Craig Silverman‘s new report, Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, is a must-read for any journalist or editor who works with fast-moving news. You can download it here (pdf).
At the end of last year, Gawker editor Max Read published a memo outlining the strategy and priorities for the site in 2015.
“Already ankle-deep in smarmy bullshit and fake ‘viral’garbage, we are now standing at the edge of a gurgling swamp of it,”he wrote.
Read’s direction to staff was to avoid being yet another site rushing to post viral stories. The goal, he said, was to be “a trusted guide to the overwhelming new Internet, your escort through and over the bog of Facebook and Twitter, your calibration tool for the cycle of incident and outrage and parody social-media account. What’s actually happening here? Is this story news? Is that photo real?”
This strategy runs counter to the approach many news websites currently take when it comes to viral content, online rumors and unverified claims. They scour the web and social media for anything that might generate traffic, and work to get it up and promoted as a fast as possible. Verification and context are someone else’s job, should they choose to do it.
