actually a sense of something even more troubling — a loss of control….”
“But there was actually a sense of something even more troubling — a loss of control. Journalists don’t often say this out loud, but we do think there’s an element of art to what we do. And what do most artists want, as much if not more than money? Creative control. But permeating almost every session was a sense of desperation — at regaining some kind of control over how we connect and impact with our audience. The homepages that newsrooms have sunk countless dollars and person-hours into upgrading are already dying a rapid death. Increasingly, story traffic depends on the whim of the swipes — with faceless folks in the bowels of Silicon Valley, at Google and increasingly at the social media giants of Twitter and especially Facebook, exerting an inordinate amount of power. If there was one word that I heard more than “viral” at the ONA, it was “algorithm.” Facebook has completed coded the way that millions of would-be news consumers get information, and no one knows how to crack it.”
– Looking for the soul of journalism’s new machines at ONA2014.
