I really need you to read this article, okay?

Joel Achenbach, a Washington Post staff writer, is worried.

Where once was the time that journalists were not driven by money, this is certainly not the case now. Back then, money came with the job. Now, the job is aimed at making money. As print journalism is moving into the online platform, page views are determining what content gets posted because the more page views one gets, the more likely he or she is to make more moolah. The problem is that sometimes the best content really does not get a lot of exposure. As Achenbach mentions, topics such as American Idol rejects or Brittney Spears’s crotch get searched more often than other important matters. As humans, we love to read about gossip, entertainment and drama. The serious stuff, we save for later. Where once we read the morning paper with our breakfast, we now read the news on our Twitter as we drive to work. News outlets are so obsessed with chasing readers, they sometimes miss out on the action.

So it’s time we stop focusing on the quantity of page views and readers and instead put our attention to the quality of news. Here is a funny clip from the Onion that tackles a similar topic:

Happy reading folks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 4:13 am and is filed under Tech Blogs.  Tagged Achenbach, online journalism, the onion You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.