{"id":948,"date":"2008-05-18T00:05:22","date_gmt":"2008-05-17T23:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=948"},"modified":"2008-05-18T20:53:27","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T19:53:27","slug":"the-origins-of-churnalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/05\/the-origins-of-churnalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The origins of ‘Churnalism’"},"content":{"rendered":"

N<\/span>ick Davies<\/strong> has put ‘churnalism’ on the map, but where did the word first appear? Thanks to the miracle of Nexis, you can go back to the beginning of the 1990s to find it in yet another media jeremiad, this time from the late Boston Globe<\/a><\/strong><\/em> columnist, David Nyhan<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

When trash appears as news<\/span> (May 2, 1991)<\/p>\n

The news media are sliding merrily downmarket, trying to retain shrinking advertising revenue and spur sales with spicier, riskier, gamier “news” that wouldn’t have made it two or three years ago.<\/p>\n

While it’s still too early for the returns from the land of Thinktankdom and the collective verdict of the sages of academe, something is rotten in the media. Specifically: the content.<\/p>\n

“Churnalism<\/strong>” would be a better name for it…<\/p>\n

Why have so many of our leading news organizations suddenly gone gaga over trash-news? And all at the same time?<\/p>\n

I’ll take a wild guess. Whenever something goes bad in a profession, be it medical research, military procurement, or the administering of college athletics, Nyhan’s first option is: look at the lust for money.<\/p>\n

Check the numbers in the news biz. What do the papers, magazines and TV networks have in common? Shrinking advertising, lowered incomes, and falling circulation, ratings and, in some cases, stock prices. What do do?<\/p>\n

Nervous editors, lashed by anxious proprietors, decided to spice up the mix. Smarm it up. Stink it up. Go downmarket. Lower standards. So long, Edward R. Murrow; hello, trash. Trash sells. <\/p>\n

Trash is cheaper to produce than quality investigative journalism that can be very detailed, very boring, and very expensive – never mind that it can be very significant.<\/p>\n

No bulletin here, kids: sex sells. Even when it stinks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that was seventeen years ago…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Davies has put ‘churnalism’ on the map, but where did the word first appear? Thanks to the miracle of Nexis, you can go back to the beginning of the 1990s to find it in yet another media jeremiad, this time from the late Boston Globe columnist, David Nyhan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}