For decades, I have felt a strange mix of anger and mild amusement whenever I heard news consumers, when complaining about something that upset them, say that journalists write and print “bad” stories “just to sell newspapers.”
“Bad,” of course, meant stories that they thought were biased, inaccurate or simply silly, perhaps something that in our digital age would be called “clickbait.” Of course, clickbait is clickbait because there’s digital evidence that readers consistently click on certain types of stories, which increases traffic and that helps the newsroom generate money (sort of like selling more newspapers).
Produce enough stories that please the faithful readers of a given publication — down South we call this “preaching to the choir” — and you can turn those readers into digital subscribers. That’s the Holy Grail, the ultimate goal, in the business-model crisis that has dominated American journalism for a decade or more.
This brings me to this unusual Washington Post headline that I saw the other day: “Evangelical pastor demands churchgoers ditch their masks: ‘Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense’.”
Now, was this pastor the leader of an important congregation somewhere in Beltway-land? Well, the answer is “no.”
If he wasn’t local, was he a prominent member of a major, powerful evangelical Protestant denomination or network of megachurches? Again, “no.” Was he connected, somehow, to an influential evangelical college, seminary, publishing company or parachurch ministry? A third time, “no.”
In other words, to ask the question that drove this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, why did editors decide that this story worthy of coverage by a reporter at the Post? (Click here to tune in this episode.)
Well, I think it’s safe to say that this stereotype-packed piece of simplistic, shallow, clickbait was produced because it punched all kinds of buttons that pleased digital niche-audience Post subscribers. In other words (I feel guilty typing these words), they did it to sell newspapers. Here is the overture:
Since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Greg Locke, the pastor at a Nashville-area church, has repeatedly called covid a hoax, undermined emergency mandates and refused to comply with guidance from public health officials.