As we round another coronavirus bend, this one with anniversaries and vaccinations and encouraging numbers, we’re set for more “remembrances” in the media. Some of these are tasteful. All of them are designed to make money.
There’s nothing wrong with making money off of tasteful remembrances of tragedy. It’s part of the media’s job, the same way nice funerals are part of the job of funeral homes. There’s not that much wrong with making money off of tasteless remembrances, either. There’s something wrong with being tasteless about it, but the making money part? If there’s a market, so be it.
Even in this context, though, don’t let yourself get hoodwinked. There’s somber/authentic/graceful. There’s opportunistic/manipulative/generally shitty. Here are a few signs of each.
Good Sign: The media outlet is a non-profit.
The state of Texas is blessed by the powers that be with the Texas Tribune, a non-profit media entity covering all things Lone Star State. It, like all non-profits, is trying to make some amount of money, but there are bounds on that pursuit that disable it from being the sole guiding light of the institution.
Nonprofit media outlets like the Texas Tribune aren’t immune from clickbait—they, too, need people reading if they’re going to get their money.
But generally speaking, they’re better-equipped to do something good with one of these.
Bad Sign: You have to click multiple pages to see whatever this thing is.
Classic clickbait move. Take it from me, member of The Internet™: We are trying to get pageviews. They are our water. We need them to grow and survive. And one of the most obnoxious ways to do this is to make people click through multiple pages to consumer one piece of work.
What about galleries? If clicking to the next image reloads the page, it’s probably bad-faith. Maybe not at the level of the person who put it together, but at the level of the entity as a whole.
Good Sign: The remembrance isn’t the lead thing.
Yes, front pages of print editions can be effective with this stuff, but in something like an email newsletter, they’re leading with something they want to convince you to click, and they’re ending with something you can click if you have the time/desire. By nature, then, putting a remembrance at the tail-end of a newsletter or mentioning it quietly on social media is generally a good sign that said media entity is trying to do something authentic.
Bad Sign: The remembrance is promoted on social media.
This is basically the inverse of the previous blurb: If someone is running a paid advertisement for their remembrance, it is not good-faith.
Good Sign: The remembrance is well-done.
Austere. Sad. Leaves you some space to think.
You might think the goal with all of these is to make a good remembrance, because theoretically a good remembrance is what should get clicks. But the click’s just the entrance to the content. With something one-off like one of these, their best financial play is to design something that a lot of people will click on. Doing it well isn’t guaranteed to get clicks.
This, though, like the rest of these, isn’t foolproof. And we’ve got an example:
Bad Sign: The media outlet is trying to make the remembrance the story.
I understand that part of the New York Times’s thing right now is convincing comfortable white liberals that it’s on the front line of some war against everything they hold holy, and that to do that they’re trying to build a fan club devoted to themselves, and not actually devoted to their work. That’s why The Daily often eschews offering multiple viewpoints for the sake of a cleaner narrative. The Washington Post does a lot of this too, of course. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” and all that. But more people read the New York Times. It’s bigger. Are the New York Times and the Washington Post both important journalistic institutions? Absolutely. Are they annoying and self-righteous to their detriment? Absolutely.
Anyway, the New York Times had a beautiful remembrance on their front page back in May, when the 100,000th American life was confirmed lost to the coronavirus. Names. Ages. In some cases, a brief sentence from the person’s obituary. I think they listed one thousand people. Powerful stuff.
Then, the New York Times went and tried to make the remembrance the story, pushing a big ol’ piece about how the remembrance was made, amplifying responses to the remembrance…the whole New York Times *thing.*
The remembrance, good or bad, will speak for itself. And if it’s good-faith, the media outlet will let it do that.
