Aol’s CEO on the future of journalism
That’s borne out by a memo from AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong on where his company’s journalism is going. It’s fairly chilling reading, ordering the company’s editors to evaluate all future stories on the basis of "traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turnaround time." All stories, it stressed, are to be evaluated according to their "profitability consideration." All AOL’s journalistic employees will be required to produce "five to 10 stories per day."
Note all the things that come before the quality of the work or its contribution to the public interest and you’ve arrived at an essential difference between journalism and content. It may start with exploiting reporters and editors, but it inevitably ends up exploiting its audience.
O f course, the irony here is that technology has allowed us instant access to a large number of information and “Facts”, however, much of the “facts” becoming opinion based. This is interesting or AOL on the heels of acquiring the Huffington Post.