Why news organizations should drop (or rebrand) online opinion columns
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The world has changed. Let’s count the ways.
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Opinions already permeate the internet, and there is no barrier to entry to publish one yourself. Smart opinions are curated on platforms like Medium and Substack covering just about any subject and perspective you can imagine. You can directly follow the people you trust.
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As news organizations shrink or disappear altogether, news coverage is on a decline, leaving “news deserts” in the US and abroad. Given today’s events, we need more local reporting and news analysis wherever we can get it. We also need more fact-checking and investigations. There’s enough mis- and disinformation out there to keep thousands of journalists busy.
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Most readers struggle with distinguishing between news and opinion — especially when they’re both housed under the same brand. If the logo and URL is NYTimes.com, it’s the New York Times. In the battle against mis- and disinformation, this perception problem is deeply damaging to the same brands that news organizations are fighting to uphold. Just ask average news consumers about a newspaper endorsing a candidate — especially a candidate they don’t support. Try to explain “the firewall” as they blame the news organization’s biased ways.
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When users can’t distinguish news from opinion, running opinion under a news brand destroys trust for news coverage. Trust (and revenue) are a news organization’s most precious resources.
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Online news and opinion articles are mostly discovered à****la carte. They’re shared one-by-one on social media or by email, often cherrypicked to prove a particular point. There’s no collective balance, because content consumption is fractured.
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Many readers just scan the headline and immediately react according to their own beliefs, skipping over any depth and nuance explained in the opinion piece itself. Opinion pieces have become fuel, not education.
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Political operatives use opinion sections to “place” disinformation or to sow doubt around basic facts, gaining a widespread audience under a respected brand. Here’s exhibit A. This is the exact monster that news organizations should be aligned at fighting.
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As we’ve seen at the New York Times, internal debates over opinion columns are tearing at newsroom morale. Employees are already overwhelmed, stressed and should be focused on covering the extraordinary events of 2020.
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Some news analysis stories are miscategorized as opinion, especially in “controversial” topics like voter suppression, climate change and COVID. These stories are written by journalists and supported with ample evidence, but labeled as opinion out of caution — or because the writer happens to work in the opinion department. But when facts are miscategorized as opinion, it gives rise to doubt.
And what do news organizations gain by having opinion sections?
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(Updated with #9 on Nov. 22, 2020)