We’ve all heard of click-bait, but some might accuse the Gloucestershire Echo of publishing ‘chick-bait’ after a story about a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken discarded in the streets of Cheltenham yesterday morning found its way onto its website.
The ‘rubbish’ tale was accompanied by social media reaction to its publication and a plea for the owner of the food to come forward with the inside story of how it ended up on the pavement.
Other pictures showed an empty KFC bag had been found in the road nearby, while a later update depicted “the scene a few hours later at 11.25am, when only the chips remained.”
Then again, fries are clearly big news in these parts. Back in August 2013, sister daily The Citizen hit the headlines after publishing the following ‘silly season’ tale about the ‘biggest chip in Gloucestershire.’
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It’s new low.
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Every journalist I know goes ballistic if you mention clickbait.
But the evidence is pretty damning
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I remember a few years back being so fed up with meeting daily quotas on the web site I put up in sheer frustration the most stupid trivial story I could imagine. It went viral. Nothing is too low for click bait.
Forget the public and the hacks. The vital question is what do potential advertisers think of such rubbish as the KFC piece.
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It is indeed a new low but I very much suspect tongue-in-cheek journalists on the Echo are well aware of this and are taking a bit of the Michael out of themselves in that their group’s relentless obsession with web figures leads to ever-more inventive, obscure and desperate clickbait.
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Support Local Journalism, hey.
Does the Echo realise people are laughing at them, not with them?
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This is so depressing!
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@Digifan. Which KFC piece are you talking about? The bit with a small amount of chicken breast (where does the rest go?) or the portion which is just bone and gristle covered in salty batter.
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Our profession has come to this.
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Johnston Press editorial board surely must be holding emergency meetings on how to emulate.
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There is a story here, guys. The man responsible for the spilled chicken repast has now come forward and given his account of the incident on the GE – so what! But, on the GE website, the old Local World logo is still proudly displayed despite a strongly worded pronouncement from new owner Trinity Mirror a month ago to the effect that all LW branding had to be discarded immediately.
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I have seen this appear on Twitter and the ladbible Facebook post had over 1300 comments. A Google news search showed that the Metro, Mirror and Huff Post also did the story afterwards.
There is an appetite for this rubbish.
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Would be interesting to hear the paper’s rationale for this story. For me it values web hits over anything else – and is not good publicity. Perhaps HTFP could contact it?
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Worryingly, the editor at our paper thought this was a brilliant way to attract hits. The future is far from bright.
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The sad thing is I guess the ‘impressive’ stats are probably being celebrated today.
I imagine Mr Smith who runs the local bookshop is delighted his advert has been seen by people in America, Australia and goodness knows where. His business is probably booming today.
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You know, for years and years we have been told that people are time poor, that they want stuff here and now and lack the attention span to read lengthy in-depth pieces. All absolute tosh, of course, made up in the heads of many a copycat editor. And now click bait proves it. People, it would appear, have LOTS of time on their hands. Lots and lots of it to waste on stupid stories that they will then comment on and lose even more time with. They’ll also pour over social media, too, they haven’t anything else to do.
And what happens? The journalists who say they are overworked and have no time to go out and research stories are willingly knocking this stuff out. History will eventually show that the internet didn’t kill journalism; journalists did. After all, the internet is merely another medium and tool for the written word. And look at it’s being used. Have a good weekend all.
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I come back to what someone else on HTFP. Put aside the crap journalism. It is just another way of making money. The big question has to be what the big question has always been, whether paper or website.
What the hell do advertisers think of this tosh?
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A very funny older guy and brilliant headline writer I once came across a few years back, now out of the industry I think, once headlined a web story “headless torso”. Sure it was. A snowman with head removed. Loads of hits, loads of laughs in the office. Management delighted.
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Aaaaagh.
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