Minimedia guy writes: “Tsk, tsk on Paid Content today for taking a snarky potshot at Yahoo’s Hot Zone, the series in which ( dangerously handsome) roving reporter Kevin Sites serves up pathos from world hotspots. Paid Content says this magical misery tour attracted only 1.38 [million, it turns out — see below] visitors in March, versus more than 27 million forYahoo proper and adds: “Nor have advertisers fully embraced the Hot Zone as a place to sell their wares.” Now consider this MediaPost report on the launch by Scripps Network of its second channel on bath design — the first being kitchen design — and the character of new media comes into focus … Of course advertisers won’t ‘buy’ the Hot Zone. What would they sell? Kevlar vests ? In contrast Scripps Network can mine a rich advertising territory in its kitchen and bath design channels. On a brief visit there this morning I noticed that portable, inflatable spas for just under $800. Wouldn’t Kevin Sites love to luxuriate in one of those after schlepping across the Sudan. Maybe we can do something groovy and user-participatory and take up an online collection to send him one … I wonder whether my notion of journalism — once defined as ‘comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable’ — can survive in an era in which algorithms reward content that better enables us to feather our nests? Personally I am astonished and impressed that 1.38 million unique visitors took time out of their days to let Sites expose them to conditions so alien to our comparative everday luxury. And I hope Yahoo News general Manager Neil Budde is adamant about maintaining and supporting the less lucrative but entirely laudable Hot Zone” … This and other interesting posts can be found on here .
Reporting like Kevin Sites’ used to make money. Then, it was supported by the editors and other parts of whatever publication or publishing empire it belonged to, as a kind of a public service. Now, reporting from other places and conflict zones costs so much money that it uses up the budgets of most of the other sections of the publication — so you have contraction, bureaus closing,and the wire services left as the only reporters in the field…