What worked in this essay?

I made a firm statement in my first essay about how I believe the CBS news program and its counterparts in the legacy news media scene were conducting a damaging style of news production. Using one of CBS's daily evening news programs I highlighted my issue with the consistent lack of these news companies providing their consumers with well rounded event coverage. Mainly, the absence of cause and effect analysis of events, whether they be of political, societal, or cultural importance. After viewing the short film documentary Stop the Presses, I feel that I have some new ideas to explore around my previous claims. Using this film and what I learned I have a new viewing lens to analyze my past statements, make new discoveries and dive deeper into the ever evolving news media industry.

When I searched today for the July 3rd evening news recording, I saw that it was no longer posted. The only episodes I could view were the evening shows of the 26th spanning back to the 19th. I had to resort to using CBS's YouTube channel to try and find all of the cut and edited segments from the full evening news episode of July 3. I understand the obvious concern that a news website like CBS would have tried to keep a large catalog of all their previous evening programs, but only posting the prior week's worth of programs was quite a surprise to me. I think having an archive of the previous month or two would be much more appropriate for the user experience on the website. I wondered as to why this was so I tried viewing it with a more informed lens based on what I learned from the stop the presses documentary. I tried to pay more attention to the layout of the CBS website, What did I say? What did I not see and what did CBS decide viewers should see in priority. First however I'll share some context about what I learned from the short film documentary Stop the Presses.

Our rapid entry into the age of technology has forced many industries to evolve and adjust to the changing environment. Businesses across all industries that have dove head first into using the power of technology have benefited greatly while other businesses that have been slow or hesitant to embrace the new era have seen declines in profit margins. An industry that was greatly impacted during the 2010's was the newspaper industry. The need to adapt was felt from the bottom to the top of many businesses in the scene including the Rocky Mountain News, The Huffington Post, and many other metropolitan newspapers. The higher ups, executives, and CEOs were feeling pressured by the noticeable decrease in profit margins, and the vast number of journalists employed at these businesses were feeling highly insecure in their employment status. Many of these newspaper businesses were downsizing and doing massive layoffs in reaction to the decrease in revenue. What had been causing all of this rapid change and impact? Many consumers were transitioning to online news as their main form of news media consumption. One business that capitalized on this shift was BuzzFeed, a rather young online media company that was ambitious with its adaptation to the world of online media. Their business model was eager, relying on information input coming from user sharing rather than only user searches. BuzzFeed was seeing online traffic of 80 million individual users a month, numbers that solidified the brand as one of the top dogs in the scene.

What I learned from Stop the Presses was that a news corporation's online presence and format of content delivery is of utmost importance now in this digitally dominated age. I noticed that the CBS website had a very distinct layout, the front page was only filled with breaking news headlines with their timeliness emphasized with a time stamp. None of the time stamps would be greater than 4 hours ago, many of them also listed as updated only minutes ago. What I began to understand was this attitude of having the most sensational and news breaking content as the objective of what is to be served to consumers was in part a survival tactic. The same thing I critique CBS for leaving out of their news reporting is the same content they steer away from as it does not cause nearly as much of an initial stimulation to a consumer as would a breaking headline would. In the interest of profit a company like CBS would be much more inclined to push reactionary content with headlines of "drone strikes make impact on Gaza" rather than a segment discussing the history and the cause and effect of the situation in the Middle East.

What happened to BuzzFeed? In Stop the Presses, the company was highlighted as one of the most popular and well performing "news" brands at the time of the transition into the digital age. BuzzFeed was a young corporation with young, progressive and ambitious ideas of how to serve news content to the masses in the new age. They focused and relied on the sharing of information from individual to individual as their main driver of content creation. What I mean by "sharing of information" is in the same sense as the sharing of information we see today on social media. BuzzFeed articles back in the time of their heyday closely resembled that of think pieces or blog posts that we see usually in smaller bite size fashions today on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Obviously, the idea of individuals crafting their own personal works of journalism i.e. blog posts and think pieces is not a new idea but what BuzzFeed did that was revolutionary was hosting a website that was a centralized access point for consumers to view this kind of news content. However, nowadays, in 2024 BuzzFeed is dead. But how is that? They were so revolutionary and ambitious how is it that they faded into obscurity?

Something I mentioned briefly in the prior paragraph, was how the content that BuzzFeed posted and gained so much profit off of is content that we still see today on social media however, it is of much smaller, bite-size proportions, and there is a lot more of it. An aspect of the digital age that I think doesn't get enough attention today is the relationship of media being increasingly more readily available and the decrease in attention spans. With news media and other forms of media content becoming so easily accessible through our devices people are losing their ability to stay focused and engaged with single pieces of media. The algorithms today that hold total control over what media we engage with have been crafted with the sole intent of increasing user engagement and watch times. What this is also doing is engraving the idea that there is always something that will peak your interest waiting for you to engage with, meaning, whenever you get bored with a video, show, or post that your engaged with, it only takes a swipe or a few inputs to get you back to surfing a page specially crafted for you of recommended media. We see this in "explore" or "discover" pages with social media and "recommended for you" with netflix, disney plus, and the news programs that partner to be displayed on these subscription services. CBS themselves has partnered with hulu and paramount plus.

In conclusion, I feel that I have come to a point of greater understanding regarding my gripes with legacy media's news content formula. I can see how in many aspects there has been decay where there has been revolution. In the turn of the technological age many news companies were focused on how to adapt to the new landscape, we saw brands that were the most ambitious becoming the most profitable, with buzzfeed as a prime example. But just as their quick entry into the spotlight, they too would quickly fade into a declining business as social media grew to be a giant for much of society's news consumption. Buzzfeed had presented a centralized point for people to easily access news and information, and not long after their success social media came to do the same thing, yet their algorithms had been innovated to value even shorter and more sensational content. I understand now that many of these legacy news companies do not want to fall to the same fate as Buzzfeed, so they too produce their content valuing reactionary and sensational coverage.