The new journalism sin that’s worse than clickbait
If you thought clickbait news article were annoying, journalist and The Media Distillery founder Alexander Liddington-Cox has uncovered another practice that’s even worse and wastes more of your time.
Consumer awareness about manipulative media strategies remains confined to the term ‘clickbait’, but there’s another long-standing strategy that wastes more of a reader’s time.
This strategy raises fundamental questions about journalism training, the economics of story selection and the levels of trust consumers have in our media that the communications industry needs to leverage business outcomes.
I usually spell it “burying the lead.” But then I’m old and redundant, so what would I know?
It’s an old expression, deliberately spelt as ‘lede’ to avoid confusion with the term ‘leading’ from the now redundant days of physically typesetting the layout.
*lead