Personally, I don’t perceive tabloid journalism to be necessarily a bad thing. Like when there is a room, full of Wall Street businessmen, counting their profits, for someone to like burst in and be like: “And what about the homeless?”, and in case of a general “We don’t care.”, to continue a newspaper article like: “Is this the world we want? A world, where the people at the economical and political top, don’t care even about their fellow citizen freezing to death in the thousands!” – such turns to sensationalism, but seems fair game.
But – while in this case, the cause may be all noble-like, just wanting to cause a commotion to get the topic rolling in public – when the entire business model is about scandalizing everything, to sell them copies and/or ad-revenue, it usually ends up as quite cheap sensationalism. “Cheap”, as in for someone to spend some hours on research, such as about eviction law in the jurisdiction, and talking to a judicial expert about whether landlords adhere at least to that minimal set of requirements as laid out by law, and so on, that requires work-time. And when the article then brings in perhaps $100 with ad-revenue, that aren’t really many hours that can be paid from it.
And what we are looking at these days, seems to be quite a number of groups trying to make profit with cheap content. Something, which sure sounds sweet. Just talking for an hour, or making some blog-posts, and thanks to ads, there is an income, some are able to live on. But, this isn’t necessarily quality content, even if the studio looks like all posh – just like a fine-dining restaurant, but ends up serving microwave-meals they got from a supermarket.
So, myself, I am not a fan of spending time, to listen to someone just rambling on about stuff. But just as I like being able to express my thoughts, as in these words here, it’s the modern day, with everyone being able to broadcast, with just a PC, smartphone, and similar.
What seems quite a pity to me though, is when the cheap ramblings get treated like it would be professional stuff. That isn’t to say that a ramble may not have a point. But, a load of pathos is just that, and far from actual journalism or even politics. In example, I may ramble on for an hour about how I am unemployed, after Mr Trump made life harder for economies in Europe. But to just insult him for an hour, to speculate about his “brain processing power”, and so on, that would be kinda pathetic even if it may be spicy – whereas a political commentary would rather focus on the lack of local job opportunities, and talk about that in a serious manner. Like:
“Welcome to today’s episode of DaLe’s Show. Our topic today, the situation on the job market in Berlin in particular, a situation complicated by recent woes about trade tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. …”
That may sound boring already, compared to all them variety shows, and whatnot. But like this, it is rather going into actual politics, instead of making a spectacle out of everything.