Excellent piece. Facing up to the truth is the only way to start dealing with it.

I feel so happy for changing my degree from journalism.

By the way, what’s that cute smiley face at the bottom of TC under ‘Contact’?

You’re right. But the consumers will decide. If they’re dumb enough to not realize “fast food” content when they see it, then they probably weren’t part of the core journalism audience anyway. Most people, when given a choice, prefer to read WSJ over Larry’s SpamStock Blog any day.
The new media world will be about trust. I think technologies like Reuters’ OpenCalais will play a big part in keeping dollars going to the original creators. Text analytics technology combined with semantic analysis technology will be able to quickly identify the read and rewrite hacks, even at the NY times.

Don’t know how much I agree with all of this considering search engines such as google are trying to focus on social media related search results

This is not a new problem. But it’s an interesting one.

My father wrote for the City News Bureau in Chicago many, many years ago. The radio stations that licensed their wire content were expressly prohibited from “ripping and reading” — directly repurposing their content verbatim on-air. The idea was that they were required to have their staff newswriters write their own copy, using the wire as source material.

Naturally, the DJs frequently ignored this decree and read exactly what was on the wire. So, the bureau got paid wire-service prices for what was used as finished-news-product. These sorts of screwings have multiplied and evolved along with the rise of technologies enabling their evolution ever since, and will continue to do so. Creator beware, I suppose.

Interestingly, one tactic they used to use was to inject subtle (or not-so-subtle) puns into their copy which, when read aloud verbatim, would cause mild (at least) embarrassment. Sadly, the only anecdote along these lines that I can recall is ethnically insensitive, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. (This brings to mind the tactic some image-theft victims have used on content thieves unwise enough to simply link to the original images — swapping image files out for something offensive, without warning, leaving the URL intact).

Anyway, great writeup, and I only take issue with one conclusion — where you see us eating fast food five times a day, I see the possibility of thousands of lemonade stands — the content creators who “leave those brands and do their own thing”, as you suggest, have never before had as many options as they do now for publishing, syndicating, and getting paid for what they do.

The thing about fast food content is, you may be able to sling it out quickly, and it may *look* like a hamburger, but it’ll still taste like garbage, and artisan content will still be viable. Whoever figures out a model for mass-marketing that artisan content that’s not (or is less) vulnerable to ripoff will be richly rewarded (think, perhaps, Starbucks to your McDonald’s analogy).

good piece – expect much furious denial, but it’s absolutely happening

Fantastic write up!

Innovators = those who accept reality before anyone else and plan accordingly.

I think this is a unavoidable consequence on the web model, where it doesn’t matter how deep news are, but just how fast you can get ‘em.

Online fast is best. It is not important what you’re saying; just say it quickly.

Who moved my cheese?

This article is proof that media is full of morons, init?

The food analogy is right on, and sadly, this is most definitely the direction we are heading in. Go to any city in America and you see 20 McDonald’s (Chili’s and TGIF are just fancy McDonald’s) for every 1 genuine restaurant with an actual chef. Maybe more like 100 to 1. Unfortunately, McDonaldization *is* profitable, and American’s eat it up. I have no doubt you’re dead on with your take on racing to the bottom, but I worry that we will all be duped into eating fast food crap and thinking it’s gourmet on the internet.

This seems like a problem with the search engines and not the content business. If the search engines routinely send visitors to terrible content then a new search engine with a better algorithm will come along and prevail. This is how Google toppled the giants, they simply had better search.

This is an interesting piece and something I’ve observed as well. I hope for the sake of those of us out doing our own sites that we don’t drown in blandness.

Nino
EarthTechling
http://www.earthtechling.com/

All the best revolutions eat their children

I wonder how TC tastes with fava beans?

The key point to add, however, is that ad delivery (and pricing) should be correlated with content quality. According to the AOL and Demand models, quality controls should matter in an economic sense.

“These are the cavemen, or whoever, who were afraid of fire when it was discovered because it burned, or was too technologically advanced to really understand. ”

– ouch. LOL.

I think you’re wrong about one thing. I think that despite the old-world mass media’s current backlash against the new-world internet media and despite the tendency for sites to scrape each other’s content, people (and hence search engines, aggregators, etc.), people are still interested in finding the best information out there, NOT McDonald’s. (Why else would we visit your site and not some other?) I think that the mass media will survive only in the measure that they get back to producing the best quality content, not in falling back on pointlessly belittling and criticizing Youtube, etc. for only having videos about sneezing Panda’s, etc.

Michael:

You’re absolutely right. This is related to the points I was making about the news and music industries in my NYT piece http://bit.ly/5uVdeQ a couple weeks ago. Icurrent.com and Pandora.com are all about empowering users to make the content product THEY want to consume.

The problem with great journalists going out and doing their own thing is that great journalists often have great editors, like great writers in general do. Also, the environment that produced those great journalists will dissolve. Where will the next great journalists come from? Raw talent and experience are two different things. I don’t think a generation of purely self-taught journalists are going to result in anything we can call advancement. Technology marches forward, though. Perhaps to our detriment.

A very good post.

I’m not a journalist. I’m a blogger.

For that reason, I’m not into breaking news, or always posting about breaking news, which has been the focus of traditional media ever since I can remember.

I make sure that I cite everything that I can. I use quotation marks. I don’t regurgitate and spit things out.

I dig deeper into information that interests me. I provide embedded videos, links to sources of sources (and sometimes sources of sources of sources). When I blog about emerging technologies, I try to get information about the people behind the research or the product. I tag each post with meaningful keywords. I also update my posts with corrections when needed.

Why so much detail, given that I blog for free?

Blog = filing cabinet 2.0.

The web is where I keep my stuff. I can search my blog and quickly find what I’m looking for, and revisit the links at my convenience.

Since I have a regular day job and a life, my time is limited. If I did not include links, quotes, citations, details, and tags, my posts would not be useful to me, and not as useful to readers.

I have great appreciation for fellow bloggers who provide this level of depth. I hope that more on-line professional journalists and bloggers would do the same.

Ok. But, why couldn’t it be two journalists and one editor teaming up? There are lots of 3rd party services offering all the pieces of the puzzle. I suppose the key is determining which are the best.

I read the title and immediately thought of Demand Media. Glad to see it was mentioned. I’ve only been familiar with it for a couple months, but the whole idea gives me heartburn.

I wonder how long this piece took to write? Was it time wasted? I think not, but aggregators will disagree.

For the masses, they want fast, cheap and hot. Craftsmanship does not matter. I present you the double cheeseburger off the dollar menu at McDonalds as evidence. They wrap it in paper to disguise the fact it does not look like the picture and it tastes of really crappy beef. But, it is fast, cheap and hot and they sell a lot of them. To many people, that IS a cheeseburger. But, BRGR is still in business.

Mike, great article. My HOPE is that search engines tweak their algorithms to reward original content creators (ie emphasizing more what links are being shared by humans) and hopefully, the only thing demand and aol can win at is “How to Donate Your Car to a Charity” or something of that ilk.

The only way to avoid a problem is the search engines making a change. Heck, they are the reason why things are going in this direction anyway.

Good article, the main point is well taken, but I do not think this is the whole story. As content is dumbed down, it will indeed become harder to find good stuff casually but the rewards for good quality will actually become higher.

For instance, there is right now a vast sea of worthless articles on finance but I disregard them and instead prefer a couple of really good blogs.

I think you neglect the point that dumbing down is intended for crawlers and automated means of acquisition. It will also apply to casual human discovery where one does not spend much more time than first page of Google results on subjects of interest.

But if one wants to dig a little bit deeper, they will be able to find and appreciate gems whose value will be that much higher. Another way of looking at this is that the premium on good, human-based discovery will increase.

To summarize, the article is very good, the trend of racing down to the bottom is very much there, but there is also more to it :) …

Journalists used to make 100 to 500 per article depending on the situation. With their own sites they’d be lucky to get 1000 page views per article for quite sometime, and that’s about 2 to 15 bucks in ad revenue when using the average range of CPMs.

A good article takes at least a couple of hours, so you could make more at McDonalds.

Paid journalists toe one line or another – they’re sterile, even if they have a turn of phrase. Unpaid journalists actually say what’s on their mind, and aren’t controlled by their editors. I prefer unpaid journalists who do it for the love of it.

What about the end of hand crafted startups? We’re still waiting for that confession.

Well done, Mike. I think readers will eventually gravitate to where the best, original content resides. As long as a decent percentage of the aggregators link back to you or the original producer, over time, Darwinian forces of natural selection will help the best original content producers rise to the top.

Spam that is. Correct?

crappy content comes in many guises. word to the wise.

How long will google let the Demand Media’s of the world continue with their SEO abuse? Or maybe google buys Demand Media and becomes even more evil =P

Hi anon,

It’s a WordPress thing. Has to do with tracking data.

excellent post recognizing the changing information production environment.

q: would your dire prognosis be so dire if you examined and included on-going changes in information **consumption** ?

I love this article. So true.

[...] Techcrunch Is Strip Mall The End Of Hand Crafted Content. [...]

Generally, I prefer quality over quantity, but I recognize that fast food content is what drives the internet. I think that much of the old world media has and will continue to come crashing down. First to go was the music industry (no one came to their rescue), now it is the publishing industry and after that will be the movie industry (Oh yes, look out). Once the dust settles, it will be interesting to see what we are left with. The new world of media and entertainment could either be wonderfully fascinating or terribly banal.

Thanks for the post.

McDonald’s had a huge impact on society. It created the franchise fast-food industry. It lead to fewer family meals, fewer meals in community gathering places and it caused a lot of mediocre restaurants and cafes to go out of business. And you can argue that McDonald’s hasn’t been good for our health as a nation.

But good restaurants still survive. People still cook their own meals. We don’t live on McDonald’s alone.

The percentage of fast-food content consumed by consumers may rise, and that could very well be a bad thing for culture and democracy, but it’s unlikely four-star content, just like four-star restaurants, will die (and there will be plenty of room for the other stars, too, depending on a wide range of market conditions).

The great thing about capitalism is that markets are very elastic.

If you follow through on the analogy to McDonalds … sure, fast food content is everywhere but it does not mean you have to eat it … and there is still lots of room in the market for quality.

i saw that once and asked too..someone said its a wordpress stats thing…not sure what exactly

Well said, but is this new? It’s what happens when you subject culture to the law of the market and when you fetishize “democracy”. Something that certain blogs do a lot.

Good stuff. I thought the Demand Media piece in Wired was both fascinating and horrifying at the same time. The thing is that there will always be room for filet in the hamburger market. In the model that Mike posits, great content brands will have the opportunity to prosper – the value they add to the market can still be recognized and rewarded although it may take a combination of policing and paywalling to get there.

“The thing about fast food content is, you may be able to sling it out quickly, and it may *look* like a hamburger, but it’ll still taste like garbage, and artisan content will still be viable.”

This is an important point. Yes, there will be much more noise to the signal with AOL’s idiotic policy, but bad writing is bad writing. People will neither spend much time deciphering poorly written copy, nor will they put much stock in information coming from a source with a reputation for getting its facts wrong. Because people do want quality content, fast food news won’t eat at your readership base, though it will clog up the search results.

Regarding search results, people who encounter worse and worse content when searching on a given search engine are likely to move on to the next one, so there is incentive to return “real food” results. If the search engines don’t solve the problem themselves, then curators like Reddit, Metafilter, BoingBoing, Slashdot, Hacker News, and Collected.info can take up the slack, since the job of curating content is that much more necessary to avoid fast food articles.

[...] Arrington has this to say: So what really scares me? It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today. [...]

I totally agree with the point of the article. If I use something that someone else has written for my blog, I always link back. Bloggers like me need the big guys to find and break the news for us so we can comment on it, link to it, and keep the information engine spinning. Original content is going to become more and more scarce, but I think the more people getting their own ideas on a topic the better it will be for everyone.

Feel better? Not any solutions here…

That’s the WordPress stats plugin :)
http://en.support.wordpress.com/smiley-on-your-blog/

Excellent piece Mike.

IMHO, it is not about traffic and tagging mediocre content for SEO but producing great content. There is no indication that building audience through SEO translates into sales. There is plenty of evidence on the other hand that an audience that is acquired by producing good content stays and spends money.

Good point. The problem is that this fast food also becomes adictive, readers start to loose attention for higher quality content, and can only focus on short ‘nuggets’. I wonder if this process can have an end, ie when people will rebound from lack of quality back to it…

Interesting article. This is even more true going foward. Fast food :/

Good post Michael.

What we really need when everyone is a content creator, are content curators.

I expect the role of curators to be a very important one and i think we will see curation platforms rise in 2010.

“But as one of the innovators in the last go round, I think…”

Ha ha ha ha, I can’t stop laughing. Michael Arrington, innovative? Oh man, that’s rich.

Next you’ll try to tell me that you invented the tablet PC.

The truth of the matter, I think, is that there will be no single content model in the future. Yes, there will be fast food content. There also will be good long-form journalism and commentary (Alan Mutter’s blogging on the journalism industry comes to mind), good visual content, good interactive content, and more. The Internet is vast and cheap, and as a result, it is providing something for everyone. Realizing this and creating a business plan around it is the one of the first steps towards moving out of old media thinking.

I think it’s funny that you are criticizing the “jerks” who publish “fast food content” when the majority of content published on this site would qualify as that. No offense, but the majority of the pieces on this site contain factual errors, grammatical errors, and focus on trite content (e.g. Siegler’s weekly Twitter is down again, OMG! column).

Even in a world of McDonald’s, I can still get In N Out when I really want to.

Great article. Let’s hope that content quality doesn’t suffer during that process.

Excellent article indeed. It’s also interesting (read scary) to “zoom out” to 30K-feet and look at the whole news system, the content available and the people digesting the news. Whereas cheap, poorly written news is the new online virus, subjective, one-sided, non-investigative news (read schlock) has more or less overtaken “real” groundbreaking broadcast television news. Hence, in only a matter of years, if not months, most people online and offline will be getting their news ONLY via “whisper-down-the-lane” type outlets. While this is certainly a danger to society in the short term, in the longer term societal pressure coupled with innovation will very likely break this trend and kick-off a wave of “real” news outlets/outputs. Again, from the 30K-foot vantage point, we’ve seen this a few times in history. And every time a Hitler, Ahmadinejad or other entity compresses the news to something more akin to non-news, society eventually revolts and establishes a way to get the real-news. Of course it’s sad that we do this over and over again. However, “history is made by those who know history.”

I enjoyed reading this one.

Something tells me that although we’ll run into a thick jungle of useless content ahead, most readers and seekers will find their way around it and through it.

Originality and thoroughness are the foundations of great journalism, online or offline.

I think you are correct. But just like the old hollywood, we seem to remember Citizen Kane, but there were thousands of horrible movies made at that time. We’re moving to a commodity model with online content. And who wins in the long run? Those who will eventually differentiate with quality. Tons of crap until we get there, but we have to go there. Thanks to AOL for getting us to the bottom so quickly.

“Former TechCrunch Reader…”

Ha ha ha ha, I can’t stop laughing. Former TechCrunch Reader? Oh man, that’s rich.

Next you’ll try to tell me that you commented on this article without actually reading it first.

So what really scares me? It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today. It’s the rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force fed to us by the portals and search engines.

Implied throughout but never explicitly stated: McDonald’s sells a lot of food. By every monetary standard, they – including thousands of franchises – are successful.

From the PoV of nutrition and “wholesomeness,” they are not successful. But they, too, have pumped profits into related businesses that are (at least relatively) more nutritious and wholesome: see Chipotle.

Aol, likewise, is sure to have some success with with their strategy. If even not from the quality / nutrition / wholesomeness PoV, if they can leverage that success to build up other businesses that are higher in quality, relatively. It seems foolish to discount these efforts from the outset.

Mike,

Great post but keep in mind that American Diners didn’t stop selling burgers when McDonalds was founded in the US.

I agree with you that the increase of ‘disposable’ content will dilute readership and possibly ‘trick’ search engines in the near term by piling tremendous amounts of new content on a given topic every day. By the time you get to the topic, you’ll be lucky to land a spot on the third results page.

That said, I think that the value of high quality content (such as this piece and hopefully, my five years of content at VC Cafe) will possibly benefit from this scenario. How? You’ll crave the high quality burger in the diner through friend recommendations.

The community will spread the word through social media, on content they engage with. Readers will post comments, blog posts, tweets, Diggs and Facebook ‘likes’ to indicate what is the true quality content/source. More readers will be on the net, and they will look for the ‘trusted places’ on niche topics through recommendations from their friends.

I think your supersize me picture says it best. If you eat too much McDonalds, you’re going to end up sick to your stomach.

Eze

While this disruption is inevitable, the good news is, there will be the passionate cohort of folks who rise up, like the locavores and slow food movement types and offer sustenance beyond fast food consumption and create industries. Curated content will emerge, becasue passion prevails, even if it takes a downward spiral first as large media orgs and disrupters whittle the standards in favor of link carnage.
History has proved, there is an ebb and flow, where we reach a culminating point, where people want something else, and seek it, creating cottage industries out of their passion (ie, rooftop farms in Brooklyn).

+1

Wow… that’s one of the more enjoyable comments I’ve read it years! Well done!

What you fail to mention is that the blame for this lies 100% at the feet of Google.

All of this is a manipulation of the Google algorithm. Google gives trust to large companies like AOL. Because they are trusted, they can abuse that trust by creating tons of crap to generate search engine traffic and make money.

More content means more long tail search traffic. It doesn’t matter if it is any good, because Google doesn’t know the difference between good and bad.

Journalists who want to go out on their own are at a massive disadvantage because it will take years for Google to give them algorithmic authority, even if they have social authority. Even then, there is no way you can beat BBC or NYT, even if you are the top expert in your field.

I’m seeing this in other areas as well. More large media companies will realize the huge advantage they have with Google and figure out ways to put out tremendous amounts of generic, crappy content to get long tail traffic from Google.

Mike,

Great article. This fast food content is creating a boom that I fear is going to go bust which is will disrupt internet like never before.

Most of internet is content websites, and most of content websites thrive on ads. With this quick-fire way to make money more and more sites and pages are being created which is sure to create a huge imbalance in ads demand and supply. A lot of content sites are going to close then..

How is that an improvement? (and yes, I’ve eaten at In-N-Out).

Michael,

Have you seen Monocle Magazine (out of the UK – URL is http://monocle.com)?

They admittedly have a high end, print as the primary focus model – but are doing deep and ongoing investment in creating original reporting from across the globe. If the print edition was just a bit smaller (how long has it been since you read/wrote that?) I’d read every issue – as it is I really enjoy their podcasts & video series and catch up with the magazine as I can.

Also McSweeney’s recent Panorama Issue (#33) which is a 320 page newspaper and magazines one time experiment in what can still be done in print. Not every story is successful or shows off print to the finest BUT there are some specific stories you should look at.

In particular the cover story, a long format investigative report into the Bay Bridge reconstruction is a collaboration between McSweeneys and The Public Press (and to a lesser degree the SF Chronicle). See http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004051984 (bonus story from a magazine about to be shuttered…)

So innovation & long form, real reporting is still happening – but is certainly few & far between (and increasingly pricey)

Most salient point made here. (And that includes the article above.)

The content model of the Interweb is more akin to the pyramid schemes of Amway than anything else — at least insofar as the original value creation point is extremely finite, with multitudinous refactorings of said being pushed and packaged ad nauseam. Trouble is, the Amway model still rewards the top of the pyramid. The online content model inverts this and the cash flows to all of the other layers first. Enter Murdoch and company trying to storm the gates.

TC needs to hire you.

Mike, I don’t think the situation is that dire. Every market is segmented into mass-market, undifferentiated products, and specialised, premium products. There are McDonalds restaurants, but also gourment restaurants. There are Toyotas, but also Lamborghinis.

AOL is going the Toyota route. And yes, sometimes the audience just wants the quick and drty facts, without analysis, insight or creative flair. Sometimes, one bland paragraph from the AP is all we want.

At other times, we want The Economist or Amusis.com. Original, thoughtful, informative, funny or differentiated content: hand-crafted as you call it.

Only companies stuck in the middle will be destroyed. Those who dominate the quick and dirty mass-market will succeed if they achieve scale. Those who offer premium, hand-crafted content will succeed if they’re so differentiated that they garner a small number of loyal readers.

Choose your market and dominate it. That’s the key.

The point he’s making, which you purposely chose to ignore, is that In N Out is generally considered to be higher quality than McD’s; regardless of your personal taste.

Isn’t this an English problem? I suspect that readers or Mandarin will still have plenty of higher quality content that hasn’t been rewritten (excpet by the government censors)

Where the offers come from, I don’t know. Two or three messages a day. once to my cell. asking if I will write x articles a weel for 20-100 a post.

I delete these emails, and took the call. The man wanted to pay me for content that I know about (+), post of 1500 words or less (+), three a week (-).

100 per post. Gak. I have a job thank G-d, where the writing is supportive of the developer community building.

Then, my Google alerts come back with all my articles scrapped right off my two sites. Since I write for the love and professional exposure, and run no ads…I let it go.

Wow.

If we’re talking about McDonald’s content, MG Siegler is Ronald McDonald.

“Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.” Give me a break.

Pot, meet kettle.

The big factor MA leaves out is real journalism costs money. Even a great editor and a couple of journalists need cash to get where the story is and an infrastructure in place to keep them safe etc while there.

It’s easy to say Techcrunch is part of this new movement – all the news they report on is generally in their neighborhood. They don’t spend 300 days a year on the road around the globe reporting on world events.

We all need to take a step back and rethink if we believe that TC is in any way comparable to CNN, the Times, or WSJ.

Mike,

I suggest you take a long hard look at Google Wave. I’ve been giving it a real chance over the past few weeks and I think it’s going to change a lot of the dynamics of Web-based content.

I finally decided to give up blogging in favor of waving because it’s just more fulfilling to me. I expanded on how I’m doing that in a post here if you’re interested in the details: http://bit.ly/63TTc9

Cheers
Jason

I agree that streamlining the operation might work. At least in the short term. A couple journalists and an editor with solid reps could put something together. Work their contacts, get direct access to newsmakers, etc. And if they brought on young talent to train, they could keep it going. Of course, we’re describing the beginning years of the NYT.

This post assumes a lot of things, most of which will probably change (SEO emphasis currently, readership habits.)

The fact is, while I think Arrington makes some interesting points here, we don’t know what will happen next.

And here was thinking that TechCrunch was the “fast food” with it’s Twitter feed being the drive through window!

Mike -

Wow, the truth does sting a bit, and your post is a great look into a very possible future -

But I do think there is still a way to make quality content and get paid. But I agree, as a content creator, sometime I worry that we may “Fred” ourselves out of existence.

It’s rough seeing the value of video/film content being decimated, just like music was in the 90s.

You are right though, it is up to us to get smart about making quality content.

Here’s an HD Pocket Doc we just did that show the power of disruptive tools for content creators to win in the end…

http://eguiders.com/exclusive/the-spark-series-part-3-open

It features your favorite pal Leo Laporte and what he is doing with TWiT. But it also shows how content is being created in a different way (both in what Leo is doing and how we produced the short doc).

Hopefully in a follow up post you will show some examples of content creators who are making videos and films in this new paradigm the right way and the wrong way.

Here’s a doc we just (Shot on Flip & Zi8, edited on FCP). There are so many tools for content creators to make their projects

Hopefully Google will find a way to shut down “Demand Media” and similar companies by devaluing their content. If quality results is their business (and that is definitely up for debate) then they will need to find a way to point to quality content; otherwise, search engines that can separate the wheat from the chaff will emerge and reduce google to the spam haus that it is becoming.

Will our news need to have “crappy content caloric intake” labels?

Do you not live in the Bay Area? Did you not notice that that the San Francisco Panorama completely sold out last week?

just when we thought that the television brought crap

And,

With one simple, short article @arrington just made the case for reputation as the next wave of innovation in the world.

With reputation engines in place, McContent has the same chance of succeeding as McDonald;s has of getting into a Zagat’s.

Thanks
Esteban

You know… The same thing is happening in education. The distance education bubble contained a lot of crap content being packaged and sold as a degree. The problem is that there are not new universally accepted metrics on what quality is. I know it when I see it, but I can’t write a program to identify it.

“We’re not there yet, but I see it coming. And just as old media is complaining about us, look for us to start complaining about the new jerks.”

There is a huge difference here..Websites like eHow (Demand Studios) earn traffic from search engines. Mainstream blog publications like TC have people who visit the site directly.

Unless, you are too concerned about losing search engine traffic to these websites, this should not matter at all…

+1

So when Techcrunch wrote about balloon boy, you had a man on the ground in Fort Collins?
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/15/i-just-had-a-skateboard-as-a-kid/

[...] Michael Arrington sounds the alarm about the emergence of “fast food” news sources, including the newly revamped AOL and [...]

Good article. As an IT entrepreneur, I visit TC several times a day and, sorry, but I do consider articles written by Paul Carr, Sarah Lacy [me, me, my experience, etc.] Robin Wauters, Vivek Wawa, low quality “fast food,” which in reality hurt the TC brand. Of course, I always bypass these articles.
On the other hand, the “good” articles I read, with true IT content, are written by Arrington, Erick Schonfeld, MG Siegler and Serkan Toto.

Mike,

who paid you to write this?

[...] following Tech Crunch article talks mainly about text content, but sometimes I wonder if WatchMojo.com is crazy to be producing [...]

You have to consider this from all angles, not just the content creators point of view.

How will users react?

Perhaps there will be a CrapBlock FireFox extension that doesn’t show you anything from an ever-growing list of known crappy content providers.
Maybe trusted aggregators and link sites like Delicious or Digg will suddenly become a search destination too.
Maybe folks will just get more savvy and develop better more exacting searching skills.

How will the search engines react?

There’s already a Google thing that let’s me drop out search results from certain Web sites.
Maybe that will evolve to be more automatic.
If they figure out that the top three pages of results aren’t getting looked at, then maybe they’ll switch up their algorithms.
Perhaps they’ll delist sites themselves (On a side note is that a net neutrality issue?)
Maybe they’ll start competing on the most relevant results.
Maybe About.com will suddenly be more important.

Where this daydreaming becomes potentially useful is when you begin thinking about how you are going to react to this.

If you’ve got a lick of programming skills perhaps you can write CrapBlock. I’m not sure how you monetize it, but if AdBlock does it, so can you.

Perhaps you can write a GreaseMonkey script that re-ranks search engine results based on your ratings or URLs or some such.

If you’re an Internet fiend like I am and you’re always bookmarking stuff that could be useful, maybe you could make it work for you. Right now, when I need a piece of software to do something, I go to LifeHacker and search for it. If they’ve got a post discussing the topic, I trust their opinion and generally give whatever they like a try. You could be the newer, better, broader LifeHacker.

The point is right, now there are endless possibilities to solve a problem most people don’t even know they have yet. If you do it right, when the problem becomes evident so will your solution.
That combination means one thing: Success!

technically, you did. the readers.

the point of articles like that are that they’re entertaining, but it also gets people thinking about sensors and how they can be used in innovative ways. I love that stuff.

PS: Vivek Wawa had the cheekiness to suggest starting IT companies in Chile, mainly because the wines are good and the beach is great. He also suggested for entrepreneurs to accept money from the government, which in fact, would own the new company… Go figure, according to Vivek, a third world country dictatorship is “benign” and “generous” – Sure, in fantasyland…

Mike,

Here we go! You can’t handle the truth. Not only did you delete my question. You also deleted your own response.

It seems to me you are afraid of the truth.

The biggest smorgasbord is about to get bigger and sure there’s going to be a hell of a lot more crap on the table. Great thing is we’re all getting these amazing new tools that help us filter out the noise and concentrate on what we want to. It’s as simple as hitting delete or cancel, unfollow or unfriend. Cream always rises.

no idea what you’re talking about. sure it wasn’t just stuck in moderation? if we deleted it, it almost certainly didn’t contain “truth.”

this, This THIS!

the problem though is, how do you break Google’s control of the US web economy? and this too has been gamed by Google.

by old law standards they are not a monopoly but in this country they’ve become a synonym to the internet. so how do you deal with that? re-defining monopoly laws and throwing the book at them? or do you leave it to the always flawed and never really free-market?

It must be tough to live in Silicon Valley. The view of life there is extremely bleak, there’s no denying. From the mortgages on the 2-bdrm 7-bath $3MM Palo Alto homes, to the relentless ass-kissing of smug papa’s boys on Sand Hill Road, to having to take seriously adolescent party games like being the “mayor” of wherever you end up at dinner — this can kill a person’s soul very quickly.

But that’s no excuse for forgetting the history of journalism and cultural achievement, or for not taking a second look under the covers — so unlike Mike’s usual writing.

Look, Mike, ’twas always thus, don’t go crying over some Golden Age that never existed. Imagine how the writers and editors of the New York Daily Telegraph felt when they were told that they were “merging” with the Daily Racing Form, a form of “newspaper” meant only to feed a destructive habit that continues to destroy people and families — but owned by Walter Annenberg at one point and today the producer of over 30 different editions, all run out of a small office in downtown Manhattan!

There were thousands of newspapers once, all trying to figure out how to make money in any way possible. Only relatively recently did some of them get rid of their competitors and start styling themselves as guardians of culture and moaning about the future.

But, as the Daily Racing Form suggests, and the list of all U.S. newspapers confirms, there are lots of ways to make money with newspapers. And with blogs, and with dumb parlor games for socially-challenged geeks, and with even dumber Facebook games.

The problem that Mike is addressing has nothing to do with old and new media. The problem is that the *most* money will be made — and the most cultural cachet earned, culture being what it is — from appealing to the incurious dullards who make up the majority of the human race.

And it’s really cultural cachet (a.k.a. status) that makes Silicon Valley tick. There’s a bunch of clever guys out there making scads of money on Adsense sites and domain speculation and affiliate programs and fake blogs about fake people using fake products. If you wanted to just make money, you’d forget about the latest way to tell everyone in the world where you are or what you’re eating or who’s your friend, you’d avoid the VC sharks, and you’d start figuring out how to sell plausible crap to gullible people — just like all the newspapers did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

But that wouldn’t get you noticed on TechCrunch or other gatekeepers of Silicon Valley chic, and so the “entrepreneurs” keep blathering on about real-time web or whatever other buzz-word is trending to the top.

Look, Mike, AOL was always crap, laughably so. They exist because they were early, and they’ve spent the last ten years trying to stay relevant, living off the scared and incurious who “trust” the first Internet brand they ever saw. And Demand Media, who do a video on anything that moves (or doesn’t), may get page views, but like a lot of popular sites, my guess is they don’t make much money with it. The money comes from somewhere else (do your research).

And that’s what journalism is and always has been — making money off something crass and slightly unsavory, e.g. ads, to pay for doing what matters. That’s the model of Techcrunch, for instance.

The problem is not that there’s a bunch of crap trying to pass off as journalism, that’s always been the case. The problem is rather that the people making the money from the crap aren’t doing anything interesting with it.

There are no Medicis in Silicon Valley. Not one of the many millionaires minted there founds a public art collection, or builds a great building, or founds universities, or indeed does anything besides adding bathrooms and new cars. The most culture that comes out of that sad place is a trip to “Le Web” to talk crap about who has better VCs, the U.S. or Europe.

Mike, if you’re feeling depressed about the state of journalism, or the web, or the wicked ways of mankind in general, my advice is to go look at some of the *actual* cultural achievements of our race. Read Flaubert or Gunter Grass or Apuleius or Thomas Pynchon or Kafka or whatever floats your boat, and that will help you realize that in Silicon Valley you see crap everywhere because it *is* everywhere.

The history of mankind is five nines of crap – 99.999% — and it’s no different today. It’s that other little bit that makes it tolerable.

Hi,
I’m with ya on this one.
Risk nothing. Get nothing. I say.
Being “ripped off” — strange way to look at it — inspires me to get into new stuff. helps develop the myolin sheaths too.
Crap is the fertilizer of new growth.
dr jim sellner, PhD.,DipC.

it’s more of a US sear problem if you go through different country portals the whole search experience is adjusted to the country/region/language. and i say this as someone who searches for content in 5 different languages.

The bottom has always been there and is the bulk of what the old media companies have produced, expensively and inefficiently, for a long time. The disrupters are just finding a more efficient way to produce it.

There will always be a place for artisan content. Just because we have McDonalds, that doesn’t mean you can’t go to a fancy restaurant.

You don’t need to point to Aol for junk content. There are hundred of thousands of blogs that publish mediocre content very well. That’s why we’ll always need filters, whether people or algorithm based.

Exactly. Techcrunch isn’t immune to that either. Writing twenty articles about how cool Twitter changing a pixel in their design drives page views better than one thoughtful article.

@Pot,

I think you missed the point of Mike’s article.

MG’s posts about Twitter is akin to New York Time’s having a section on Broadway shows, as in, Broadway shows are unique to New York City. If you do not live in NYC or do not care about Broadway shows and are annoyed that there are too many articles about them on NY Times you need to realize that many New Yorkers cannot live without them, the same way many TechCrunch readers are Twitter fans.

Regarding this post by Mike, to me, it is a subtle jab at those bloggers and journalists at both new and old media who either mocked or ignored his reporting earlier about Google Phone yet are now “breaking” this news on their sites without giving Mike due credit.

+1

wow – are you guys @ techcrunch deleting comments again?

are there new guidelines i should be adhering to? been a tc participant for years; my last 3 comments – on topic – have been deleted – what’s the deal?

Wow. Inspiring video. Not only what Leo is doing which I have been following all along, but your own efforts. Very nice profile of Leo.

Great article but, although its foreshadowing of the coming wave of ‘fast food’ content is likely accurate, I believed that it’s fearsome only to media conglomerates and not so much to individual ‘craft’ journalists (or at least I hope won’t be). Certainly, there will be a shift in the avenues through which “mass produced” news is consumed but I believe that this with this shift will come another (as is touched upon above) toward news as luxury and individual craft journalists (like the present day Krugmans and Gladwells) as the luxury brands. This second change will only be aided along by new devices like the Kindle, Nook, and eventual Apple tablet and will eventually be fostered by the ‘Itunes for news’ that everyone is buzzing about.

Fast food has not killed fine dining and, likewise, the rise of crap news will not kill the well-written, well-researched text. However, the audience will need to embrace a change and certainly not all will as no doubt, like anything that is well-crafted and valuable, there will likely be a dollar value associated with ‘luxury’ media and most will be unwilling to pay for content that could previously be acquired for free (although oddly, most have made the shift from leeching off of napster to buying from iTunes without raising a big fuss).

The cheap apparel available Walmart hasn’t killed Louis Vuitton and the $2 cheeseburger hasn’t killed the $100 steak tar tar. Likewise, ‘news’ articles written by 1000 monkeys seated 1000 typewriters (likely in India or China) will not kill good daily content but it will certainly change the landscape a bit.

I would argue that much of Fox News is not only not “fair & balanced” but is fast food news yet has millions of viewers for the same reason McDonald’s makes money – easy to digest (for some) and cheap to make

=== popurls.com === popular today…

yeah! this story has entered the popular today section on popurls.com…

so long as the people realize they’re being sent to “terrible content” and therein lies much of the problem – who decides

[...] the influential Techcrunch site published a powerful piece of opinion claiming that hand-made content was [...]

Well, I hope we don’t lose the in depth articles from the larger magazines in the process.

My roommate has a subscription to National Geographic and I’ve really appreciated it’s deep(er) content lately, also their pack-in maps, posters, etc are awesome to look at…

I don’t think a blogger can provide what they provide– I’d be willing to pay a few bucks for high quality content ala an iTunes model…

Search engines don’t know good content from bad content. And thats the central part of all of this.

AOL, Demand Media, etc., create massive, low cost, disposable content for search engine juice..

The problem is called “Plagiarism” and it’s been going on for years, mostly propagated by the so-called “Problogger” minions. It is a plague that is unfortunately only getting worse.

[...] can read the post here. This was written by Steven. Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009, at 11:42 am. Filed under Media, [...]

I’m glad you’ve written this piece as I thought you and the other bloggers were also getting carried away with the race to the bottom. There’s a lot of good content at TechCrunch but I was feeling worried at some rushed articles seemingly trying to be ‘first!’.

I hate that everyone is scrambling over everyone else to be dynamic and fast at the expense of quality content. I’ve said it before in relation to Twitter: I am willing to wait a few days for me content so long as I get to read informed and intelligent opinion and journalism.

[...] Arrington published another brilliant essay this morning, this one on the future of blogging and journalism in a world of rampant theft: one writer takes [...]

This is a little melodramatic. People get tired of “fast food” and long for something more refined and substantial. Otherwise we all would really be eating McDonalds every day. the same thing will happen in the content market. There will always be cheap and fast but those that can afford it will pay for the quality they crave and that is where you will make your money. The best will rise to the top and be rewarded for their talents.

What is needed in this case is a technological solution that deals with the mass plagiarism and ” spinning” of other people documents. Something like an Attribution Clearing House for written content.

Personally I believe that if there is a need that someone will build it.

I would think that the Photography industry would offer some insight into this problem and how to deal with it.

Doesn’t the value of quality content rise as the quantity of junk content increases, since we have to possibly spend more time seeking out the quality?

So… you’re planning on picking up where you left off with your lawyer gig?

Good post. True about quality dive.

But junk journalism has always existed, old or new media. It is easier, though, with Twitter, RSS, Google Alerts, to sew together Frankenstein pieces, without attribution.

The consumer will make the call ultimately. The cream will rise, and has already risen for many new media sites.

Interesting times.

great comment. i’m not adverse to eating fast food five times a day everyday of the week…but i’m eventually going to die from all that stress and with the no stimulation to my brain. good reading is still good reading. i know the written word is going through transitions and news delivery and consumption as we know it is changing, but i don’t think that hand crafted content will entirely disappear. it might not be popular/the norm but i think it will exist in one way or another. i value hand crafted content and i know i’m not the only one. i might not like to read it in a newspaper format anymore or might be fed up with newspaper companies and their bs, along with other media companies, but i haven’t thrown in the towel altogether.

Fast food content is also classified as articles published by “innovator” blogs that say the same thing over and over again, link back to themselves in their own articles, and pretend that they’re not just regurgitated crap meant to keep their clickstream data numbers healthy.

Get over yourselves.

you’re the “mike, who paid you to write this?” guy aren’t you?

[...] Michael Arrington sounds the alarm about the emergence of “fast food” news sources, including the newly revamped AOL and [...]

[...] Posted in Blogging, News by Darrell Brogdon on December 13, 2009 Michael Arrington has an interesting post on companies like Demand Media and Associated Content suggesting they are doing nothing more than [...]

Great article –

I think this issue is why it becomes important for us as content creators to not just be broadcasting. We need to have a relationship with our readers, a dialogue and conversation. That’s not something they can get from people who are ripping off content.

Be well,
Andy

Are you suggesting that most people today recognize ‘terrible content”? Or even that they read anything at all except sports results…well, maybe the MacDonald’s menu.

Definitely.

“My advice to readers is just this – get ready for it, because you’ll be reading McDonalds five times a day in the near future. ”

Mike is missing the point – he’s comparing how most people find content today (via Google searches) – when Google results become McDonalds themselves, other aggregators will take it’s place – think good tools to filter through twitter, sites like Techmeme, etc…

I see where you are headed. There are, indeed, dangers. It’s not the same at all, but I am reminded of the fears expressed when USAToday hit the scene. McPaper had arrived, and all content would be reduced to colorful information graphics and silly, information-less two paragraph stories.

It didn’t quite happen that way. One reason was new technology that enabled lots of smart people to publish great content on the Web. The gates started to come down, other voices poured in.

And then there are new content models… TrueSlant.com is one of them. We’re giving knowledgeable contributors who want to go out on their own (to brand themselves and build an audience online) the publishing tools and support to do so in a networked and curated environment. So far, 300 credible content creators have signed on… traditional and digital journalists, bloggers, authors, academics and experts.

I believe journalism is entering one of its most exciting periods ever.

Resigning to the “inevitable” is not innovative. Practical? Yes. Lucrative? Perhaps. Innovative. Um, no.

People can lament forever about the tastes of others, that will never change. If Arrington’s entire point is that people are stupid and don’t know good content from bad then this article is just worthless snobbery. But I don’t think that’s what the article is about, it’s about how search engines don’t distinguish well enough between good and bad content and keep sending traffic to bad content. That’s a problem search engines need to worry about.

Aaron Wall had a good post on this a few weeks ago http://www.seobook.com/2010-year-information-pollution-takes

Unfortunately most search engines still don’t have semantic algorithms that are really at a human level of judging quality, so it will likely be a few years at least before there’s any way to apply quality scores en masse, particularly for the long tail keywords that Demand and the like are going after.

On the contrary, Google knows quality content by the number of links pointing to it from legitimate, respected sources that it is fairly good at determining as well.

Junk doesn’t get many outside links. It relies, in the the case of AOL, on the network’s popularity itself.

There are easy ways for real engines like Google to determine the value of something to the internet community.

With social media and blog links, they rely on human curation and “votes” for other content to determine the value of said content.

It’s not bullet proof, but Google is not a dumb bot. And it is getting better every day at ciphering the crap from the quality.

[...] Michael Arrington weighed in on the ever-controversial content mill issue and it’s worth reading.  Here’s why: [...]

I have this great business idea. Instead of forcing you to read dozens of blogs by poor writers, I’m going to create a single source of news. I will only hire the best writers in the world. We will, of course, include daily chatter such as weather, horoscopes, and perhaps even a chess column. I will focus primarily on national and international news but of course I will tailor to your local interests. Because I’m sure that you get tired of checking your computer and your phone every 5 minutes I will only ask you to check in once a day – usually the morning but it could also be the afternoon. I have to charge for this idea but to make it worth your while I am going to include coupons from my advertisers so that you can get all your money back in savings and then some. I am going to call my idea – the newspaper.

Could TechCrunch afford to field a reporter in Iraq or Afganistan? (I’m sure Sarah wants to go…). The security, travel arrangements, communications, and insurance costs are huge. I’ve heard some old media outlets claim it runs into seven figures for just a handful of reporters to collect news (important news) in locations like that.

The future of news is all about vertical silos of extremely focused content that are finely curated for the reader in search of that specific type of content at that very moment. If I am looking for Twitter related content, I want to find a resource that has aggregated content about Twitter and nothing else. It should be put together in a way where the curator has taken the time to filter out the irrelevant posts and laid it out in a way that is meaningful, very fast and easy to use. Here are some examples:

http://www.socialgamenews.com

http://www.virtualcurrencynews.com

http://www.socialnetworkmusic.com

http://www.tweetjunk.com

These websites are sparse and in many cases simply provide links to the original posts. But really, what is the point of regurgitating content to fill space? To get a few AdSense dollars? Why not make it user friendly, give props (links) to the original writers and in doing so provide an increasingly important content curation service in the process?

The reason for the need of highly focused verticals is lack of time in the day. People just have less and less time to sit there and try and filter through all the the irrelevant articles and blog postings and we all need filters and resources that cut straight to exactly what we want. TechCrunch nailed it by saying that the growth of irrelevant content is becoming problematic for search engines. And that means it is becoming problematic for people searching for useful content. That may be a reason for the race to capitalize on the whole “real-time” movement is absolutely critical for Google, Bing, etc and it is going to take this new level of highly focused content to an extreme we have never seen before.

I believe that one way for news organizations to survive is to start focusing more on their role as agents of change, not just mere reporters of news. People are interested in that. People are interested in contributing to valuable causes. And so people want to see the value that exists in reading high quality content and being engaged as coagents of change. A good story will always be in demand, and people will always be excited to be involved and anxious for the story to have a good ending. Back to basics, people, but with 21st century tools.

Content on TC is sometimes bad, sometimes good; once in a while, it effects change (e.g. the Scamville story). This is the latter that gets people excited and involved (in this case, through comments, but there are surely news ways to be devise to further engage the readers).

[...] I just followed this tweet by Chris Messina to Mike Arrington’s The End of Hand Crafted Content. The tweet-bite: “The rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get [...]

I find this all too funny. Seems to me the bulk of consumer driven/profitable content has always been crap.

People love crap. People watch crap on TV. Crap sells. The crappier the better.

The more intelligent will find ways to weed out the crap, they always have.

What can we sell to smart people…Not Much.

Hail, hail shit content.

Anyone want to buy a used gold tooth..?

I don’t see what TechCrunch is worried about. As long as the majority of your audience doesn’t come from search engines, you don’t need to worry about losing traffic to crappy content sites. And a little bit of SEO work on mass content isn’t going to get most of it ranked higher than established sites like TechCrunch.

+1

[...] had a relevant post today about the impact of micro publishing. They spin it negatively but I think the author misses the point. The more relevant article is the [...]

I see four crowds in the news business.

The breaking crowd gets views because the first source of information.

The accuracy crowd gets views because they combine stories and act as a source of information. They make sense of it all for their viewers.

The niche crowd gets views because they tailor their content to a specific audience and often give an overview of content from the breaking and accuracy crowds.

The copying crowd gets views by throwing everything against the wall and counting what sticks. These people are just news spammers and their audience is usually people who aren’t captured by the other 3 crowds.

Each has their own business model. You can either earn money because you are first, accurate, niche or spam.

I can see the breaking/investigative crowd dying as an independent business and the authors becoming independent. You could write stories and sell them to specific news organizations. So if I had some apply scandal I could probably sell the copy to TechCrunch or Engadget because they could acquire views from being first to break, exposing themselves to new potential readers with an interest in technology, and becoming a source of information for future stories.

Absolutely right about us small bloggers needing the big organizations to find and break the news for us. I write my blog somewhat in the style of a newspaper “op-ed” and so I need to have a couple links from the big news organizations that my readers can go to if they want more information on the topic.

I provide a brief summary of the news as a form of introduction, but as my focus is mainly an original analysis, I quote from the large news sources for the summary. As a rule, nothing goes on my blog without at least one source linked, and I prefer two or more depending on the subject. Links give the reader a sense that the author has at least done their homework and has a factual basis for the analysis. Whether the analysis itself is good, that is left up to the readers and commenters…

There’s a model that hasn’t been tried yet – call it the Bundle. For a small monthly fee, you have access to, say, the TechCrunch Bundle, which includes X number of partner publications, blogs, etc – all cleared by the Bundle Manager. Some Bundles would be ‘fast-food’ Bundles, some would be full course dinners. Then the choice is ours – some will want the TMZ Bundle, others the TechCrunch Bundle. Bundles could also offer incentives for Bundle subscribers – free month for every 10 Bundle links/tweets whatever. Still in R+D…

[...] } There’s been a lot of doom-laden talk today about ‘The Death of Hand-crafted Content‘.If you believe Michael Arrington, quality online writing and video is being pushed out by [...]

[...] is an article today on Techcrunch about “hand crafted content”.  With a lot of people writing to get linked, rather than writing for the love of it (or really [...]

I’m a little confused as to why this is ‘news.’ You’re issuing a ‘warning’ over a movement that has infiltrated the Internet for at least the last 5-6 years. I know this as a freelancer, often hired to pump out hundreds of articles at a time. Although I did my best to make my content worth reading, I know other freelancers did not… sometimes the fault of the freelancer… other times the fault of the hiring party who emphasized quantity over quality. I additionally disagree that the situation will worsen. With readers being a silent dictator of worthy content (via traffic) and Google’s ‘rewards’ for such traffic, sites will readjust their strategy and the scale of worthiness till tip again. Only this time, it will tip with quality over quality as it should.

I can’t believe that 98% of web users are okay with seeing ads all over the place. Talk about shitty content! Adblock Plus for Firefox gets rid of them. Try it, it’s really a LOT better. But if it’s that easy to block ads, perhaps in the near future I’ll be able to click a link inside my browser and block all content from SpamContent.com >add to spam content filter.
But what about great content providers. How will they get compensated and carve out a living? Why can I still not click a link in someone’s blog and pay them $.10 directly for an article I liked. How effen hard can that be to implement? Why can’t I click a link on an aggregator site and know I just contributed to both the aggregator and the creator. It’s the eyeballs-for-ads model that is driving the race to the bottom. It must be destroyed!

[...] via The End Of Hand Crafted Content. [...]

I think the author of this piece should take five and lay off the Kool Aid. The web is evolving and people are relying on more on word of mouth for web “Digg, Twitter, etc.” and not just search engine results.

Not to mention with personalized search results I see buzz from Twitter on my search queries and I’m never given About.com because I requested that trash of a site not ever show in my results.

[...] I just followed this tweet by Chris Messina to Mike Arrington’s The End of Hand Crafted Content. The tweet-bite: “The rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get [...]

Great article. Thought too the point about content curators really important – I suspect most of the readers on this site are using social media to construct their own aggregations via reliable sources, groups, and meta-aggregators. What’s missing is the ability to open source construct (or refine) a search engine to the user’s preferences for filtering out the white noise of info-marketing.

The inability of search engines to discern in line with a content user’s preferences is made more problematic if the marketplace is dominated by a few search engines – what mechanisms they use for ranking seems like a pressing need for an open source response. A search engine developed using the Wikipedia model perhaps?

I’m not really sure about your advice… maybe it’s just like fast food. A lot of people like it and eat it, but there’s a new giant wave of people that is stopping to eat that, because they know it’s bad.

I’ll risk sounding like a jerk, sounds like what used to be a blue ocean is becoming a red ocean -
http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/

Content producers should find an edge over junk food content creators, this is evolution.

Maybe TechCrunch should create a “read on the go” version of itself thus making fast foods irrelevant?

I know this idea isn’t the solution, but it will take a bit out of the junk content advantage.

New media folks should start thinking how to fight junkers.

Maybe there should be a junkyard section at TechCrunch (coupled with a Twitter list of course)?

Unless there’s bullshit politics involved.

The problem is that quality investigative reporting costs money: it takes time, you have to fly places, the tools are not cheap (e.g. Palantir Government or Finance, i2 Analyst’s Notebook, Data Applied, and so forth), nor are they easy to use, etc.

Just be interesting.. be funny.. the old is changing.. don’t fire someone for tweeting.. or saying something in blog.. embrace them because sadly we live in a beavis and butthead world… you got mix the crazy with the news to reach people…

DO NOT GIVE UP HOPE! ;) There is a counter to the search engines to promote hand-crafted content. I’m using it right now: RSS Feeds. You have one so I added you to my personal combined feed. This combined feed is only from sites that I have determined have value. Not pushed on me by SEO. The web is only in its infancy, there are still many methods of organization to be explored.

besides i’m more of a hamburglar myself.

Oh, and by the way: now you’ve captured my attention I’m exploring your long tail of previous stories ;) :D

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content » [...]

So Mike …. How do you feel about micropayments ? While I guess some WSJ viewers ‘might’ go that way … for a while, I just can’t see anyone paying to read an article that will, no doubt, be well distributed by their competitors (and agreed … in many case … re-written).

Bloggers celebrated the demise of the record business and facilitated the public notion that music should be free.

It was just a matter of time before this monster they created turned it’s appetite on them.

Great points but it should be pointed out McDonald is quite popular and profit able

Still, that source of original information is constantly shrinking such that you won’t be blogging about “original stuff”, but blogging about something that was on a blog.

Simply put, unless actual worthwhile thinking goes on, most stuff on the Internet won’t be worth reading.

Too bad for us who DON’T live in the west, we have no idea what In N Out tastes like. =/

COME TO TEXAS!!

Fast food content… like this article? Give me a break, real content has been gone for quite some time, leaving pathetic bloggers and top 10 lists as the only items on the menu.

[...] rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get ugly.” – http://bit.ly/7DF2Rc This was written by Phil. Posted on Sunday, December 13, 2009, at 9:51 pm. Filed under Twitter. [...]

That leads to a whole lot of really, really crappy content… This article, for example, is just horrendous… rambles for miles without any real point, and adds a huge factual error to top things off… Hiring a bunch of people who couldn’t keep their old media jobs and don’t have the stomach to go out on their own

Sounds like how the NYT would have described TC a few years ago!

Demand Media is the anti media company. Please bury this type of media and the crap they dish up.

[...] not sure what to make of Mike Arrington’s blog post today that “fast-food” content is going to “destroy the mom and pop operations [...]

[...] Old media loves nothing quite so much as writing about their own impending death. And we always enjoy adding our own two cent.>>> Bem, se você trabalhar com um martelo provavelmente você continuará a fazê-lo da mesma maneira nos próximos anos mas para quem é jornalista ou trabalha em veículos de comunicação e não serve o cafezinho a revolução já está chegando ao fim. Confere o texto e segue os links no TechCrunch… [...]

Mike, on the one hand I agree with you and see this coming, particularly since Google can’t by its very nature care about quality. I do take offense at being referred to as an old media castoff who doesn’t do any research or work. I’m out in the field interviewing people all the time, spending time to hand-craft nuance analysis on lots of issues. What I see is a bi-furcation where those who have money to pay for superior information and analysis get it and the rest get McDonald’s. Wait until AP shuts down and then you’ll really get a flavor for it.

I spent 10 years writing websites that had great original content and awesome SE rankings. As soon as people saw my SE position they would scrape my content, add a few other random words and SEO it up… soon I was nowhere to be found.

After awhile of doing this I realized a few things:

1. 25% of Americans CAN’T READ. Those that can tend to be writers and bloggers like myself; preaching to the choir I guess.
2. SEO is evil; as are “mainstream” websites who will “do whatever it takes” to get traffic.
3. Adapt or die

So what’s the answer? Everything I am developing now is in VIDEO format, animation specifically. People are lazy and most can’t read. But they can WATCH and listen.

So if you’re a good writer perhaps re purpose yourself as a screenwriter or look at doing a video blog instead of the traditional format and you may be more successful. My 2 cents

http://www.neverendingprincessstory.com

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content (tags: media trends journalism socialmedia)   [...]

+1

[...] on how journalism can survive in the Internet age. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington also riffs on this theme, mentioning AOL’s "Toyota Strategy of building thousand of niche content sites via the [...]

Here here. Finally somebody acknowledges the obvious (if painful) truth. Quality is not nearly so important as answers – and that’s the nature of search – providing quick and easy answers to basic questions. Screw what is better or best – if you’ve answered my question, I’m satisfied. If not, I’ll click on #2 or #3.

That is game – answer as many questions as quickly efficiently as you can.

Everything else is mere set dressing and ego stroking.

+2

[...] Tech: SEO, Demand Media, “fast food content,” and the loss of quality [...]

You’re all off base and out of touch on this one – sorry.

‘Quality’ is in the eye of the beholder – and most of the ‘beholders’ who come from search want an answer to a question – period.

‘How to remove lipstick from my underwear’ – I’m certain that any number of ‘authoritative’ sources could wax eloquent about the science of stain removal and the efficacy of specific cleaning agents…but I need to get this stain off my undies now! And if eHow or Yahoo Answers provides that guidance, then I’ve got all the quality I need.

Demand media, Yahoo answers, About.com, and any other number of ‘low quality’ sites, have all tapped into the fundamental utility of the internet: Instant answers, instant gratification.

Don’t even try to beat them – they’ve proven that the model works. As Marcellus Wallace said, ‘fuck pride’ – give ‘em what they want, not what you think they should have – THAT is the new paradigm.

I agree with the sentiment expressed in this post, but it is ultimately pessimistic. Online history proves innovation will prevail. Lets not give up now. What is need is a new set of search criteria to sift through this fast-food noise. For instance, there was an article in our local paper about high school students who recognize the difference between ‘popular’ and ‘most-liked’ – a kid at school can be really popular because they are the rowdiest, or funniest, but that doesn’t mean they are the most liked. Same thing with fast food content. Google build an empire on a tool that could sift through the noise to help us find the most-liked. If in the future, as you say, the fast-food content will be popular in current search systems. Then there here is a problem seeking a brilliant business solution – New Search

I am concerned about someone getting hurt when they read a “fast-food” article about working on their car or doing electrical home repair work. If these sites truly just push anything through, could they be on the hook if someone is injured following the reckless suggestions of a random guy without editorial oversight?

I’ve been using Google to research mid-level difficulty technical materials, including computer operations, for a decade.

I see no improvement in the quality of results returned on my searches at all. In fact, I see more and more trash results, the result of sites which seem to accept any posting on tech subjects regardless of merit, and which if any attempt to determine merit exists at all uses “voting” by technically incompetant users to vote content up or down.

Gresham’s law applies, by this evidence, to web information as much as or more than to money.

Trash commercially focused pages are controlling the flow of information, by applying expert knowledge to get high search return listings, leaving sites where quality people post quality information invisible except to people with long memories and specialized interests.

well played … well played

Is it snobbery to note that Faux News draws a passionate audience, and to think that parallel processes will come to bear in the selection of internet content for consumption? I think not.

As evidence I’d offer the quality of forwarded emails I receive from aquaintances and distant relatives.

If there is any hope for internet content producers and consumers of quality content it won’t come from increasing sophistication of search engines – they as well as the rest of the commercial net will have to pander. It may come from the ability of people to self select their circle of individual acquaintances and specialized sources of news and opinion.

Twitter lists have recently offered the beginnings of such a tool. Those of us attempting to gain access to information in specialty areas can collect and winnow specialist tweeters in those areas, and rely on the respect and reputation they have with one another as tools to help assess their usefulness as sources of ideas and of references to technical information.

Twitter, despite the 140 character limit, increasingly surprises and impresses me as an information source, under some conditions, due to this high level of access to communities of interest and knowledge.

Facebook seems more social, but not nearly as useful as a source of real world information beyond the kind available at the cafe around the corner from the court house and service station.

[...] December 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment This content farm stuff blew up over the weekend.  Check out techmeme, which headlines the techcrunch article: The End Of Hand Crafted Content. [...]

That’s very sobering.

For months, I toyed with creating my own aggregator, to collect things that I wanted to read because, frankly, so many of them stink. I wanted to build one that collected no more than a dozen items, hand-picked, with small commentaries.

So glad I didn’t.

I have just heard from numerous unknown sources that this is a WordPress stats thing, or possibly a plugin. This is breaking news, and I will have full coverage of this at my blog!

From a slightly different POV, I have noticed that some highly valuable web materials which could be located easily using Google & other search engines a few years ago are virtually unlocatable using those engines today.

They are buried under garbage content which is “new”; the fact that they are postings of documents of significant historical and intellectual significance apparently means nothing to a search engine algorithm.

I expect that this effect is worsened in cases where they were posted in the late ’90′s – obviously those pages are “aged” and no longer relevant on the internet.

Those in charge of the development of internet information access technology appear to be unintentionally engaged in a race to replicate the lowest level of common “current events” gossip as the dominant source of opinion and information that we find in the least literate and prudent members of society.

It’s all quite ironic, eh?

Seems to me that hand crafted anything went dow nthe toilet a LONG time ago!

jess
http://www.online-privacy.th.tc

+2

Word!

Sphere (Sphere News) doesn’t look like fast food content…the journalists at this site have hundreds of years of combined experience at some of the most respected news organizations.

Large online media sites should be applauded for this, not ripped. Don’t hate…appreciate.

Short attention span theater is well underway.
It’s News Corps forte.
Issues are too complex for the middle.

For further context:
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

Is there some kind of limit on + rec’s for comments?

Consider me over limit for this one, anyway.

[...] Pasteris ! Se vuoi essere aggiornato sulle ultime notizie di questo blog Iscriviti al suo feed RSSVia Techcrunch But as one of the innovators in the last go round, I think there’s a much bigger problem lurking [...]

This is probably one of the saddest things you’ve ever written, Mike, since I have the feeling everything you’re saying might be true. McContent. 954 Billion Served.

Just wait til Net Neutrality is shoved aside and you have to pay for the Happy Meal version of this – “Up to 10 websites and one search engine for just $12.95 a month!” If you think it’s bad now…

Or try it the other way…I think 12 countries want to ratify some sort of legislation soon to make it illegal the world over to quote anyone’s text online (even snippets) without the copyright owner’s written permission.

So Fair Use goes out the window, and most of us are illegally publishing copyrighted content at that point, and none of us can ever do so again.

The Internet shuts down at that point, since this legislation allows for you to report anyone for copyright violation – and no proof is required before that person is banned from using their own ISP for a period of months to years, and they must pay fines each time they’re accused, on top of that.

So everyone accuses everyone of copyright violation until *poof* – we’re all fined and banned and the government finally runs the Internet for us, which is all they ever wanted to do in the first place. Then on top of that, Net Neutrality ends and you pay the a la carte prices to view the garbage that’s left online. Doesn’t that sound like fun, kiddies?

I see the Web as we know it done sooner than later at this rate, and maybe it’s just as well – it seems we humans take greed and use it to screw up every gift we’re given, including the gift of being able to communicate with each other “freely” online – probably the best gift we could ever have communications-wise, but that’s what humans do, thinking greed will serve them when actually it just tears everything and everyone apart.

You should totally put TC behind a pay wall

[...] The “pros” set standards they don’t even keep for themselves. TechCrunch is notorious for saying that they are copied all the time. But this is a naive concept. When I dabbled in screenwriting, I realized how easy [...]

[...] media”, but what is next? no comments Mike Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, wrote a great piece about content producers taking a new direction. New media moguls like him are now becoming the old [...]

[...] Læs indlægget i sin fulde længde. Lige nu. Endelig bliver du grænseløst deprimeret og forlader branchen, eller også tændes den hellige ild, og du beslutter dig for at gå imod strømmen og virkelig gøre en forskel med de ting, du render rundt og laver. Jeg håber det sidste. Og hvis du vælger det første, så vær venlig at liste ud af bagdøren. Og gør det samme, hvis du vælger at være ligeglad. For lige nu er ikke tiden til ikke at engagere sig i branchens fremtid. [...]

I have to disagree with Google getting better on this front. Part of the role of the search engine is to create the economic system which rewards the creation of the right kinds of content and punishes the creation of undesirable types of content. As Michael pointed out in the above post, the trend is going in the opposite direction, and has been for a number of years now.

Thanks for the mention YM Ousley.

Of course most of the mainstream media won’t report much on the net effect of this issue because by the time they figure it out they will probably try working it into their content strategy :D

Well, the dear Michael finally got his mind of the “pad” came back to quality writing. To sum it up, search engines are like malls, they aren´t supposed to offer quality, but quantity by the dollar. How do we find out about good restaurants, by going to a mall and asking the KFC cashier? NO, friends of friends comments, real mouth to mouth.

Mayor media outlets are investing millions answering with proficiency the wrong question. Stop hoping for a line of code to teach you about good wine and go back to basics.

That’s why AOL was worth 260billion and few years later no more than 3, in the same fashion its why Google´s worst competitor isn´t Microsoft´s Bing or Rupert Murdoch hitting the red button. Facebook search on the other hand, is the most advanced search engine if you see people as server nodes, it’s even the most powerful and the cheapest way to run a search business. They are the new curators, the new media.

This is why bloggers and mayor media sites are freaking out pointing at each other instead of looking beyond the monitor. So, my advice, stop being control freaks and let it go. Instead become facilitators of this massive source of content and be on top of the tide again.

People used to say, “Yeah, there was a time when a photographer was respected as a scientist, an artist and magician at the same time. Today, 90% of the U.S. photographers are making USD$24,000 a year at most”.

The time were the word photographer was not enough to qualify you and you needed to add the word professional is the time were a trend becomes a hobby, that´s why you don´t see any “professional dentist”, but you do find “professional bloggers” trying to charge $100 per post, achievable, but it isn´t far from where a trade becomes a commodity and then the most hated specie of providers appear, free-freelancers.

Now we understand why Techcrunch has so many new writers producing so much content. Arrington just put his business plan in a blog post.

I like this post, Michael, even though I disagree with a few premises.

The assumption, if I’m reading right, is that McDonalds is the only food venue available if I’m hungry and want to eat.

But it’s not. Quality restaurants abound, with good and bespoke food.

So I think that there is hope for content, and that all is not fast-food doom and gloom. In niche areas, I think people will pay for quality and exceptional content.

I’m surprised you didn’t mention the “thesaurus-bots” which are automated systems that re-write your content automatically, en mass, and then spit it out to various portals etc… right now the results aren’t amazing but with more time, they will soon kill everything else in sight. Imagine writing an article and then having it “reworded” a thousand times across blogs etc… this is coming and it won’t be pretty!

Jon @ WoodMarvels.com

[...] (highly targetted display advertising)Update 14/12/2009Techcrunch had an interesting piece about quality content on Sunday highlighting a post on Wired that descibes the content creation process on sites run by [...]

super awesome post- brought up so many thoughts the media is currently juggling and raised some really relevant points that resonated with me.

while i do think mcdonald’s media is here and will attempt to crash our content- there’s still something about individuals who have relevant brands that stand alone themselves. they might not be the billionaire ceo’s or conglomerates, but they will have relevance in shaping, telling stories and initiating trends the mcd’s aggegrators smiply copy. there will always be a mass audience for candy culture. this will make it harder for the mom and pops online to survive, but it’ll also make the true talents, changemakers and revolutionists stand out from the rest.

they will also be the one’s who continue to communicate and spread the message offline- something a giant site of links will never have the power or ability to do. i think there’s still power in the individual and an authentic and personal voice.

[...] FOLLOW – Of course, there could be something worse. That would be junk content. Michael Arrington explains this latest trend from TechCrunch [...]

Wow. 216 comments and not one mention of the JooJoo. Isn’t that device supposed to revolutionize fast-food content ? Or am I hitting too close to home ? he he he

Wow. 216 comments and not one mention of how the malware and virus propagators are using the fast food content as bait for people to click on – sometimes creating websites that look legitimate but are redirectors to the malware sites, sometimes planting TinyURLs and other shortened links, sometimes planting malware exploits into Flash advertising, sometimes tricking search advertising into carrying their fake advertising – Google being number 1 is being hammered with adverstising from dishonest sources. All of which seek to sneak in through … fast food content – the content of National Enquirer, etc.

Anyhow. that’s my two comments’ worth.
My two cents on things not too sensible.

Interesting piece, Demand Media model looks like a winner – not because I like the direction it seems to be going – because it’s a perfect example of what aggregators do with-in best practices of web 2.0.

So here it comes.

On the positive side: the demand side is still in it’s infancy. I don’t follow algorithms pulling me by the nose, where everyone has gone before, I know where I’m going on the web – I use it as a tool. I’m not smart – just experienced,

The data is incomplete from a demographic point of view.

-I’m not sure what the penetration of internet use is today but 5 years a ago it was a measly 30%. The behaviour of new, older users – who came to the internet through facebook in the last 3 years – is maturing every minute they’re on line.
-Internet use is still biased to young users, ‘born with a mouse in their hands’ – their ignorant of just about everything at a depth. One cannot expect kids to demand high value content, they’re still learning life.
-I think the data that’s driving the demand side in this Sweatshop Production Model is full of immature users who have just gleaned an understanding of how these algorithm engines work and are experimenting with them.
-The pocket internet has changed penetration incredibly but again, and more so, that market is New; and so back to my first point – immature behaviour in the data will change behaviour as it matures.

As such I think producers of content can look forward to a maturing demand for high value content. It’s a function of the technology – we start out using it pretty sloppily – when our use of it matures the thing starts to resemble something closer to the cannons we remember.

Of coarse, I’m a writer and it just Has to.

Michael Holloway

[...] façon dont le journalisme peut survivre à l’ère d’internet. Michael Arrington de Techcrunch a fait de même, parlant d’AOL, lui aussi en train de devenir une usine à contenus, comme ayant adopté “la [...]

McDonalds is taking over. Clearly an issue that has been around for a long time although we are in real danger of getting to a point where spam content generators are winning the battle.

The problem with McDonald’s content is that (a) it is very cheap and (b) it is a mass consumer product and whilst it is low margin, it sells and makes money. Contrast that with a meal from ElBulli restaurant where there is a 2 year waiting list for diners, prices are high although the business will never make the kind of money that McDonalds does.

I know where I would eat. The problem with search engines is that they seem to reward McDonalds over ElBulli every time. You can read my thoughts on some possible solutions at http://thebln.com/2009/12/machines-like-empty-calories-too-but-they-lack-the-taste-to-distinguish-good-and-bad/ but the reality is that McDonalds will always make the most money.

Great post. Clearly an issue that has been around for a long time although we are in real danger of getting to a point where spam content generators are winning the battle.

The problem with McDonald’s content is that (a) it is very cheap and (b) it is a mass consumer product and whilst it is low margin, it sells and makes money. Sadly most consumers, and all servers, have no taste. Contrast that with a meal from ElBulli restaurant where there is a 2 year waiting list for diners, prices are high although the business will never make the kind of money that McDonalds does.

I know where I would eat. The problem with search engines is that they seem to reward McDonalds over ElBulli every time. You can read some thoughts on possible solutions here: http://thebln.com/2009/12/machines-like-empty-calories-too-but-they-lack-the-taste-to-distinguish-good-and-bad/

The McDonald’s metaphor is a valid one IMO. The trend is towards generating content that is highly palatable, but low on nutrients. Literally poisoning our mind with junk-info, and like McDonald’s and Starbucks (forgive me Americans, but their coffee is shit), it’ll be everywhere you look, thanks to the magic of SEO.
Perhaps this is an indication (and not the first one) that the Web paradigm – let anyone publish anything and then build a really big, really smart Search engine to figure out what is what – is coming to an end.

That can’t be right. People like me who don’t have the time to check out millions of junk for 1 worthy article and are not satisfied by twitter and other meme engines, are still willing to pay for premium content

it’s even simpler: google-translate your text to , italian and back to english

“trying to focus”? i’d say “experimenting with”

Nobody is seeing here business opportunities, and that worries me.

I won’t develop the idea that much, but I see in the issue of fast food content and content that just cheaply repeats ad infinitum some services that would be needed and could gain relevance.

I mean, for instance, sites that are able to distinguish craft content from fast food content. There isn’t a clear barrier here, and some everybody will claim they are reinventing journalism, but one can set up an algorithm to filter content who fits with “fair accountability” and separate that craft first hand content from the rubbish.

Then, to develop the rest of the idea is your task if you are interested, my anonymous friend.

If people new what terrible content was they wouldn’t buy the Daily Mail (UK)…. but they do. Content is just another resource to be stripped down to it’s cheapest working parts.

The truth is that hand-crafted content will standout. But even with great content I think the point Mike is making is that you won’t be able to make (much) money from it. That’s already true. If you have a business model that depends on pageviews, the noise level will dilute your pageviews even further. This will affect TC and everyone else.
It used to be said that a rising tide lifts all boats but this rising tide of sewage will engulf rather than lift.

The tide change has the inevitability of Ford’s assembly line transforming the market. It will be impossible to compete with old content production models.

But I disagree that this will be a permanent race to the bottom. As we begin to universally adopt this production framework, some outlets will differentiate themselves as the Rolls Royces and Mercedes of the content industry– offering high-end, superior, sophisticated content that enriches the lives and status of its readers.

Remember news is not really about communicating information. Otherwise we’d all just read wire feeds. It’s about establishing community mores, distinguishing what ‘matters,’ and feeling like you belong to a society.

The fast food analogy is decidedly unsavory: what about Henry Ford and the assembly line? Critics lamented that it would signal the end of craftsmanship, but it increased efficiency and consumer access.

New production models are going to inevitably transform the media industry, and there is no way of stopping it. But it will not be a one-way race to the bottom. Smart outlets will learn to distinguish themselves as the Rolls Royce and Mercedes Benz of the content industry, providing high-end, sophisticated media that enhances the lifestyle and status of its consumers.

Remember that news and media are not really about information transfer; otherwise we’d all read wirefeeds. News is about establishing community mores, determining what ‘matters’ and is acceptable in society, and where we belong as individuals. It’s about being able to say to tap a friend on the shoulder and say, ‘Hey, did you read that TechCrunch article over the weekend?’

[...] few days about the idea and worth of hand-crafted content. This debate was sparked by a post by Michael Arrington of the Techcrunch Tech Blog. In this post, he argued that we were seeing a world where the good, hand crafted content, was [...]

social tools will allow us to decide what is crap and what is not. our social graphs will help us. search engines won’t. it’s a lot harder to spam yourself into a social graph.

That has nothing to do with search engines. Search engines allow you to search, that’s it. Game over.

I do not want a search engine censoring the results by only showing the results that it thinks are “right”.

What you are proposing is plain censorship at the level of Iran or China.

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content – TechCrunch [...]

Thank you for this post. It’s really sad that this is happening to content, but then again, it has already happened to TV, movies, music, food – I can go on. And the saddest part of it is that most people will get used to crappy content and won’t like good content any more (just like they don’t appreciate good movies, etc).
Hopefully degradation won’t last forever and people figure out that site like AOL are not evern worth visiting.

anyway…we can’t expect get away with it easily.

I read TC regularily – I also used to read the tech articles over at the German Spiegel, until I noticed that their stories are a TC (ars, cnet, engadget) echo… for every big TC story, there’s one at Spiegel Online a day or two later. They link to you, so I guess that’s ok.

Not really Peter. If they promote and rank trash then eventually that will be all they will be able to chose amongst in certain verticals.

It is an economic decision…the goal of the search engine ***is*** to filter/censor out garbage & return good stuff.

But many people are working the line…which will cause Google to adjust the line. This has been a common practice cause/effect relationship over the past decade or so. Hence why SEO is always changing. Stuff that was once good gets considered gray, and stuff that was once considered gray becomes black, etc etc etc

The AP stories are the fast food.

Mike….agree but the more pervasive MacContent become the powerful and valuable the social news sites such as Digg and Reddit and discovery sites like StumbleUpon will become.

Yes, with a spicy sauce of exquisite grammar

So the twitterification of the web continues.

Not to fret Mike, quality journalism will still flourish in the new media world, much like it always has. We are in the middle of a painful, yet exciting transition. Sure, crappy, valueless content will find a home in the new media world much like it exists today with garbage like Us, National Enquirer, and NY Times as a few examples. The columnists of today, who seemingly successfully ride the coattails of the major content brands will be forced to find their own way in the blogosphere or fade into irrelevance. I expect we will see marginal columnists like Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman fade into the dustbins of journalistic history.

On the other hand, I write for Demand Studios sometimes and I’m a f***ing good writer (and award-winning former national journo) who can put together in 10 minutes something better than many hacks can write in a week.

I do it in my spare time because I now run my own business and miss the fun of writing. But the point is, just because it’s turned out quickly it doesn’t mean it has to be crap. McDonalds is fast food, so is Scallops à la plancha.

[...] that offer cheap, mostly useless, ad-driven content. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington calls it “fast food content,” and RWW’s Richard MacManus calls them “content farms.” Both fascinating reads on [...]

[...] Demand Media, a sprawling network of content sites (that was a big part of a post yesterday on the end of hand crafted content), is rumored to be shopping itself to the big Internet companies. A couple of sources have told us [...]

I can see where this is all so upsetting for most of us who have always relied on tangible items that we can cherish. Like that folded, faded paper with the poem you wrote in third grade that is in some box somewhere in your attic. Maybe though this is a good change, maybe the weight and value of our words and actions will be more transparent and we will see a higher level of quality in how we communicate. People will either follow the person who can copy, yell, and create havok or they will seek out the source instead of the words. After all think of all the times that would have saved a lot of trouble in the past if the sources were graded higher than the content they produced. Just a thought.

[...] how journalism crapper endure in the cyberspace age. TechCrunch originator archangel Arrington also riffs on this theme, mentioning AOL’s “Toyota Strategy of antiquity cardinal of status noesis sites via the [...]

[...] by Fever/Chill Pill– Is Mike Arrington’s post on the demise of hand crafted content—The End Of Hand Crafted Content—then followed by several sage responses:Doc Searls Weblog · The Revolution Will Not Be [...]

[...] Demand Media, a sprawling network of content sites (that was a big part of a post yesterday on the end of hand crafted content), is rumored to be shopping itself to the big Internet companies. A couple of sources have told us [...]

[...] The End of the End of Handcrafted Content TechCrunch says it’s The End of Handcrafted Content. [...]

What about the inevitable backlash that will embrace high quality, A.D.D. hostile, richly argued and illustrated content?

Look what’s happening in the music industry from the gradual amputation of the physical artifact culminating with the mp3. Vinyl record sales were up 99% in 2008.

Great article. Let’s hope for the best

[...] Arrington has a good op ed about the future of machine based blogs and content theft.  Bottom line: it’s a speed game [...]

By chance does anyone know if google has a search bias for publishers who use their ad products? That could also be a reason trash content is ranked ahead of sophisticated content assuming that trash content is usually accompanied by a google ad product like adsense. Just a thought.

Make up your mind.

Aren’t you always arguing for free music any way YOU want it?

If people find other blogs than TC, good for them. Even if that’s where they consume your content.

P.S. And TC has a great history of reading TechMeme and rewriting popular articles.

I think this is where TechCrunch is taking the smart route of having their writers express a bit of personality. While maintaining an objective journalistic eye I see a lot of TC articles that would make those old-school journalists cringe because they have (gosh) an opinion or use humour or sarcasm to make a point. The upside is that we (readers) develop an individual relationship with the perceived personality of TechCrunch. Keeps us coming back. Keeps us linking and quoting. Keeps us clicking through on ads when they appeal to us.

This was a great quote from a few years ago, but I lost the reference.

“If anything, sifting through the almost-good to find great is now harder because there’s so much more of everything to evaluate. Everybody is their own studio, broadcaster, distributor, producer, writer, editor and director. Mass media and mass culture have lost centralized control via means of distribution. No more enclosure. Also no more editorial oversight. “

This is also a side-effect of valuing the location of content over the content itself.

Demand leverages Google’s heavy reliance on publisher reputation to gain authority for their newly minted content. These pages rank solely because they live on Demand’s heavily linked URL.

PageRank was always an imperfect proxy for real-world reputation. It’s time we tracked what’s actually important – the ID of the person writing the content.

Docs are Old School, We Need PageRank for People: http://bit.ly/128U9V

Two points: 1) There is nothing new about any of this. Here’s what happens in newsrooms all around the country every morning. An army of “financial journalists” prints out the same Reuters article, adds a line or two and a slight rewrite, and calls it an original articles. The lack of differentiated content is one of the key things that’s killing all the newspapers.
2) AOL is trying to catch a falling knife. This model isn’t going to work, because crap content doesn’t drive results, and all those AOL advertisers are gonna be watching their click rates drop through the floor. I may sound like a traditionalist here, but I actually sell things online, and I know that people don’t respond to junk. AOL’s play to bring down their content costs is going to murder their already-low CPM’s.

This still leaves out the hardest part of the equation, which is gaining audience. How many indy journalist teams will also have the resources and know-how to build a destination as popular as DailyKos or HuffPost? Should they have to?

The current search algos rely too heavily on links and not enough on social capital. Links are a poor proxy for realworld reputation.

It does make me sad that the crap content seems to be rising.

I’d also add to this phenomenon the rise of lazy tweets: people who tweet random info, hashtag the hell out of it with trending terms, and then seed it out to their “retweet minions” who’ll then spread it for them.

This “content strategy” is clearly all about the number of impressions and has nothing to do with what anyone is actually SAYING — obvious since many times the tweets are incomprehensible, superfluous (i.e. “mobile is going to be big! #mobile #tech #news #LLCoolJ #hungry #obama”) or inaccurate (as is the case when a person tweets about a blog post they’ve clearly never read.)

But I guess you’re right…the more we know, the more we’ll be able to deal with it as it gets (inevitably) worse. But I also never thought I’d see the day when McDonald’s would serve apples to kids, so I guess we shouldn’t give up all hope.

[...] just finished reading Michael Arrington’s "The End of Hand-Crafted Content " (also published elsewhere as "AOL’s New Fast-Food-Content Strategy Means the [...]

Great article but alarming as well. May google and co. will find a way to identify no-brain-articles.

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content: (aamm medier ) [...]

This is the best summary of the issue I’ve ever read. Absence of a quick fix demonstrates the veracity of the diagnosis.

Could be the problem is with consumers not creators.

How do we fix our culture?

I think what you’re really arguing is the demise of full-time content creators. “Full-time reporter” vs. “hobbyist” is a false dichotomy. E.g., I don’t make a dime in direct money from my blogs, yet they are the chief driver of a nice consulting business.

As is frequently pointed out, the replacement economic model for hardcore, limited-audience investigative political and social reporting hasn’t been found yet. But most other categories can be covered under the rubric “People who want credibility in the area will earn it by giving insight away more or less for free.” Aggregators and the like can use those as a starting point.

It’s still early days for “curation” being done really well. But it’s also still early days for the death of the traditional media.

[...] Arrington writes about the end of hand crafted [...]

So what you are saying is that if you can run a print or other traditional media outlet profitably, regardless of scale, you are in a great position to profit when all the online media is
“mcdonaldized”

never too you for one to go that direction MA !

[...] content.” I like better RWW’s “content farms” and TechCrunch’s “fast food content” to describe the new “content factories” (i.e., Demand Media and AOL). The [...]

As the publisher of an “artisanal” online magazine, I find this both encouraging and depressing. I agree with Arrington that we’re swimming in crap, and will soon be swimming in more. But that doesn’t mean that the quality won’t still rise to the top. Everyone will have their favorite aggregators, and will trust those aggregators to lead the way. A thousand new churches, for a universe of a million gods.

[...] don’t fret about the robo-content trend being championed by AOL and others. Michael Arrington writes, “It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop [...]

Outright stealing is going on on a large scale. TechCrunch has never listed my blog in its trackback section, but it once listed a blog that stole from my blog. I wrote to TechCrunch. Got a bad reply.

Michael, you are on a tear — between this and Spamville, you are really being bold and insightful and doing right for journalists and editorialists everywhere

Don’t let up — Demand Media and their ilk are a plague. If the thought leaders call out the mf the human race and the trivialization of journalism and reportage, then we can consign Deman Media and the rest to the margins, where they belong, and label their movement for what it is — the true dumbification of the human race,.

Nothing — repeat nothing — is inevitable, except death.

[...] inevitable death of journalism.  The Washington Post sees the same thing.  Tech Crunch describes Fast Food Journalism, and Paul Kedrosky points out that Google is starting to fail.  While I’m sure PageRank has [...]

I think you are all missing the BIG TRUTH

The big truth is that GOOGLE does not care!

It makes money off what other pay to produce, and it makes even more money off people like Demand Media who make tons of content that is aimed exactly at what makes GOOG the most money b/c its the most searched stuff.

Google “hearts” Demand Media!

Like a strip mall developer “hearts” McDs!

Keep those CAM fees coming says the developer

Keep the crappy articles comin Demand Aol Media

It is not a race to the bottom, its a race to win Google’s heart since they are a monopoly and the only game in town – so what do you do for the biggest badass in town – you give em exactly what he wants!

Lots of fresh new stuff that he makes money off

like delivering frat boys to the strip club

its an old business my friends

Hate the fact those huge companies steal your content,I’ve thought about using some articles but just Declined too

But I did Write about CrunchGear Today

About the camera contest here
http://www.thepadrino.com/2009/12/leave-comment-to-win-contourhd-1080p.html

Cheers.

“The rise of fast food content is upon us, and it’s going to get ugly.” … I couldn’t agree more. I recently read a statistic predicting that soon, the information on the Internet will double every 72 hours. Furthermore, according to a recent report by Nielsen, the average person in the US spends 68 hours online each month (that works out to 34 full days online each year). The interesting point the study uncovered is that in a month, an average person visits 2,700 websites, yet only spends 57 seconds at each site. What does this say? People are doing a whole lot of nothing. This is what we do for 34 of our 365 days each year.

I agree with @grimp0teuthis’ idea that ” Because people do want quality content, fast food news won’t eat at your readership base, though it will clog up the search results.”

The question remains: if content on the Internet does in fact triple every 72 hours, what service will we use to filter through all the information to find the quality content? Given that my search experience is so frustrating now, I can’t imagine what it would be like with double the information.

I think we’ve hit a point where our society thrives on the idea of an “Urge For Excess” … you can check out a blog post I wrote about it here: http://www.sarahdoody.com/blog/urge-for-excess

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content – TechCrunch Demand Media – the Myspace of online content, or blogging by the numbers – The Inquisitr The supersizing of content; or how we are turning the Web into an obese mess – The Inquisitr Techcrunch as the Content Strip-Mall – SiliconANGLE [...]

“Most people, when given a choice, prefer to read WSJ over Larry’s SpamStock Blog any day.”

Is that why the number one search term on google last year was Michael Jackson? And number one, right now, on Yahoo is Kourtney Kardashian?

I’d say that your “most people” don’t even know what WSJ stands for.

Classical Musicians have gone through this crap years ago. They committed suicide by various means at the same time the “Entertainment Industry” began to take shape. (When 78s became affordable, through to the CD-age, and to the death-knell of the MP3).
The Cream does NOT always rise to to the surface. I know hundreds of superiorly gifted “retailers” who went to (music) conservatory.
The field of Music Composition died a quick and nearly sure death when digital means became affordable. I’m not talking about the eternal remix.
The printed word held up for centuries; but it really had a rather small age of profit-making (which has been extravagant to obscene).
News had no glorious start. Benjamin Franklin wrote a most dishonest and entertaining rag. Newspaper Row was no bastion of prudence and erudition.
And our Internet, now, is an exact mirror of who we are – even the parts we don’t want to think about or yet understand. I’m glad I just do this stuff for fun. Sylvester Wager, The Times Square

[...] started this thread with his post on “junk content”. Now Fred Wilson, Om Malik and a few others have picked up on [...]

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content – Quality is being replaced with easy and not-too-bright. Time for a big group showing of [...]

[...] across this article by Michael Arrington. He’s painting a picture of an ever more complicated world of digital [...]

[...] Update: Tuesday, 15/12/2009 There’s an excellent discussion of the rise of junk content over on TechCrunch. [...]

I personally still prefer to flip open a real newspaper and sit back in a coffee shop comfy chair and read it. Reading the news on a battery-dependent Amazon Kindle or Iphone doesn’t cut the grade. Long live the printed newspaper :-)

great article. So what’s the solution – some accredited journalist badge or an accredited institution badge / feed filter? That wouldnt have dealt with the maureen dowd issue a few months back though. I personally think the major media houses are going to have to start acting like interactive agencies and producing great content for brand websites and microsites (I blogged about this at http://www.glenborn.com/?p=252) so maybe google should treat those sites as an extension of the media house producing the content from a rankings perspective?

It’s not outstanding editorial that will begin to fade. It’s search engines. Search engine “approval ratings” have dropped from 75% to 62% to 51% over 3 years, and the ongoing flood of mediocre content will drive this down into the teens. And the “wisdom of the crowds” approach is just as susceptible of being gamed as search engines, so that’s not the answer. Professional curators who truly care about getting it right are the antidote.

[...] new: Over the weekend TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington waded into the fray, warning that “I think there’s a much bigger problem lurking on the horizon than a bunch of [...]

The rise of Demand Media , AOL’s new “content” strategy, and related search-driven publishing strategies, are the ugly result of the world that Google’s success has, inadvertently I think, created online. A lot of revenue — too much — goes to the content creator that games Google best, not the one that make the most original contribution or the one that readers would necessarily prefer. My guess is that this phenomenon will slowly start to sour Google’s fortunes. I don’t know how exactly, but at some point users will start to recognize that Google isn’t producing the “best” results, as reasonable people would define them, and turn away from Google as means of information discovery. Or Google might work harder to keep the gamers at bay. Both are preferable outcomes to Mike Arrington’s unhappy prediction.

[...] (oops, sorry, Aol.). Kicking off this round was Michael Arrington, who wrote in a post titled The End of Hand Crafted Content: On one end you have AOL and their Toyota Strategy of building thousand of niche content sites via [...]

Mike, the key assumption in your point is that people get their news through portals and SEOs. The mass market may be SEO/portal based, but that’s nothing new, they were reading USA today or The Sun, so it’s such a different media for the same crap.

My guess is that your target audience comes to your site through links in RSS feeds and tweets.

Isn’t that right?
How much of your traffic comes from search engine?

Demand Media is absolutely no threat to TC and other news destinations. They’re creating a market for HOWTO articles and videos. If they’re taking traffic away from anyone, it’s old, unreadable forums.

AOL’s “news” factory will probably have a negative affect on organic traffic to sites like TC, but I think people read news from brands they trust, depending on the category. TMZ, TechCrunch, CNN are all category leaders with loyal readers that won’t be swayed by SEO-fadder.

Great post, I agree, anything from Ezines or any article database has been written, rewritten and spinned 20 times. Really, It might as well be a foreign language to me.

The essential requirement to get the quality content is to have the original content creator find a way to monetarized his work.
NYT guys following Techcrunch didn’t prevail in this digital era not because they are not able to produce quality content but because they are in disadvantage due to insufficient knowledge and exposure to the latest tool&channel for marketing their content and get paid.
As you pointed out, If one is just bragging about the fancy marketing tool, he will soon find out he is in a position losing his edge too.
The quality of content is what finally makes difference. It just takes time for people to get there.
Free content is not the way to go.
It could look like free, but the writer has to get paid one way or another.

[...] interesting discussion has been swirling lately kicked off by Michael Arrington’s The End of Hand Crafted Content. In it, he argues that web publishers are in a spiraling race to the bottom because companies like [...]

I would argue that much of Fox News is not only not “fair & balanced” but is fast food news yet has millions of viewers for the same reason McDonald’s makes money – easy to digest (for some) and cheap to make

It takes effort to write your own content and I guess you do not want somebody else to take credit for your work. There is now hardly any original content on the net. The good ones are always copyrighted.

The NYTimes is quite innovative. They have a cool desktop application based on Adobe’s AIR technology.

[...] the past few days a conversation has been going on over at Michael Arrington’s Techcrunch “The End Of Hand Crafted Content”, Fred Wilson’s AVC “Social Beats Search,” Chris Dixon’s Blog “Search [...]

[...] on the web that has been getting quite a lot of coverage from major blogs like ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch, and that is the “content farm.” Many of you may be familiar with the term “link farms,” [...]

crap content rewards search terms, while news isn’t trying to answer questions like, “how do i make papier mache”. they serve two completely different purposes. the fact that they’re competing on the same platform (i.e. an Internet where search engines are the pathway to all content) is totally stupid. i vote for a new ad-free, search engine-free Internet, a PAID directory like the HBO of the Internet. my wallet is ready!

[...] eulogies were kicked off by Michael Arrington, whose The End of Hand Crafted Content provocatively claimed that “Hand crafted content is dead. Long live fast food [...]

[...] AOL has in store for the display ad business.  However, as I read foreboding articles about the end of hand-crafted content, I see the other side’s point a [...]

Every individual will be his or her own tribe for a while. The world of information is not just being fragmented, it is being pulverized. But, somewhere lurks the centripetal force that will work against this current centrifugal tendency. Imagine for a moment, if you would, the day when someone played the first commercially viable phonograph record on an old wind up Victrola. Now imagine what the publishers of sheet music thought. A big uh-oh. Yet, sheet music is still made, sold and used. There have been hundreds of information revolutions big and small. This one will be digested and probably, at some point, we will be better off for it. If it doesn’t kill us. :)

So apparently writers are going to be like musicians. Plenty of talent around, but unable to make a living doing what they do… But, I say this somewhat facetiously. There aren’t THAT many talented writers out there in the ‘media’ anymore. And the big-time news talking heads are mediocre at best. Anderson Cooper is like the obnoxious neighborhood teenager. Whomever proof-reads the major newspapers may, or may not read at a 10th grade level. Reporters stopped reporting and became commentators a long time ago. Pretty soon it’ll all be Tiger Woods stories.

Journalists dress themselves up as modern Hemingways. They lament the downfall of traditional news sources, as though recording the day’s events were high culture. The Internet is a wasteland populated by oases of Original Content, which bloggers and search engines are draining for profit.

This grandiose self-conception is lost on ordinary people, who read the news to learn what happened yesterday. Newspapers are not high literature. Readers care no more about dying newspapers than about dying genre-fiction authors whom they have ceased reading. A news story is no more “hand-crafted” than a Subway sandwich.

Journalists invoke a doomsday scenario where Content has died out, leaving only the parasites who sucked the life out of Content–and a few tabloid-esque papers that spend so little time and money preparing stories, that a continual “first mover” advantage keeps them atop the market.

In reality, human nature does not change. People will always demand legitimate news. As the Internet renders local papers superfluous except for local news, many will die out. A few major news sources will find innovative ways to scrabble together enough market share to survive. Bloggers living on wittily rearranged Content and advertising payments will continue to thrive. If necessary, people will find clever ways to monitor these news sources for reliability.

This is not a tragedy. This is a rearrangement for efficiency. This process of creative destruction is how society advances. The genre of journalistic literature will not be lost forever as it is drowned amid blogs and search engines, but will “suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.” Change is inevitable. I look forward to it.

[...] his response to TechCrunch’s declaration that hand-crafted content on news and other websites is being replace…, Daylife CEO Upendra Shardanand says its the tools being used by writers and editors to create that [...]

Some good thoughts here, but let me give you a tip: Don’t ever refer to yourself as an “innovator.” Self-congratulatory references like this are always an indicator that you’re less significant than you think. Accolades for real innovation always come in time (sometimes a long time), and from others.

Nice article, and way to see how the winds blow, but this has been happening for a long time now. We’ve been racing to reach the lowest-common-denominator in many areas, journalism (esp the rush of online, non-professional news) is just the latest battleground. (we already lost the war in education, business and innovation…)

I think the article is missing the point.

No one cares overly much if you reprint content (although attribution would be not only nice, but would also support the arguments of bloggers using the material).

The problem is that the structure behind the media has to support production of not just “hand-crafted” (how ridiculous a phrase is that?) but “quality” journalism. Everyone should pay for the original source. If everyone pays it’s not that much of a financial burden per person.

We have to solve the problem of differentiating between “Earned P.R.”, “Paid For adverts and Spin” and news (“And Now… Back To Real News”.)

A human being has some B.S. filters which get more sophisticated with time as opposed to the “Choke and Spew” mechanical approach. (How many people can’t spot a piece of Nigerian Spam? How many computers let the same piece of dross through?)

Generated content, specially done without the B.S. filters, will be recognized as such. (How much of Google News is just reproduction of the original and is treated as such by the search engine?)

Proper content, done with a distinct style, proper grammar and respect for context, will rise to the top.

I’m not as worried as “The Media” seem to be, as they are shredded, reassembled, mixed and ashed into “The Medium” of the internet.

“The Essay” that used to be the source of all well written political activism is about to resurface after a few centuries of being submerged beneath commercial necessity.

Current commercial content is too short, not too long. You can’t fit complex information in the limitations of today’s editorial budget.

But with and on the internet, you can take the time to evolve the logic and frame the arguments underlying the point you are trying to make. The linking of information (by URLs to/from trusted sites) can advance your point of view.

Me machine bot. Like your post. Me will be future.

Cheapened content plays to the lowest common denominator, as you point out. The danger here is not just killing off professional journalists and writers who make a living from their work; real news, real reporting is done in the field, not only in front of a computer monitor. It needs editors, fact checkers and writers and it is expensive to create.Also, what is happening will create a troubling increase in class differentiation. Newspapers are democratizing instruments. Those who have the wits, education and expertise will migrate to substantial web and (yes, some will remain) print content; others will sink to the fast food level. But maybe television has already done this.

In-N-Out’s ingredients are always fresh, never preprocessed or frozen. Compared that to the frozen beef patties at McDonald’s and Burger King, frozen, chemically-processed french fries, pre-shredded lettuce, and homogenized “secret sauces” that taste vaguely like a mix of tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, relish and onions. Now, apply that analogy to the news business.

Readers’ Digest was aggregating content before many of today’s bloggers were born. The main advantage of aggregating content and linking back to the source is that in my view it not only does not “steal” content, it cuts down on needless Internet traffic by avoiding copying material, just linking back to it. As for the content, the rock band Phish made a fortune by letting people copy recordings of their live shows.

The difference now is that the whisper down the lane is a whisper that is instantly heard around the world via the Internet. If there’s a way to distinguish a firsthand report from a hand-me-down, we’ll still have an idea of how accurate it is. In an age of William Randolph Hearst style “yellow journalism” and when network television deliberately colors the news and perpetrates lies of omission, the emerging model of information dissemination is certainly no worse, and probably a little better.

Clearly googles news aggregator isn’t working, after all, it allowed this article to appear as an unfiltered front page hit. It did this even though it has a comment section with so many posts bashing the Google News aggregator. If I were to decide how to filter results for my own business model, such nonsense would not occur.

[...] blog entitled “McDonalds Content and Social Search.” It was, in part, a response to a post by Michael Arrington about the evolution of news content. The bottom line in both instances seemed to be that content is [...]

Look at This Viyya Technologies, premium news content
http://members.magazine.org/source/events/event.cfm?event=PD10ARTICL

I could not have said it better myself.

Speaking of the Medici, Criterion gave us another winner recently:

http://www.criterion.com/films/1025

[...] storm in a teacup to upset the blogosphere is the threat of ‘fast-food content’. Raised as a threat by McArrington himself, the worry is that fast and loose content quickly generated to match popular keywords will swamp [...]

[...] But it seems as if sharing was being dominated by short content or “fast food content,” as Michael Arrington calls it. He mainly talks of aggregated content but also discusses “the end of hand crafted [...]

I agree that fast food content is upon us but I see that as an opportunity rather than an issue or threat.
When McDonald’s arrived it spread fast. Convenience, availability, coolness. Everyody was happy and McDonald’s is still there and going strong.
But after we got used to McDonald’s good things came back. New outlets selling better burgers, organic meat (I am not a big fan of organic), local producers. We started going back to research quality. And that quality commands an higher price becasue it is scarcer and it offers more than just food, it offers and experience.
Now, I don’t know if the analogy holds true all the way, but certainly I see many similarities in what is happening with content.
Poor quality content is here to stay and will keep multiplying and become more accessible to everybody everywhere (this is a good thing) but good quality proprietary content, treu journalism and analysis will continue to exist and will become more valuable. It’s to us to find better ways of collating all content, filtering the relevant bits and consuming (experiencing) it in the best possible way, depending on context and relevance to us.
I believe the solution is actually simpler than most think.

[...] this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that [...]

[...] this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that [...]

[...] TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote document.write(String.fromCharCode(97,110)); alarmed post document.write(String.fromCharCode(97,98,111,117,116)); “fast food content [...]

Can an infinite army of machines tapping keys write Shakespeare?

Pretty solid post from a webzine editor Mike. It’s fun trying to predict the flow of real information even just a year or three from now.

[...] 2. “5 Reasons Why You Should Comment on Blog Posts” by Misty Belardo (BitRebels.com) 3. “The End Of Hand Crafted Content” by Michael Arrington (TechCrunch) 4. PODCAST: “CobWEBs Daily Edition: TechCrunch, content [...]

[...] of this Wired profile of the online content factory. Early this week it reached a boil after both TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb sounded the alarm about the coming onslaught of cheap, superficial “content [...]

[...] this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that [...]

[...] del periodismo en la era Internet. El fundador de TechCrunch, Michael Arrignton, también habla con asiduidad de este tema y menciona la “Estrategia Toyota de crear miles de sitios de contenido [...]

I’m just happy that most of the topics I like to write about on my blogs are very closely associated with skills and knowledge I can use to get work, or are done closely with organizations that see value in what I’m doing which opens up more job opportunities the better the work I do.

I do agree that one of the things bloggers will have to do is keep innovating, because fast food content just like anything else might be simply another trend that rises and falls, but through innovation and adoption of different mediums or whatever, the guys who are producing the high quality content now will be able to find new ways to appeal to people.

My prediction is that in a year people will have been interested in fast-food content for a little while, but the appeal will quickly go away.

[...] hand crafted content doomed? Spekaing for myself, [...]

That’s why you focus on SEO more instead of content.

I disagree partly with the above post, btw, I think Google has already a strategy for this problem. It goes like this…
DOMAIN AUTHORITY.

Sites like ehow.com (owned by demand media ) are gonna be the providers of barely decent content and Google will say to them..do sustain this quality or you’re $#)$#).

And new sites will have to try to build domain authority in order to compete with sites like ehow where you just need to write one article and viola you’re ranked #2 for that phrase.

So, there is more than enough content. Google needed content in order to serve the long tail searchers…I think that need is satisfied now.

What you should focus on if you have a site now is building domain authority and links to your site.

Anyway, I guess Michael was talking about NYTimes who have already domain authority…and in that case I think the fight will also be on promotion..which will make the web not so fair place where will be very hard for beginners to get in. Just like with the offline world,,if you wanna get a good magazine going, you need to spend big effort on promotion.

The long tail of Internet use would like to have a word with you.

[...] blogger Michael Arrington recently posted “The End of Hand Crafted Content” on his TechCrunch blog, in which he exposes his fear that cheap, disposable content will bring [...]

[...] ultimi giorni si è parlato parecchio dei pericoli che la qualità dell’informazione pubblicata online può portare alla Rete stessa. Le content farm sono sempre più diffuse, si tratta di società e [...]

[...] use keywords to find things and advertisers use keywords to find customers.  As Michael Arrington points out, this is leading to increasing amounts of low quality, keyword-stuffed content. The end result is a [...]

[...] Incredibly Dour Assessment of Where Creators Are Left in Age of Aggregators – I still value the immediacy and authority of content directly from thought leaders. [...]

[...] on quality, but on quantity. Search engines and aggregators are complicit in this abuse of the Web, force feeding a glut of low quality content to unsuspecting [...]

In short, this is a fantastic and thought-provoking post.

Totally disagree with Mike. Here is why:
Google has about 65% search in the world.

1. Google needs high quality sites which yields high conversion for its advertisers.
2. Google is now filtering out low quality sites which put them to the bottom of the sea. Now sites are more user targeted by their behavioral. The sites you most visited are now ranked top according to your previous visit. This is narrowing search for high quality sites.
3. I have 60 sites with low quality which use to pay top dollars last few years. Now it is paying pennies due to Google is improving its algorithm.
4. I have a really high quality site that is now ranking great on its keywords and pays higher each month while my other not so high quality sites pays badly.
5. If what Mike says is true then soon or later the internet will become a collection of garbage data which I bet no one wants to see and will not allow it to happen.
6. My vision is that those company who does tricks like Demand Media will be banned or put them on the bottom of the sea by Google soon as they did it before to those company who try to out smart them.
7. Google dominate the internet and trust me, they are smarter have the best of the best people in the world. They want quality and they will protect those who does produce them.

[...] The End Of Hand Crafted Content. Welcome to the age of “cut and paste journalism”. [...]

So if none of this is fair and they are playing dirty with Google’s blessing…than would it be so bad to make things more difficult for them? Would it be so bad if there were some genius programs out there to robo-search terms strictly for the purpose of messing with their algorothim?

The real content producers won’t suffer since they write based on what other humans want. The mass fast food article producers will have to sift through more confusing data…

I know many people won’t see the value in the above suggestion. So how about just educating big time advertisers on how they are essentially paying to be on parked domains (really, it’s no different) and suggest blocking all of Demand Media’s content.

Many, many advertisers were angry about losing $$ to parked domains…forcing Google to make mass changes. Eventually…this could turn into a similar thing.

I’m an old-style journo who made the jump to working for myself 4 years ago, & now with print outlets practically closed to freelancers, provide content to web sites. The point was made that if you write with passion & write well, you will get an audience, even if you don’t earn very much. That’s exactly the approach I take.

I looked at the farmed stuff 2 years ago – the job boards where you bid on stories for ridiculously low prices. I could never underbid my opposition (often in India), & I hated the lack of quality. Instead, I write for Suite101.com, which pays longtail commission on page views & Google ad clicks, & has high editorial standards. I also blog, & I provide a range of content to commercial clients for their websites & email newsletters.

Individually, these clients pay me far less per article than I used to earn as a full-time print journo, but they respect my expertise – I only write on topics about which I’m knowledgeable – & we have a good working relationship. I enjoy researching the topics suggested and providing short, informative articles that will draw visitors to their site.

There is room on the internet for everything from the AOL-style fast food crap to high-end journalism. It’s up to individual content providers to find the level at which they will write, build their business model based on that, and take the time for the audience to develop.

It’s a hell of a scary way to survive – but there will always be an audience for the good stuff.

[...] this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that [...]

[...] photos back then, and it’s certainly more than what appears to be coming next: Google-driven “fast-food content” or “content farming.” Find the hottest Google search terms, get somebody — [...]

[...] I am in no way trying to imply the sites such the NY Times, Washington Post, or Wikipedia are comparable to the content factories.  I bring it up to show how rapidly the content factories are growing.  Michael Arrington has written an interesting post about how the content factories may indicate the decline of “hand-crafted content” [...]

[...] * TechCrunch > The End Of Hand Crafted Content [...]

[...] you haven’t yet read the mind-bending Wired article on a company called Demand Media (and Mike Arrington’s poignant response), you really ought to.  As a passionate wantrepreneur, I’m incredibly torn by the rise of [...]

[...] days ago on his popular blog called “Why Social Beats Search.” In it, he alludes to Mike Arrington’s post about the rise of automated content production and its effect on the larger content ecosystem. I encourage you to read both posts in [...]

[...] has been to their detriment as well. Even winners from the first wave like TechCrunch have admitted that the evolution towards shorter, fast food content will mean that no one can take the time to do deeper dives because it’s not economically [...]

This is depressing for any writer. I came across Demand and didn’t understand what it was – now I do, unfortunately.

And someone recently tried to sell me an automated website creator – one of its features was an ability to use thousands of relevant articles by translating them into another language and back again. Scary!

[...] long-form journalism. And while I’m skeptical as to just how well any device can change our growing collective desire for faster content over better content, I hold out hope because of the way I currently use my Amazon [...]

[...] long-form journalism. And while I’m skeptical as to just how well any device can change our growing collective desire for faster content over better content, I hold out hope because of the way I currently use my Amazon [...]

[...] a post entitled “The End of Hand Crafted Content“, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington states that he’s worried about the “rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force [...]

[...] should have included AOL instead of CNN, as it has effectively morphed into a collective of blogs of dubious quality and questionable need, existing primarily to attract bottom-feeding advertising revenue, which circles back to [...]

m@h@lo is apparently a big point here. Came out a few days ago that they are scraping content, and then ranking for that content better than the original.

I know I’d be super pissed if they scraped http://styleguidance.com and then ranked for our stuff better.

[...] approach has come under heavy criticism. Michael Arrington recently wrote: These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on [...]

[...] approach has come under heavy criticism. Michael Arrington recently wrote: These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on [...]

Demand Media got interesting approach and so far so good, but it’s nothing promising on long term. I guess they will change the steps if they need to.

[...] Michael Arrington on TechCrunch re: The End of Handcrafted Content [...]

[...] just finished reading Michael Arrington’s “The End of Hand-Crafted Content” (also published elsewhere as “AOL’s New Fast-Food-Content Strategy Means the End of Journalism [...]

[...] Despite the fast rate of Old Media decline, the emergence of the Reader Elite remains several years down the road. The proverbial shoe needs to drop even further before the general public realizes what’s being lost. The inability to finance quality content creators is something only Old Media people care about right now. The New Media Elite will care about it eventually, too, once their “I told you so” self-stratification abates, and they have less to link to and huge passages to excerpt from — and they’ll themselves disrupted as well. [...]

[...] have come to the concluscion, thanks to this article on Tech Crunch, that Blogs With Wings is a Mom-And-Pop blog. My blog is a grass roots kind of [...]

[...] churning out stories about algorithmically determined topics. While Demand has been described as “fast food” content by TechCrunch, Seed got some press recently for a high-profile attempt at [...]

[...] churning out stories about algorithmically determined topics. While Demand has been described as “fast food” content by TechCrunch, Seed got some press recently for a high-profile attempt at [...]

[...] churning out stories about algorithmically determined topics. While Demand has been described as “fast food” content by TechCrunch, Seed got some press recently for a high-profile attempt at [...]

[...] opinions vary from TechCrunch throwing a party when someone “steals” their content, to Newsosaurs mandating that their content is removed from [...]

A few years ago when this Shit started pouring out into the web, I and a LOT of others started seeing it and fleeing from it. The average consumer will take some time to get used to it but web savvy readers immediately recognize fast food journalism, and steer clear asap, there is a HUGE list of sites that I no longer go to. And all it took was one or two junk articles.

[...] my world, where content is quickly ripped off without attribution every day, a link is gold. I wrote: Old media frets over blogs and aggregators that summarize content and link back to the [...]

Good quality, relevant and unique content will always be in demand. It is a fact that current internet users tend to want info faster and in smaller sizes. When they find something they like they will spend more time on the topic and will look for quality content. Thanks for a good post.