Another Half-Baked Blog Post

Three days ago, I was looking at the news feed on my Google Pixel when a CNET article caught my eye. It was about Microsoft Copilot which is something that I don’t follow closely. What made me pay attention to the article was its thumbnail photo. It was of a person using a MacBook.

Even slightly blurred, the unmistakable function, control, and option buttons were visible on the bottom left of the keyboard. When I clicked on the article, I found out that it was a stock image which wasn’t a surprise. I just found it frustrating that whoever is responsible for picking thumbnails couldn’t be bothered to check what the article was about or what kind of laptop was being used in the photo. This symptom of misguided motivation has been a long-lasting problem with online publishers, including me.

Hey, I got some news with my ads!

The problem with online journalism, and most journalism for that matter, is that it is produced for reasons other than to inform or entertain. For most publishers, the primary driver for publishing an article is to generate revenue. Online, revenue is either generated by paid subscriptions or ad impressions. With the second method, over-prioritizing/dependence on ad-based revenue generation has led to a significant decrease in writing quality.

The ad-to-content ratio is insane on some sites. Whenever I want to look at whatever weird laptop Lenovo is releasing this week I have to fight a torrent of advertisements. Above is a screenshot of a PC Gamer article where an ad for Microsoft Azure, a portable monitor, Xfinity, and a video playing a PC Gamer video that had an Amazon ad before it started playing. To add insult to injury, the video autoplayed and isn’t even related to the topic. I used to think YouTube was the most demanding thing done on my phone but now I think it might be reading tech news.

Low-effort article spam has gotten so bad that I basically stopped clicking on random suggested articles and instead stick to a few trusted sources when I want to learn about some piece of news. The number of times I have clicked on an article for a topic I am interested in for it to be only two paragraphs of text where the first is explaining what the topic is and the second is restating what I saw in the article title is ridiculous. This isn’t even counting the places like Buzzfeed or other clickbait listicle sites.

Why I started this blog

It’s funny that I have a page on this site dedicated to most of the projects I’ve worked on but not one on this blog. Maybe that’s too meta for me.

I started this blog about 9 months ago on June 24, 2023, as a summer project. I had just finished the AIT documentary and wanted to write down the process of creating it as well as showcase all my other work. Being at home with nobody to talk to about tech, I also thought it would be cool to have a blog where I could flesh out my thoughts and post them. Since publishing the site, I’ve written 22 articles, 9 book reports, and created 7 pages for projects I’ve worked on.

I work on this blog for myself. Good thing too because nobody else really looks at it. I'm not the type of person to do something for recognition or clout. I’m not trying to be a tech influencer or NYT journalist. I didn’t even think to put this blog on my resume until after I got my full-time job. I just like the practice of developing my thoughts on things I’m interested in. Now and then I’ll post an article to my LinkedIn that I think others might find interesting, but I don’t try to force my poorly written prose on others too often.

Becoming part of the problem

I didn’t write this article because I wanted to trash CNET, PC Gamer, or any other online publisher because my motivations are superior to theirs or some junk like that. I wrote it because I saw some of my work had the same issues I had been critiquing them for. No advertisements or extremely short content that doesn’t discuss anything but a sense of rushed writing and motives that weren’t to inform or entertain.

When I started, my goal was to write one article a week. Sometimes my schedule would get busy, and I wouldn’t have time to write something I was proud of. Other times I would sit on an article, and I would see someone publish a take before I did; so, I didn’t bother posting it. Once I noticed myself posting things that I wasn’t excited about, I changed my rule to posting only when I had a good idea and the time to execute it correctly.

Some ideas still don’t pan out the way I want them to. I can struggle to format my take and get everything just so. Other times I can overlook details because I didn’t do the proper research. My last article had an error in it that I noticed a few hours after posting. I added an edit to the top of the post, but I still don’t like that I let something like that slip past me. To be fair to me, the article was about how my customer journey was poor and my inability to find this fact was a result of the poor experience.

What I am doing going forward

To prevent errors like the one I made in my last article from happening in the future I’m trying to do more research even when I think I know the answer. For this article, I Googled to see if Microsoft Copilot was available on MacBooks although I was almost positive it wasn’t. I found that it is available for download on iPhone and iPad.

Stopping myself from releasing something I am not 100% proud of is a harder problem. Some of the topics I cover are time sensitive. I even mention this at the bottom of my homepage. I don’t have the luxury of stepping away for days or weeks to come back to something. I have started to sleep on my ideas or come back after a couple of hours to reread before publishing and that seems to help.

It’s possible that both problems are a result of these articles only being for me. I’m not expecting anyone to read these thoughts so I don’t put a lot of value into how refined they are and what people will think of my words after I click publish. Going forward, I’m going to consider publishing on LinkedIn more often. As long as I don’t start getting hate mail from hundreds of people, I think I’ll be okay. At the end of the day though, the articles are still for me.

Conclusions

As for other online news sites, I don’t think they will change anytime soon. Even as AI takes away viewership due to convenience, I do not see sites shifting focus to improving user experience to increase traffic. I’m interested to see how this will play out. I don’t see myself paying for a subscription to The Verge anytime soon but who knows?

For my blog, I will continue to try and create works I am proud of. I am not looking for a word count, follower count, or a job offer to validate my work. I am looking to develop my thoughts and to see how I improve as a writer as I continue to do so.