You don’t think the headlines that paperboys yelled out was “clickbait”? That the previews of the upcoming news at 11 were not “clickbait”? That those sales of papers or numbers of viewers were a direct payoff of what we now call “clickbait”. Which is nothing more than a new word reflective of modern news delivery in a hyper sensationalized headline or promo.No, they have always had a slant.
But now they are incentivized to crank out click bait. Before it wasnt as prolific because people paid them for their paper, which was printed for all to read. They could tweak readership a bit by doing better. But unless they sucked hard, they would retain those subscriptions.
Today if they dont tweak via clickbait, they dont earn.
This is not anything new, just a new name for despicable actions, with few real consequences…
A short history of ‘click-bait’ journalism
From the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ of 1835, ‘Yellow Journalism’ has been around longer than you might imagine. But can it survive forever?
institute.aljazeera.net