Faking It

 

To fake it is to stand guard over emptiness.

— Arthur Herzog

Fraudsters know it's easy to make a fast buck from a phony "news" website.

To prove how easy it is, journalist Megan Graham conducted an experiment a couple of years ago.

She built her own website and filled it with stories she stole from CNBC.

"Within days, I had the ability to monetize my site with legitimate advertisers," she reported. 

"It was shockingly easy."

Graham's success was no doubt due to advertisers' shoddy ad-buying systems, which funnel ad money through third parties.

Those companies take their fees off the top and buy ads with the money left over.

But in their haste to earn fees, the companies lose track of where that money is spent.

"Half a brand’s digital marketing spend is absorbed by middlemen," Graham says. "It’s impossible for advertisers to know exactly where their money is going."

But suckering advertisers and their agents isn't the real crime here. (It's perfectly legal to create a website filled with gobbledygook.)

Plagiarism is.

To sustain the illusion that they're legitimate publishers, fraudsters rip off stories from legitimate publishers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.  

Fraudsters can even automate plagiarism by using website plug-ins known as "scrapers," which swipe articles from legitimate publishers hourly.

To cover their crime, before posting the stolen stories, the more artful fraudsters run them through a paraphrasing app.

These apps thinly disguise the plagiarism—but only thinly.

They also provide inadvertent chuckles.

Consider, for example, how one fraudster mangled parts of a story about a Congressional hearing on stock-trading:

Original 

Some legislators called for more transparency. Rep. Nydia Velázquez asked about the lack of requirements for hedge funds to disclose short positions.

Fraudster

Some legislators necessitated additional transparency. Rep. Nydia old master asked regarding the shortage of needs for hedge funds to disclose short positions.

In this case, the fraudster simply published the paraphrasing app's results verbatim:

• Called for more was replaced by necessitated additional
   
• Velázquez was replaced by old master
  
  
• Asked about the lack of requirements was replaced by asked regarding the shortage of needs

How do the fraudsters get away with this?

As Graham showed, they count on advertisers' inability to detect original from plagiarized stories.

"It’s easy to make money from advertisers just by setting up a web page," she said, "That means there’s significant incentive to create sites filled with outright plagiarized content."

But fraudsters also count on visitors' shabby reading habits.

As studies have shown, digital readers are evincing ever-greater degrees of "cognitive impatience," robbing them of the ability to "deep-read."

To put it succinctly, digital readers lack discernment: we'll accept any crap that's dished out, no matter the source or the quality.

In a real sense, we're complicit in the fraudsters' crime.

Federal Court Okays Web Scraping

I've scraped many a website in my time.

"Web scraping," in case you're wondering, refers to the compilation of information that's published on websites.

A few recent examples:

• This week, I wrote a blog post on the birth of art history by web scraping. 
  
  
• Earlier this month, I taught a brainy high schooler how to "speed write" a term paper by web scraping. In the process, I learned more about Shirley Jackson than you'd ever want to know.
  
  
• Last November, I built an e-mail list of insurance executives for a client who had no marketing list.

Web scraping isn't theft.

Theft is what Instagram coach Kar Brulhart faced this week, when a rival ripped off her ideas verbatim and presented them as his own.

Web scraping is research, as a federal court ruled last week.

In the decision, the US Ninth Circuit ruled against LinkedIn, which sued hiQ Labs, a research firm that studies employee attrition.

LinkedIn wanted HiQ to stop scraping its users' profiles.

The court ruled that web scraping doesn't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which defines computer hacking under US law.

Hacking is defined as "unauthorized access to a computer system;" but scraping snatches public data.

The case had reached the Supreme Court last year but was sent back to the US Ninth Circuit for review.

The court's decision is a "major win for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists who use tools to mass collect, or scrape, information that is publicly accessible on the Internet," says Tech Crunch.

Prediction

With all eyes on Putin, watch for this story to develop in the coming weeks: all along Mr. Obvious was a paid shill of the Russian autocrat.

Follow the money.

Get the Name of the Dog

My task is, by the power of the written word, 

to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, 

before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White pooh-pooh lazy writers—the majority—because they're so often satisfied with imprecision.

You see their slothfulness on display every day:

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made."
  
  
• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years."
  
  
• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable."

By saying so little, sentences like these tax readers' minds. They squander readers' energy in guessing what the writer means to say.

Good writing avoids imprecision by drawing word-pictures.

Word-pictures comprise concrete details—specifics—that allow readers easily to imagine the world the writer seeks to depict. 

Anything less is filler. Eyewash. Baloney. Horse hockey.

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made" merely tells you the writer likes this cowboy movie.

• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years" merely tells you that incidents of a weird disease have increased.

• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable" merely tells you there's demand for vinyl recordings by bands like Peter & Gordon.

Precision, on the other hand, would have told you, among other things, what distinguishes The Searchers from all the other hundreds of Westerns; how fast cases of "broken heart" are accelerating—and whether the disease affects a lot of people, or only a few; and which mop-top bands' records are hot.

Lazy writers favor the generic, as Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer said in The Philosophy of Style; and, because they do, they always leave readers guessing. They should, instead, aim to produce "vivid impressions" with their words.

Writers should avoid, Spencer said, abstract sentences like "When the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the penal code will be severe." They should write instead "When men delight in battles, bullfights, and gladiatorial combat, they will punish by hanging, burning, and the rack."

Spencer calls the use of vivid word-pictures a "thorough maxim of composition."

Writing coach Peter Roy Clark calls Spencer's maxim "Get the name of the dog" (or the "Fido Theorem").

"Such was my affection for this writing strategy," Clark once told an interviewer, "I wanted to use it as a book title. 

"Anticipating the literalism of SEO, my publisher decided the title should reflect what the book was really about. In the end, Get the Name of the Dog became Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. 

"Get the name of the dog" does appear in Clark's Writing Tools as Tool Number 14. But it's much more important.

"It ranks as Number 1 in my heart," Clark said. "Every strategic move I’ve shared over 30 years derives its existence from the Fido Theorem. 

"'Get the name of the dog' stands, for me, for the whole. In other words, if the writer remembers to get the dog’s name, he or she will be curious enough and attentive enough to gather all the relevant details in their epiphanic particularity."

Got an email to write? A memo? A report? 

Get the name of the dog.

December Golf

Golf is a game of letting go.

— John Updike

Among the countless magazines where John Updike placed articles—pieces that earned him ten cents a word or less—Golf Digest may seem the oddest, until you realize the writer had a lifelong love for the game.

That love is on full display in "December Golf," a 1,000-word essay that ran in the December 1989 issue.

Its title alone signals Updike's theme—finales—and its opening two paragraphs make clear you're not in for run-of-the-mill sports writing.

You're in for an elegy. 

Through most of the piece, indeed, Updike lingers over closings (the clubhouse, pro shop and regular greens, for instance), the "savor of last things," and the abundant reminders that the golf season is at its bittersweet end.

Just as a day may come at sunset into its most glorious hour, or a life toward the gray-bearded end enter a halcyon happiness, December golf, as long as it lasts, can seem the sweetest golf of the year. 

The sweetest, Updike says, because in December "golf feels, on the frost-stiffened fairways, reduced to its austere and innocent essence."

There are no tee markers, no starting times, no scorecards, no gasoline carts—just golf-mad men and women, wearing wool hats and two sweaters each, moving on their feet. The season’s handicap computer has been disconnected, so the sole spur to good play is rudimentary human competition—a simple best-ball Nassau or 50-cent game of skins, its running tally carried in the head of the accountant or retired banker in the group. You seem to be, in December golf, reinventing the game, in some rough realm predating 15th-century Scotland.

In December golf, Updike says, excuses abound and rules are forgotten, freeing the players at last to compete on equal footing.

John Updike

Excuses abound, in short, for not playing very well, and the well-struck shot has a heightened luster as it climbs through the heavy air and loses itself in the dazzle of the low winter sun. Winter rules, of course, legitimize generous relocations on the fairway, and with the grass all dead and matted, who can say where the fairway ends? It possibly extends, in some circumstances, even into the bunkers, where the puddling weather, lack of sand rakes and foraging raccoons have created conditions any reasonable golfer must take it upon himself to adjust with his foot. A lovely leniency, in short, prevails in December golf, as a reward for our being out there at all.

That leniency compensates for the havoc the untended course and chilly air wreak on Updike's swing, a gnawing irritant both to him and his partner.

It is with a great effort of imagination—a long reach back into the airy warmth of summer—that I remind myself that golf is a game of letting go, of a motion that is big and free. “Throw your hands at the hole,” I tell myself. But by then the Nassau has been decided, and dusk has crept out of the woods into the fairways. 

As early night falls, the December golfers are ready to call it quits, for the day, for the season. And why not? They've discovered how to let go—the secret to the game.

Time to pack it in. The radio calls for snow tomorrow. “Throw your hands at the hole.” The last swing feels effortless, and the ball vanishes dead ahead, gray lost in the gray, right where the 18th flag would be. The secret of golf has been found at last, after eight months of futilely chasing it. Now, the trick is to hold it in mind, all the indoor months ahead, without its melting away.

You can read more of Updike's reflections on golf here.

Chump Change

Only stupid people don't change their minds.

— Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Kathleen Kingsbury, Opinion editor of The New York Times, announced this week she is canceling the term "Op-Ed."

"The first Op-Ed page in The New York Times greeted the world on Sept. 21, 1970," she writes. "It was so named because it appeared opposite the editorial page."

For 50 years, the Op-Ed has let writers "from outside the walls of The Times" speak their minds, she explains. Since its inception, tens of thousands of Op-Eds have run in The Times, and this odd-sounding name for an outsider's contribution has grown storied.

"But it’s time to change the name," Kingsbury writes. "It is a relic of an older age and an older print newspaper design. So now, at age 50, the designation will be retired."

So what will "Op-Eds" be called?

“Guest Essays."

OMG. At the risk of seeming stupid, what the hell is Kingsbury thinking?

Does "Op-Ed" trigger her gerontophobia? And what has she got against anachronisms, anyway? We use them all the time. 

Inbox. Dashboard. Brand. Logo. Icon. Cliché. Blueprint. Horsepower. Icebox. Gaslight. Rewind. Typecast. Ditto. Above board. Hot off the press. Cut and paste. Pull out all the stops. Glove compartment. Kodak moment. Lock, stock and barrel.

Sure, anachronisms are fossils, but they satisfy us perfectly well. When we say, "What a doozy," do we worry no one drives a Duesenberg any more? We do not. And if you do worry, maybe you should start calling the morning "paper" the morning "electron mass," and the "front page" the "upper screen."

How ironic that Kingsbury has chosen to cancel "Op-Ed" right now because, in her words, "the geography of the public square is being contested" (italics mine). Watch out, Times readers! The rabble is gathering to cancel anachronisms!

Worse yet, what's up with "Guest Essay?" Could you possibly ask for a name more jejune, juvenile and barren? It sounds like something you'd leave the manager at a Marriott when checking out.

Kingsbury claims she's cancelling "Op-Ed" because it's "clubby newspaper jargon."

"In an era of distrust in the media, I believe institutions better serve their audiences with direct, clear language. We don’t like jargon in our articles; we don’t want it above them, either."

But would you call these "Guest Essays?"

"I asked Mandela if, when he was walking away from confinement for the last time, he felt hatred. He said, "I did, but I knew that if I continued to hate them as I drove away from the gate, they would still have me.' Our world is awash in 'us' versus 'them' thinking. Nelson Mandela’s life remains a rebuke to that kind of thinking."

— Bill Clinton, from a 2018 Op-Ed in News24

"The Mole in the Oval image is not as crazy a theory as it was a year or two ago. The president clearly has something to hide. While Trump is not an 'agent' of the Russian Federation, it seems at this point beyond argument that the president personally fears Russian President Vladimir Putin for reasons that can only suggest the existence of compromising information."

— Tom Nichols, from a 2019 Op-Ed in USA Today

"Americans are not good at talking about death. But we need to be prepared for when, not if, illness will strike. The coronavirus is accelerating this need. Our collective silence about death, suffering and mortality places a tremendous burden on the people we love. We should not be discussing our loved one’s wishes for the first time when they are in an ICU bed, voiceless and pinned in place by machines and tubes."

— Sunita Puri, from a 2020 Op-Ed in The New York Times

"Despite what my Republican colleagues may claim, the reality is that when you take into account federal income taxes, payroll taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes and property taxes, we have an extremely unfair tax system that allows billionaires to pay a lower effective tax rate than many workers. That must change. We need a progressive tax system based on the ability to pay, not a regressive tax system that rewards the wealthy and the well-connected."

— Bernie Sanders, from a 2021 Op-Ed in CNN Business

In my book, these aren't "Guest Essays." They're impassioned critiques, heartfelt lines in the sand. They'd blow any Marriot manager's mind—as they're meant to blow ours.

They're Op-Eds.

To her credit, I suppose, Kingsbury believes in her "Guest Essay" label sincerely, because she's focus-grouped it. "Readers immediately grasped this term during research sessions and intuitively understood what it said about the relationship between the writer and The Times," she writes.

I'd only remind her New Coke focus-group tested well, too, and it caused Coke-aggedon.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity," Einstein said. "And I'm not sure about the former."

Stay tuned (another anachronism) for Op-Edggedon.

Saved by the Cell

Publicity is the very soul of justice.

— Jeremy Bentham

Journalists have voiced near-universal praise for Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old who filmed the murder of George Floyd with her cell. 

Her footage all but convicted Floyd's killer.

She deserves our praise. 

Her cell made the law work.

Eighteenth-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham thought the law's purpose is "to govern;" that is, to keep us safe. 

But to govern, the law must be enforced—and enforcement is everyone's responsibility. 

The law, he said, "governs through the governed."

Because it depends on the governed, the law is highly fallible—because we are. The corrective, Bentham said, is publicity. 

Publicity, he said, "keeps the judges on trial."

"It is through publicity alone that justice becomes the mother of security. Without publicity, all other checks are fruitless."

Without publicity, the law is toothless; but with it, the law can prevail, as it did yesterday.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to historian Jon Meacham for inspiring this post.

The Late Hunter S. Thompson Answers My Question

NOTE: I awoke today to find this mysterious note on my bathroom sink.

Bob,

You addled bastard, you approached me in your fetid dream last night and asked my advice. 

At least, I think you did—I had the Cowboys game on at the time, and Washington was stomping them, like they were a gang of sick junkies.

My attention wasn't fully yours. 

If I grasped your question, you asked what America should do with 45, now that the maddened crowds—like Bond in the grand finale—have dispatched his fat diapered ass.

The Ephedrine supply is practically nonexistent here, so I must keep my answer brief.

America doesn't have to do anything about 45. 

Come mid-December—too chilly for tubby to golf in Virginia—45 will depart DC permanently for his rat-hole in Florida, announcing by Tweet a "hard-earned" Christmas vacation. 

From there, Snowden-like, 45 will flee to Moscow, requesting permanent asylum.

Putin will grant the asylum, glad for yet another thing to lord over fatso. 

But when Putin learns 45 is broke and knows no Top Secrets the Kremlin doesn't, he'll graciously deliver one of his infamous gifts.

The only question for America: where to dispose of the remains?

I suggest the ruins of Reactor 4 in Chernobyl.

— Hunter

Hyperbole

“Truthful hyperbole" is a contradiction in terms.

— Tony Schwartz

Spartan. Dangerous. Terrifying. Nightmarish. Horrific.

Too often in recent days, I've heard these words used by journalists to characterize the temporary hospitals that are propagating the country.

Spare me.

Valley Forge was spartan. 

Vietnam was dangerous. 

The Blitz was terrifying. 

Aleppo was nightmarish. 

Auschwitz was horrific.

In fact, the temporary hospitals are havens for the sick. 

And the job our military is doing is nothing short of herculean.

There's a hyperbole you don't hear enough.

Americans and the Media: Disappointment and Distrust

Most Americans expect the media to inform them, but a majority (58%) think it's harder than ever to rely on the media for objective news, says a new study by Gallup and the Knight Foundation.

TV programs remain Americans' primary news source, relied on by two-thirds of the adult population. Websites are the next most-popular source.

Equal proportions of Americans (41%) rely on social media sites as rely on newspapers to stay informed, according to the study. Reliance on newspapers is most common among older Americans and Americans with graduate degrees.

Only a quarter of Americans are confident they can distinguish facts from opinions. Age, education and party affiliation affect that confidence. And a quarter of Americans admit they get their news only from sources with a clear political bent.

Facing Facts

The greatest American superstition is a belief in facts.

— Hermann Keyserling

Facebook is countering fake news by downgrading all news.

Beginning next week, users will see mainly the posts of friends and family in their feeds; publishers' posts will virtually vanish.

In the short term, the decision is harmful. 

Facebook's move will lower users' time on the social network, and lower the "referral traffic" publishers count on. The latter will force all publishers to scramble to make up for the lost eyeballs, and put a lot of them out of business, according to The New York Times.

In the long term, however, the decision is beneficial—to Facebook.

Under scrutiny for abetting Kremlin-backed trolls during the 2016 election, the company confronts the real possibility of government regulation, as it lacks AI's equivalent of a Walter Cronkite or Ben Bradlee to decide what's legitimately newsworthy.

Critics complain the company's move amounts to a news blackout, since nearly half of Americans get at least some of their news from the social network. 

But CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is merely "protecting our community from abuse and hate."

The decision signals a return by Facebook to its "college scrapbook" origins ("Look how my new brussels sprouts recipe turned out!")

Takeaway? Ten years from now, we'll chuckle to recall we once believed Facebook was a media company.

What Happened?

A bombshell not unlike Fire and Fury hit bookstores 40 years ago.

Elvis: What Happened?, based on interviews with three of the rock star's private bodyguards, painted a tabloid-style portrait of the King as a self-indulgent child bent on "slow suicide."

Fans were shocked, and reacted by calling the book a con-job. They cited the author's many factual errors; his failure to reveal his sources; his failure to verify the sources' accounts with third parties; and his frequent use of qualifiers like "as I recall."

Elvis was also enraged by the book and spoke in private about contract-killing the three bodyguards.

But when Elvis OD'd two weeks after its release, Elvis: What Happened? gained instant credibility, and a steady stream of confidants began to speak out, confirming the book's allegations.

With Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff, journalist and former editor of Adweek, has created the portrait of another self-indulgent child.

Trump's fans are reacting in the same way Elvis' did 40 years ago; and Trump's press secretary has dismissed Wolff's book as "trashy tabloid fiction." But unlike Elvis: What Happened?, Fire and Fury is based on interviews with 200 sources.

When the insiders―no matter their number―tell an essentially consistent story, only a fool cries, "Fake!"

Darkest Hour

England's policy of "appeasement"―letting Hitler grab neighboring lands with impunity―provides the backstory of Darkest Hour, the new biopic about Churchill and Chamberlain.

As we watch the media under attack by right-wing Republicans, Churchill's warnings about the dangers to freedom of the press are as relevant today as they were in his time.

And so are his actions to sidestep thought control.

During the 1930s, Chamberlain favored appeasement, for an extremely practical reason: his party's rule hinged on the votes of working-class Britons, who opposed foreign entanglements and distrusted war profiteers (after all, they'd paid the price for militarism in the previous war against Germany).

In 1938, Chamberlain signed an accord with Hitler labeled the Munich Agreement, which let the Führer annex part of Czechoslovakia if he agreed to stop seizing more territory. Most Britons praised Chamberlain's coup; but of course it didn't stop Hitler, who provoked war with England a year later, when he invaded Poland. The pacifist Chamberlain proved within eight months an inept wartime leader, opening the door for Churchill's appointment by the king as his successor (the first scene of Darkest Hour).

Chamberlain's most fiery critic, Churchill had spent years protesting appeasement, using his favorite soapbox: the newspaper op-ed. When Chamberlain―in keeping with the Munich Agreement―moved to stifle all opposition to Hitler, he ruled out critical speeches in Parliament and threatened the newspapers with shutdown, citing national secrecy laws. Churchill, in response, promised to take his message to the streets.

In a November 1938 speech before the national press club, Churchill wondered aloud whether Chamberlain wouldn't rather live in a totalitarian state. "In those states they conduct foreign policy on the basis that the press say nothing but what it is told, and immediately say what it is told. It might be very convenient, no doubt, if we could suppress public opinion here, and everything was allowed to go on quietly without our knowing what was going on outside."

Churchill suggested England was in fact already experiencing a press blackout. With appeasement's critics in Parliament muzzled and the press censored, Chamberlain enjoyed carte blanch to bamboozle Britons. 

The situation left opponents like Churchill one choice: to resist the government's policy through the "public platform." And resist Churchill did. 

Between September 1938―when the Munich Agreement was signed―and September 1939―when Germany invaded Poland―Churchill spoke against appeasement relentlessly on the radio. He also repackaged 80 of his op-eds into a book―which became an immediate best-seller―and, with financial help from silent backers, erected billboards calling for his appointment to Chamberlain's cabinet. 

Churchill's cabinet appointment did come, three days after Hitler entered Poland and simultaneously with England's declaration of war with Germany.

Callender: An American Musical

"Fake news" is the reason Alexander Hamilton—George Washington's Treasury Secretary and the leading voice of the Federalists—never became president.

And, though he may not rate a musical, you can thank the infamous journalist James Callender for it.

A renowned drunkard and scalawag, in 1796 Callender was paid by the Treasury Secretary's chief rival—Washington's Secretary of State and the leading voice of the Republicans, Thomas Jefferson—to see to it Hamilton would never become president.

Callender achieved Jefferson's goal by publishing a juicy book detailing two Hamiltonian indiscretions: the first, an adulterous affair between Hamilton and a 23-year-old married woman, Maria Reynolds; and the second, payments of blackmail by Hamilton to Mrs. Reynold's husband (who had colluded with his wife to entrap Hamilton in the affair).

At first, Hamilton's fans cried "Fake news!" But the Treasury Secretary decided he could exonerate himself by admitting, in writing, to both deeds.

The American public never forgave him; and so he's only the subject of a musical, not the second or third POTUS.

But the story has an ironic second chapter: Callender turned around and attacked his sponsor, Jefferson.

Fined and imprisoned in 1800 for defaming the then-sitting President John Adams—he had called Adams a hideous hermaphrodite—Callender wrote to Jefferson asking for his help.

But Jefferson, elected to the presidency a month after Callender's trial, betrayed the journalist. Although he gave him a pardon, Jefferson cut all ties. A president, after all, shouldn't associate with a drunken scandalmonger.

So Callender retaliated.

First, he published documents proving he'd colluded with Jefferson to defame both Hamilton and Adams; then, he published newspaper stories about "Black Sally," the slave he claimed was the president's mistress—and the mother of his many illegitimate children.

Callender's stories went viral; but they won him no new sponsor. He was deemed too reckless to be trusted by anyone, including Jefferson's enemies.

He died in July 1803, when, in a drunken stupor, he fell into the James River at Richmond and drowned.

“It was the happy privilege of an American that he may prattle and print in what way he pleases, and without anyone to make him afraid,” Callender once wrote.

When it came to fake news, he was fearless.

The Sheep of Things to Come

Photo: Ann Ramsey

I had the honor to sit down and interview England's renowned shepherd and author James Rebanks in his Lake District home in April. Our main topic: the likely impact of Brexit on UK farmers.

The resulting article has just appeared in Sheep Canada.

Superman was a Content Creator

We often forget a significant fact.

When disguised as mild-mannered Clark Kent, the Man of Steel worked as a reporter for the Daily Planet.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to content creator Matthew Grocki for reminding me Superman was a content creator.

That Old Black Magic

Whoever Americans elect as president next week, I hope she has a witch as her top aide, as does South Korea's president. We're going to need that old black magic to get well.

Writers need black magic, too; and editors are its source.

In his new memoir, The Accidental Life, Terry McDonell quotes Norman Cousins, the longtime editor of Saturday Review, on the art of editing:

Nothing is more ephemeral than words. Moving them from the mind of a writer to the mind of a reader is one of the most elusive and difficult undertakings ever to challenge the human intelligence. This is what being an editor is all about.

Editors are advisers, coaches, cheerleaders, therapists, parents, midwives and—as Cousins implies—sorcerers.

They're also missionaries, as Robin Lloyd, contributing editor for Scientific American, says:

My motivation as an editor is clear, compelling communication for the reader. Delivering that is my first job. Readers are looking at every word for an excuse to bail out—to stop reading a story. My job is to prevent that and to keep them reading this story by focusing on clarity, pacing, logic, arc, and sparkling prose.

Above all, editors are match-makers, pairing willing writers with willing audiences.

That means an editor must be conversant in many fields; sense which topics are ripe for coverage; and know which ideas, words and phrases will keep readers reading.

No mean feat.

How Publishers Will Survive

Antiquated mindsets bar publishers' way to monetizing digital content, Rob Ristagno says in Niche Media.

"Publishers often cite a 10% rule of thumb, meaning only one out of ten print subscribers pays for a digital replica," he says.

But exceptions to the rule abound (for example, with over one million subscribers, the digital edition of The New York Times).

Publishers' time-honored business model—amass an audience and sell ads based on CPMs—no longer works. 

Why not? Because, while print CPMs sell for $17, digital CPMs sell for $2. And the bargain-basement price of digital CPMs only promises to drop, as more publishers abandon print.

Publishers need a new model, Ristagno says. They need to:

Corner a niche market. "Instead of worrying about CPMs, find the most enthusiastic sub-group of your audience and help them solve a specific problem." Once you succeed in one niche, extend to another and another and another.

Sell more than ads. Sell memberships, online courses, research reports and events. "Your business model should survive without advertising. Otherwise, you’re not providing enough value to the consumer."

Publish only great content. "You can’t fool smart people (or Google) with low-quality digital content."

Adopt new technology—now. Off-the-shelf technology is easier and cheaper to deploy than ever. So move quickly. You can tackle fancy integrations another day.

Bezos Rekindles Old Paper

Amazon founder and newspaper owner Jeff Bezos' thumbprint continues to appear in the online version of The Washington Post.

Having trouble finishing long articles? You can now use a gadget to enter your email address at any point. The Post will send a URL that lets you pick it up later where you left off.

We can expect more Kindle-like add-ons to appear in The Post, as Bezos dabbles deeper in journalism. 

"The transformation may not be apparent on the surface, but the Internet billionaire has ripped up and revamped the technology underpinnings at The Post since buying the storied daily in 2013, while investing in the newsroom with more journalists, video offerings and tools for digital storytelling," AFP reported in January.

Bezos' investments might be paying off.

Last December, readership of The Post's website overtook that of The New York Times.