Friday, August 02, 2013

USAT | Five reasons why it's aping MarketWatch

USA Today's publisher and its editor-in-chief both served time at financial news site MarketWatch, where editors play to short attention spans by turning complex topics into bite-sized listicles. For some reason, the No. 5 resonates.

As in: five reasons everyone hates this bull market; five out-of-favor stocks investors love, and top five fastest-growing car brands.

Not to be outdone (or, more precisely, original), this morning's USAT brings us:
As we'd say when I worked at the paper from 2000-2008, three examples and it's a trend!

5 comments:

  1. Why 5? Because your favorite keyboard banger can pump these out one-handed.

    Leaving the other hand free to peruse BNQT's top 5 of the day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Idiotic paper, dumbing itself down to new lows in desperate attempt to remain relevant to an even dumber readership. Instead of trying to elevate journalism and educate/inform the public, USAT continues to cater to the lowest of the low. What a freakin' embarrassment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Someone from Marketwatch must have gone to CNN.com because they do the same thing. So from that since USA Today, CNN and Marketwatch use this technique it must be an industry trend and you can't blame that on USA Today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So imitating MarketWatch and CNN is a strategy? Wow!

      Delete
  4. And more and more its mini-bites are the products of ripping off other work, apparently 'cause this latest round of buyouts left so few veteran reporters capable of producing original content sophisticated enough to pull in readers for any amount of time. The top story on the Web site right now is a bylined story about bullfighting from a "reporter" who very clearly did not talk to a single human quoted in the piece. A Journalism 101 no-no, but it's apparently the way they roll at USAT now. The story is entirely ripped off from AP or from propaganda on the web site of the organization featured in the piece. Can't imagine having the chutzpah to put my name on someone else's work or to do the due diligence to make sure the story is right, but that corner-cutting and ripping off is now standard on the site. Sad.

    ReplyDelete

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