I always knew these techie wizards would get us journalists in a mess that we can't extricate ourselves from.
Back in the late 70s, when I first encountered wizards of computers, I thought they were a clannish, cultish little lot, obsessed with details that most non-geeks don't care about - like punch cards, making sure you wrote a zero in the proper way with a strike through and the rest.
And 40 years later, the techie wizards have succeeded in what really was always their aim - subvert journalism and replace it with powerpointless slides and something called "search engine optimisation".
Yes - these days it doesn't matter whether your story is good - if you don't have the right metatags and the right "search engine optimisation", the entity called Google will not "google" your news and the publisher will be upset because there will not be enough "page views" to justify hacks already miserable pay.
I know a load of great journalists all across the world - almost without exception these "data gatherers" are being "encouraged" to obey rules made up by introverts in darkened rooms that spend most of their lives believing binary or hex is actually important.
It didn't matter so much in the halcyon days of web journalism, when it was the Wild West and a left-handed Billy-the-Khid could, with his six shooters, get away with murders. As in the Rogister and the STINquirer.
But now, in the 21st century, "search engine optimisation" is quite the self-interested thing for techies, who justify their hugely inflated rates on "delivering" page views and results.
It might be a little parochial of me, but aren't people still interested in what they always were in the past? Sex and money - provided food, water and shelter is there, of course.
In reality, these self interested techies have decided that as they rule the world of traffic lights, servers, web sites and commerce, they can subvert the last bastion against their wizardly ways - journalism.
I guess they wouldn't be that happy if instead we journalists decided to obey their wizardly ways, we exposed their lives in terms of money, sex, and shamanism.
The wizard techies, and Google is really the Great Beast 666 in this case, are doing what they've always done since the dawn of techiedom - making sure they've got jobs and are earning loads of money. And to hell with the rest of the world.
I can tell you this. Computer wizards have been arrogant forever. But ask yourself if Google will be remembered 100 years from now? A.N. Wilson will be. I doubt Linus Torvalds will. And all the publishers like Hearst and Murdoch will really really be dead bones.
Just my opinion.
Mike
Give us independent analysis tempered by experience and humour. Stir in a dollop of wit and talent and publish freely.
Keep up the good work Mike!
Whilst as you say Google have immense power over the mere mortals that are Journalists, it's also worth noting that they also have the power to make and break even the smartest of your Wizards with their Black Magic and shamanistic ways.
Techies suffer from Google equally as much as you and everyone else using and producing content for the Web.
Don't feel too hard done by, Google do have control of your life, but they also control ours. We're all on this Indiana Jones stylee Mine Cart into the depths of the Earth together.
Tickity Boo!
Phil.
My argument is that the use of technology has actually benefitted readers by making the selection criteria more objective, less ideologically based. Granted, Google can manipulate the rules of the game as they see fit, but, and here is an important but, in the modern world of global Internet connectivity, there are also options. Options that did not exist when you could only effectively read your local newspapers, or watch the few government-licensed television stations or listen to the few government-licensed radio stations in your area. You, as a Brit, should be cognizant of this more than us U.S. readers. The Media, in G.B. has been under tight government control for many years. (Auntie Beeb, anyone?)
My browser isn't stuck on Google. In fact, I very rarely access Google; there are other search engines, and other sources of information.
Methinks you are bemoaning the loss of control by those few editors who decided what people should read and how they should interpret it. If so, you are dangerously on the edge of leftist elitism, a typically fatal malady for a society.
(Please excuse me for my impertenence, I'm currently eyeballs deep in Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Court of the Red Czar". Like all good paranoids everywhere, I am perceiving similarities between the terrors of that time and current.)
But the googlie news algorithm only selects the articles it posts, it doesn't write them. That task is still relegated to crazy humans.
And not knowing the algorithm theoretically gives more people a chance of being selected and published. Unless programmed so, computers don't have favorites. And if they are programmed so, it's no different from a human editor.
'Tis but a rhetorical issue for me anyway, like I said, I get my information from sources other than googlie. There's this tech site of which I'm particularly fond... What was the name of that site? Technology Eyeballs, or something like that...Run by a elderly, somewhat cranky, but generally genteel real journalist.
Surprised, too, that you can't even lay some sincere observations of the landscape down without some people getting all bent out of shape over it.
You & I & others we talk to regularly have been at it 40+ years, too, since we left school, and every time we write something that is clearly the truth, there are always people who were not born yet when it was happening who want to tell you how it was there where you were and when it was happening, cuz you clearly somehow don't know yourself, and they're certain of that.
And you know what I mean, even if they don't.
Apparently there was a goddess of beer http://www.alabev.com/history.htm
Can't say I'm surprised. I have one now so have calmed down.
m
Yes, there is that aspect of humanity; small groups constantly interacting, reinforcing their own self-importance, amplifying their personal perspectives into some form of universal "truth".
What arrogant impertinence, claiming you "write something that is clearly the truth". It is not for you to decide the truth, but for history. THAT is my main beef about "journalists"; their conceit and self-aggrandizement, their eternal pronouncements that they, and only they, are the recorders of the "truth". What total malarkey. Without proper self-criticism, either individually or within the small group, the "truth" almost always diverges from historical truth.
The Bolsheviks were convinced they knew the "truth". Their blind ideological fanaticism led to the murder of millions as they forced their "truth" down other people's throats.
As you so conceited, so vainglorious, that you claim the same level of knowledge of the "truth"?
I've been around just as long as you, cobber, but because I'm an engineer and have to deal with reality, I cannot lose myself in my own fantasies. Reality can be such a complete bitch sometimes.
By definition opinions are subjective.
Selling SEO is like trying to sell non-conductive linings for chocolate teapots. My very subjective opinion.