How Ben Goldman and Paris Wade of LibertyWritersNews gamed yellow journalism: two out of work waiters employing questionable ethics to get clicks.
Out of the washingtonpost comes an eye opening feature on two maverick former unemployed waiters (aka recent college graduates) Ben Goldman and Paris Wade and how they have shrewdly gamed the blogging world to make a flotilla of money through their shocking and arguably crass (but exceptionally profitable) blog: LibertyWritersNews.
In the exclusive, the two twenty-something men who rotate during waking hours penning ten minute two hundred word articles (they concede wishing they could write honest thoughtful articles once in a while, but don’t bother cause no one would ever click on it) from their California somewhere couch cater to feeding a particular audience.
Notes the washingtonpost: ‘Ten minutes and nearly 200 words later, he is done with a story that is all opinion, innuendo and rumor’.
Penning what they concede are ‘deliberately misleading’ articles which go viral on their swelling Facebook page (yes kids, these are the yellow journalists who help inflame society’s prejudices, anger and frustration at the system), Ben Goldman and Paris Wade’s intentions have little to do with actual real journalism but more with how much money they can make in the here and the now.
Reticent to explain how much money they make since starting their off hand conservative website six months ago (current estimates sit at $40 000 on the low end a month) the two formerly unemployed workers (who have actually only voted liberal in the past) cut and paste story posts that feed into Donald Trump mania along with pegging twisted and hyperbole, shock value article titles.
Sample article titles include, ‘CAN’T TRUST OBAMA,’ with the added (yummy caveat), ‘Look At Sick Thing He Just Did To STAB Trump In The Back… .’
Or other tempting delectables, including: ‘THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing.’
Who doesn’t want to click on too good to be true clickbait?
Other article titles and headlines readers with ‘Down with the Globalists,’ soon to go viral with their 815 000 plus Facebook followers who in each other have found a vehicle, in a pro conservative website (purportedly anti media site- if only they knew…) which expands on their viewpoint on US politics.
While some may wonder to that Ben Goldman and Paris Wade are gaming the system and taking advantage of Facebook’s algorithm model which leads to articles shared by friends going further increasingly viral (although sometimes a wire trips the blog from time to time, leading to desperate phone calls to the partner’s developer in Houston) – they’re in effect only doing what many industries in America and journals are doing.
Feeding their audiences with what they really want to hear and not necessarily interested in non partisan news or viewpoints, except those views which accede to their views and dispositions.
Which is like trying to blame cigarette manufacturers for cigarette smokers’ smoking habit. It just doesn’t cut it.
Notes the washingtonpost: ‘Goldman and Wade often tell each other they aren’t creating anything that’s not already there, that they’re simply fanning it, that readers know not to take their hyperbole and embellishments seriously.’
Concede the partners who have since brought on an accountant and lawyer to help them find interns (lol) to train to write the same type of articles, ‘You have to trick people into reading the news.’
How this type of yellow journalism will further debilitate engender critical thinking which is what some would argue is really what society needs (but then again why dump the greasy hamburger for the rye bread with cottage cheese) is yet to be seen, but in the interim, as long as Ben Goldman and Paris Wade of LibertyWritersNews can continue gaming Facebook (who are equally compliant in feeding the public buckets of shard at a motza profit) expect America to continue magic tricks and troll onto itself.
