Journalism Dying
I ran across a video from Bull Boom Bear Bust, a YouTube opinion channel about the economy. That video seems to have been deleted, or I cannot find it if my life depended on it. The video did (or does) explain 2019 Media layoffs, you can also find the article Jayson J. (the man running Bull Boom Bear Bust) was talking about here. According to that article, Vice is cutting jobs and also Huffington Post. (Note: found said video on his website).
For Qwick.info here, I designed the theme myself; it did require a moderate level of skill in the technologies of PHP and CSS, along with some HTML and JavaScript. So, I got that down. I decided to end Qwick as a blog in March 2019, looking to make it a Baseball Stats site. I started it in December 2018, it only existed for three months. Something came up in my personal life in late February and I had to stop blogging and head back to HubPages.
With this site, I got some local attention with The Golden Butthole of Macomb County article I wrote (no longer there). It also happens to be a Facebook page about this. I send a message asking the person who runs the group on posting my article on the page, they later agreed. Most people enjoyed it while a few thought my article sucked.
According to Adsense, the article got me over 2,000 views and I made a whopping $0.92 from 10 ad clicks. Running away from the subject of the Golden Butthole to the Jamye Closs situation, when Closs was found, I was looking for the official police statement and ran into some issues. I first visited a couple of Wisconsin TV station websites and the articles took a while to load. Quite a few ads were loading and also in the TV station's defense, the news clip about the situation was also loading. That, and the laptop I was using was new and it needed to absorb those cookies. After two different stations' sites and not finding the official statement, I went back to Google and typed the Wisconsin State Police. The Police site had no ads and had the statement I was looking for right up front.
Ad revenue
With the two news sites, sans the vids, there were quite a lot of ads loading on the sites. One of them was Google Adsense. For people starting blogs or any website that relies on ad revenue, Google Adsense is a good starter. There are also other businesses that offer the same deal and are willing to work with beginners, ZergNet is another one. But also, there are ad companies that require a minimum of 500,000 page views a month or year.
I also have been seeing local newspaper websites and also the Washington Post allowing people 5 or 10 free views until they have to pay a weekly or monthly fee. For example, the Detroit Free Press offers a weekly subscription for one dollar (or 99 cents). I have never subscribed to any local paper, so I'm unsure if they take away the ads (they should). I live in Macomb County, Michigan and we have our own newspaper called the Macomb Daily. As the Detroit Free Press, they offer 99 cents, for the first month, then $2.24 every month after that. There was no mention of taking away the ads.
Media Bias?
The BBBB video points out the bias with some news sites such as the Huffington Post (leftist). That company is facing layoffs according to the said article linked above. So, my question is, are people just getting sick of the bias of some of these news sites? Are people waking up? Or are people just more interested in video media opposed to print? Being bias to one party may not be that reason. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News are making money according to this website. Now, people are cutting the cord on cable TV these days, myself included. But that doesn't stop one from watching YouTube clips these three channels upload themselves. They can get the ad revenue from YouTube as well.
CNN, of course, is anti-Trump. Now, do I watch CNN a lot? No. But from watching quite a few clips of CNN, I can tell where they stand. MSNBC seems to be more dramatic with their Trump bashing. And Fox News mostly sides with Trump from what I can see. And again, I don't have cable, I just watch these clips here and there. I also find Kellyanne Conway arguing with CNN people to be hilarious, and most times than not, Conway looks like she is on drugs.
Going back to sites driven by print over video media, such as HuffPost and Buzzfeed, if both of these sites are hiring a good number of journalists and giving them benefits and the ad revenue for those sites are dropping, cuts will be made. The ad revenue and also any subscription cash goes below the salaries of these journalists, the ax will come. Plus, I think most people would prefer video media as opposed to print. With the BBBB article, he also mentioned Obama signing The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act.
Going Live
On a personal note, I hardly watch CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. I rather not watch any channel that is going to talk about the president 24/7 whether it is positive or negative. If Trump farted in the White House, I'd imagine CNN and MSNBC would be talking about that for the whole day. During the SeaTac plane hijacking in August 2018, I heard about the news due to a Google alert from my phone. Somebody had all three feeds of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News on YouTube at the time and I looked at all three to find out they were not covering that situation, they were talking about Trump.
After floating through the YouTube matrix to find live coverage of that situation, I stumbled upon Agenda-Free TV. It was there where I got up-to-date information about that guy who stole the plane, new audio feeds and also some user commentary. I got hooked on Agenda-Free TV and I watch it frequently when certain news events happen when I'm at home. Agenda-Free TV is run by one man, Steve Lookner. He runs the news broadcast from his home and gets by with Patreon and donations. I prefer Agenda-Free TV over the big three cable news channels.
