content sharecroppers

Future of journalism department.  

The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog. 

"I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.' 

Hell, I’d do it, even at nine quid a pop (which is roughly what the NHS was paying for sperm donations twenty years ago, incidentally). But I’d do it under a pseudonym. “Martin Kettle” perhaps, or “John Rentoul”. 

A lot of Kettle’s output right now could be titled how to massage a dog. It’s just that he’s paid rather a lot for it.

Comments

[ejh]

The seductions of cliquism and presidentialism to which Blair succumbed

I may not have been paying sufficient attention to Martin recently (not since the Robert Tressell Was Responsible For Stalin And Mao piece, I should think) but I confess I don't recall him charging Tony with these faults all that often.

[dsquared]

she's actually underselling herself - I can't speak to the seater vest or dog massage articles, but the gin one looks like a perfectly sensible set of instructions for steeping herbs in vodka. Can't personally see why anyone would bother when gin is commercially available, but it's certainly not going to kill anyone.

[jamie]

I think it's a dislcaimer. Cheap, rapid content and cheap, rapid lawyering are an uneasy combination.

[Tim Worstall]

I've done Demand Studio stuff. Heck, if money's short then it's an easy enough place to make £100 a day.

Yes, my own name. No shame in it at all.

[Martin Wisse]

Sort of the antithesis of what the internet was supposed to be about though, all those reams and reams of farmed content to sell ad space.

[Alex]

I've seen a French version of this - a huge book of "household tips" that included applying toothpaste to nappy rash. I do not think this is sensible advice. In fact, about 20% of the tips involved toothpaste, and I wonder if some poor content-drone hadn't quietly started taking the piss.

[Charlie]

all those reams and reams of farmed content to sell ad space.

Does it matter how big the internet gets, though? Or how much advertising can be spread around it? There are search sites that cut through the less good stuff v. effectively, and then there's pools of linked pages where you tend in each case to trust the linker. I'd hate to see the rise of a 'curated' 'internet'. Best case, it'd be subscription packages to Time and the Economist (as part of a superb value introductory offer with your new iPad). A sensible person would have to accept voluntary exile to the New Yorker, or the LRB, or some other such compromise, and that's the end of the once-promising many-to-many broadcast experiment.