I have hit a breaking point this morning with what search engines call the news.
"Secret for the perfect toast" is on the moving list of news stories today. I almost went ballistic yesterday with "What's dirtier than a toilet?" on the rotation, but was distracted by other things. I get it - not everything has to be heavy news, a bit of light information can be fun and entertaining. Fine. So tell me who is marrying whom and how short that tennis star's skirt is, but please, do not insult my intelligence by trying to tell me that scientists have just broken the code on the perfect toast. Come on!!
If we don't have an appetite for more fluffy news about celebrities, how about information about new inventions, human interest stories about people who beat the odds or volunteers who are making a difference? Why? Because these stories actually take time and research to write. They require journalistic knowledge and effort to pull together and search engines don't want to pay for that kind of quality. They just want "eyes" on their site so they can sell more expensive ads. So they hire monkeys to produce content based on searches that people do instead of applying themselves at work. I should know, I write for one of those search engines (a girl's got to earn a living you know). I make $15 per article. Do you know what you get for $15? Total crap.
Hey, this could be another idea for Oprah - run an on-line news channel that actually hires people with journalistic integrity, pay them a fair salary for their work and refuse to publish anything unless it informs, inspires or educates. Thought for the day.
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