Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (17 page)

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As Richard Greenblatt—maybe the greatest hacker who has ever lived—told
Wired
in 2010, “There’s a dynamic now that says, let’s format our web page so people have to push the button a lot so that they’ll see lots of ads. Basically, the people who win are those who manage to make things the most inconvenient for you.”

VIII

TACTIC #5

SELL THEM SOMETHING THEY CAN SELL (EXPLOIT THE ONE-OFF PROBLEM)

I’M NO MEDIA SCHOLAR, BUT IN MY FANATICAL SEARCH for what makes bloggers tick, I turned to every media historian I could find and devoured their work. Through these experts I started to see that the very way that blogs get their articles in front of readers predetermines what they write. Just like the yellow press of a century ago, blogs are at the mercy of unrelenting pressures that compel them to manipulate the news, and be manipulated in turn.

History lessons can be boring but trust me, in this case, a brief one is worth it because it unlocks a new angle of media control. Once you know how the newsmen sell their product, it becomes easier to sell them yours.

There are three distinct phases of the newspaper (which have been synonymous with “the news” for most of history). It begins with the Party Press, moves to the infamous Yellow Press, and ends finally with the stable period of the Modern Press (or press by subscription). These phases contain surprising parallels to where we are today with blogs—old mistakes made once more, manipulations made possible again for the first time in decades.

THE PARTY PRESS

The earliest forms of newspapers were a function of political parties. These were media outlets for party leaders to speak to party members, to give them the information they needed and wanted. It’s a part of news history that is often misunderstood or misused in discussions about media bias.

These papers were not some early version of Fox News. They usually were one-man shops. The editor-publisher-writer-printer was the dedicated steward of a very valuable service to that party in his town. The service was the ability to communicate ideas and information about important issues. These political papers sold the service to businessmen, politicians, and voters.

It was sold on a subscription model, typically about ten dollars a year. A good paper might have only a thousand or so subscribers, but they were almost always mandatory for party members in certain areas, which was a kind of patronage.

This first stage of journalism was limited in its scope and impact. Because of the size and nature of its audience, the party press was not in the
news
business. They were in the editorial business. It was a different time and style, one that would be eclipsed by changes in technology and distribution.

THE YELLOW PRESS

Newspapers changed the moment that Benjamin Day launched the
New York Sun
in 1833. It was not so much his paper that changed everything but his way of selling it: on the street, one copy at a time. He hired the unemployed to hawk his papers and immediately solved a major problem that had plagued the party presses: unpaid subscriptions. Day’s “cash and carry” method offered no credit. You bought and walked. The
Sun
, with this simple innovation in distribution, invented the news and the newspaper. A thousand imitators followed.

These papers weren’t delivered to your doorstep. They had to be exciting and loud enough to fight for their sales on street corners, in barrooms, and at train stations.
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Because of the change in distribution methods and the increased speed of the printing press, newspapers truly became
news
papers. Their sole aim was to get new information, get it to print faster, get it more exclusively than their competition. It meant the decline of the editorial. These papers relied on gossip. Papers that resisted failed and went out of business—like abolitionist Horace Greeley’s disastrous attempt at a gossip-free cash-and-carry paper shortly before Day’s.

In 1835, shortly after Day began, James Gordon Bennett, Sr. launched the
New York Herald
. Within just a few years the
Herald
would be the largest circulation daily in the United States, perhaps in the world. It would also be the most sensational and vicious.

It was all these things not because of Bennett’s personal beliefs but because of his business beliefs. He knew that the newspaper’s role was “not to instruct but to startle.” His paper was anti-black, anti-immigrant, and anti-subtlety. These causes sold papers—to both people who loved them for it and people who hated them for it. And they bought and they bought.

Bennett was not alone. Joseph Pulitzer, a sensationalist newsmonger long before his name was softened by years of association with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, enforced a similar dictum with his paper: The
World
would be “not only cheap but bright, not only bright but large.” It
had
to be, in order to sell thousands of papers every morning to busy people in a busy city.

The need to sell every issue anew each day creates a challenge I call the “One-Off Problem.” Bennett’s papers solved it by getting attention however they could.

The first issue of Bennett’s
Herald
looked like this: First page—eye-catching but quickly digestible miscellany; Second page—the heart of the paper, editorial and news; Third page—local; Fourth page—advertising and filler. There was something for everyone. It was short, zesty. He later tried to emphasize quality editorial instead of disposable news by swapping the first two pages. The results were disastrous. He couldn’t sell papers on the street that way.

The One-Off Problem shaped more than just the design and layout of the newspaper. When news is sold on a one-off basis, publishers can’t sit back and let the news come to them. There isn’t enough of it, and what comes naturally isn’t exciting enough. So they must create the news that will sell their papers. When reporters were sent out to cover spectacles and events, they knew that their job was to cover the news when it was there and to make it up when it was not.
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This is exactly the same position blogs are in today. Just as blogs are fine with manipulators easing their burden, so too were the yellow papers.

Yellow papers paid large sums to tipsters and press agents. Fakes and embellishments were so pervasive that the noted diarist and lawyer George Templeton Strong almost didn’t believe the Civil War had commenced. In April 1861 he wrote in his diary that he and his friends had deliberately ignored noise they heard—the streets “vocal with newsboys” shouting “Extra!—a
Herald
. Get the bombardment of Fort Sumter!!!”—for nearly four blocks, because they were convinced it was a “sell.” That Fort Sumter issue, which Strong broke down and bought, sold 135,000 copies in a single day. It was the most printed issue in the history of the
Herald.
The success of that war was what drove yellow papers to clamor for (and some say create) the Spanish-American War. As Benjamin Day put it: “We newspaper people thrive best on the calamities of others.”

Media historian W. J. Cambell once identified the distinguishing markers of yellow journalism as follows:

•   Prominent headlines that screamed excitement about ultimately unimportant news

•  Lavish use of pictures (often of little relevance)

•  Impostors, frauds, and faked interviews

•  Color comics and a big, thick Sunday supplement

•  Ostentatious support for the underdog causes

•  Use of anonymous sources

•  Prominent coverage of high society and events

Besides the Sunday supplement, does any of that sound familiar? Perhaps you should pull up
Gawker
or the
Huffington Post
for a second to jog your memory.