I’ve made the rounds of daily newspaper newsrooms, lifestyle newsmagazines, trade publications, business newspapers and magazines, international news services, and online magazines for a few decades and witnessed the dumbing down of journalism.

But on the other hand, we now have some of the best journalism ever, in abundance: listicles.  Listicles are totally important to readers, and here’s why:

Thoughts to consider

• The digital journalist problem
• A 30-second attention span
• Fishing with clickbait
• Why listicles matter

The digital journalist problem

Years back, the new kiddos on the journo grind were calling themselves “digital journalists.”  Thankfully, that name didn’t take (it always struck me as cloying).

Still, that condescending mindset toward readers is deeply entrenched with the New Digital Journalists.  This “profession” (scare quotes used to indicate I think it’s no longer professional or, generally speaking, much of a profession) has become increasingly upper-middle-class, entitled, and both perverse and diverse, all of which appears to have been bad.

Note: There once were a lot of diverse black-owned newspapers in this land, and people read them, and they were run by black people, and they went out of business because people stopped reading them, just like white-owned newspapers.

30-second attention span

Since people have dismally low attention spans due to the internet (30 seconds, tops, I’m told), they’re an impatient, childish sort of reader.  They need hand-holding, and lots of subheads to move them along.  (Even at risk of destroying beautiful prose, the stupid stuff must be made clear first.)

Painful as it may be, NDJ types must spoon-feed dumb people information.  It’s the cross these wordsmiths must carry, to engender a more enlightened, government-controlled electorate.

Fishing with clickbait

Rather than provide readers with thoughtful analysis of issues, new digital journos prefer fishing for readers with clickbait, ’cause that’s where the money is.  Listicles are stories meant to hit on search terms for everything from “32 pieces of the best fishing gear” to “7 ways to avoid getting a bad haircut and what to do if you do.”

What’s most important is to get the reader to come to the website to browse the story for 15 seconds.  Give him what he wants!  Fluff!  It’s like how people used to browse J.C. Penney catalogues 50 years ago — breezily!

Why listicles matter

I cannot overstate that impatient readers need info right now!

Readers need laundry lists of info, which we most gracefully call listicles.  Listicles will give some of the salient data to them, and some of it may even sink into their thick, distracted skulls.

So now we have online content mills and their main product, listicles, that are no more than laundry lists of schtuff.  It’s incrementally placed data (sometimes, if not often, A.I.-generated), supposedly appealing to readers (and certainly editors) who are spooked by thick paragraphs of prose unbreached by numbskull bullets and subheads.

“Journalists” must give readers quick info on the “best” pickup trucks, or lunchboxes, or retirement plans.  Lists, lists, and micro-lists within listicles.  That’ll grab ’em!  (Or at least it will generate website traffic, hopefully.)

The finest new journalism

From what I’ve seen in a few decades of trawling the back alleys of journalism, the true deplorables often wear the title “Editor,” and their contempt for readers is plain.  One of my first newspaper editors was one of a few who instructed me to “never write anything above a sixth-grade reading level,” because readers are too stupid to understand big words and complex ideas.

I always chafed at the suggestion, since I was once a reader in sixth grade, delivering newspapers and reading them at a twelfth-grade reading level.

Such condescension has brought American journalism to a moment in history where it now mostly provides either one of two toxins: unabashed corporate and government propaganda or listicles (and sometimes a mix of the two).

So read your listicles, lads and lassies, since you’ll glean a lot from them.  I just saw a very interesting piece on “Best Winter Boots for Urban Lumberjacks” that looks super interesting!

J.B. Pensyltucky thinks listicles are an “opiate for the masses” tactic of the liberal color revolution.

Image via Pxhere.