Recently, I’ve been approached with writing news feeds for certain websites. Basically, the task is to troll the web looking for news in the website’s particular niche or industry and then create a short news story. It isn’t journalism, I don’t do any interviews or contact any sources, but simply a gleaning of information which is then rewritten and presented. While I know there are a lot of sites that do news feeds, because it helps with rankings and traffic; what I want to know is, are they a good idea ethically?
I suppose I’m being a bit stick-in-the-mud – after all, people need new ways to drive traffic to their sites and news feeds aren’t spam. But there is something about gleaning already-out-there information and regurgitating it that gives me pause.
I also know that when I am asked to write about a topic, I like to go to multiple sources and trace research content back to its source if at all possible; but not everyone does that. (And, at $3 per 250 words you can see why.) Far too often you see the same article practically verbatim on several sites – no added opinion, no additional facts, nothing but copy-cat. That bothers me a lot and makes me feel sleazy for even being in this part of the industry. But a gal needs to eat and this is the going rate for content. So, until I find a way to break free and start writing legitimately again, this is what I will do.
In the meantime, I remain concerned about content and content providers. When we cater to anyone and encourage regurgitation rather than bona fide writing in order to keep fees low and mass produce content, we are condoning the creation of internet garbage. Our focus should be on developing intelligent content, not on mass production. But how many people are willing to take the time and make the effort to provide intelligent, well-thought-out, researched material when it means they are working for less than someone scrubbing a toilet?
