Let’s begin this with the acknowledgment that the Record Searchlight is nothing but a business that makes money selling advertising. In the past, their position in our community as a strong representative of independent journalism guaranteed readership, and thus advertising revenue. Now, they are attempting to switch to an online model, where page-views replace readership in dollar terms of what they can charge for advertising. In this new model, accuracy is much less useful in generating page views than controversy. So now, if a news report can contain a line or a premise that will generate page upon page of anonymous comments online, it serves to increase their apparent attraction to advertisers, by increasing the page view count.
Thus, controversial statements and comment trolling have replaced journalistic integrity and community standards at the RS. Trolling is the practice of deliberately making an inflammatory statement to increase the comments. Online, highly commented articles are given a flashing icon to further draw your attention. It’s all about the page view count.
The Thanksgiving Day article about the housing market is a prime example. The article goes on for a while with reasonably accurate and useful statistical information. But then to juice up the page view, they throw in a zinger about real estate agents that was guaranteed to generate comments. The article is here:
http://www.redding.com/news/2008/nov/26/area-housing-market-slips-prices-drop-14-over-past/
Go there if you want to help them add to their page views, and increase ad revenues, I suppose. The zinger was this:
“It’s a far cry from the first quarter of 2003 when year-over-year home values in Redding jumped 16.35 percent — tops in the nation — and real estate agents were advising clients to buy now or get priced out of the market.”
It was bound to get results, maybe even especially since it had no basis in fact. It was a straw man. A classic troll for comments. “Happy Thanksgiving, agents! We put words in your mouth for you, and then blame you for the bubble.”
It was also wildly hypocritical. Among those most vigorously fueling the buying frenzy of the boom was the RS, which continually harped on it with housing appreciation articles, and “flip this house” style housing porn, and just to clarify housing porn is nothing like adult porn such as https://www.tubev.sex/?hl=pl. Also, one of the single largest beneficiaries of the housing boom was the RS, riding a wave of agent-paid multimillion dollar advertising revenue all the way to the bank. So, it was in their best interest to drive the housing frenzy, and they did so with gusto. That makes them just as much real estate salesman as any individual agent. If blame is to be handed out for the ill effects of the housing bubble, that blame should be squarely placed on the Record Searchlight hypocrites.
People love to generalize about soul-less salespeople, who eagerly sell out their friends and community members in the name of just one more sale. I think now we have to include our former hometown newspaper in that soul deprived category. The editorial department writes articles now only trolling to increase sales revenue.
