Anne Elizabeth Moore, a Chicago-based author in her evisceration of Vice Media, had three gems that are worth sharing.
- Lie becomes joke becomes stance: the evolution of form is mirrored by readers’ decreasing attention spans in the Internet age.
- The metric of success is “clicks” over “paper sales”—a clear, and discomfitingly natural, extension of tabloid news values into the digital sphere.
- That’s reserved for “clicks,” both the motivator and the reward in a media ecosystem without broadcast licenses or cover prices—two outdated systems that, however ineffective, promote at least the appearance of media accountability to a viewing or reading public.
The merits of rest of her argument are for others better equipped to discuss. I am not a purveyor of Vice, though I occasionally end up on Motherboard, a technology focused subsection of the publication. Still, Moore’s three observations are easily applicable to other publications as well.