While perusing Twitter today, I came across a link to a Business Insider article. It was a standard BI type of article where the news was kept fairly high-level, digestible and concisely written - just a quick snapshot of the news and why it was important.
I think that there is a certain amount of that that is healthy for readers in today's fast-paced world. Many would argue that we can only take in so many pieces of information in a given day, so it is better to get as many 1000 feet views of numerous topics than it is to develop an in-depth understanding of a few select issues.
But too much of that and we start to lose the significance of issues by glancing over some of the nuances. And that is where I start to get a little frustrated with a publication like Business Insider. In addition to its click-baiting (save that for another day), it would prefer a gatling gun style approach where it guns down issues left and right rather than focusing on some truly solid reporting on bigger issues. Ultimately it is the reader who loses out when this happens.
Take for instance an article that came out just before the Olympics - 16 Crazy Anecdotes About Sex In The Olympic Village. Never mind the fact that the title of the article would seem to suggest that these are direct anecdotes the journalist acquired, the entire article is simply a "listicle" of a truly excellent piece of journalism that Sam Alipour put together for ESPN two years ago just before the 2012 London Olympics - Will you still medal in the morning?
The ESPN article is long by our "this article seems interest...holy shit there's a squirrel!!" attention spans. But I have read this ESPN article before and I can tell you that it is well worth the additional 15 minutes that it takes to go start to finish on it. It provides everyone with an authentic description of what it is like in the Olympic Village for an athlete - something which none of us will ever have a chance to experience.
The Business Insider version is a list of one line snippets that were pulled from the article and paired with random images. It took me about 30 seconds to go through the entire thing, told me literally nothing about the actual Olympic village itself and shed no insight on the great lengths that Alipur went through to acquire his information in the article.
So is Business Insider the problem? Or are the readers to blame? It is a little bit of both. On one hand, readers can demand some modicum of effective journalism rather than the laziness of turning an outstanding piece into a tiresome list. On the other hand, Business Insider should be pushing its journalists to produce content that is better than that.
Don't get me wrong, I am not condemning every story that appears on the website. I have seen some longform journalism on Business Insider that I truly enjoyed. I have also seen some great reporting on issues around business and technology. But articles like the one above cheapen the rest of those articles to the point that I frequently avoid reading Business Insider articles that people post on Twitter and Facebook.
Alipour leveraged an insane rolodex on contacts to provide this look into the Olympic Village. Business Insider took his work, gave him a one sentence credit at the top, turned it into a list, slapped a click-baiting title to it and called it complete. And that's where the issue comes in for me.
The next time you're reading an article like this on Business Insider or another similar website and they link back to the original piece - do yourself a favor and read the original. You'll be surprised by just how much you can learn and you just might put the pressure on Business Insider to do more reporting just like it.
For an example of Business Insider doing excellent reporting to show that they truly are capable of it, check out this article on the story behind AOL CEO Tim Cook firing an employee in front of the entire company - The Story Behind Why AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Fired An Employee In Front Of 1,000 Coworkers
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