Deadline

“YOU WANT AIDS CUNT?”

There was far too much debate about whether this should be the opening line to the story, in Sandra’s opinion. She had spent two valuable hours down at the local Magistrates Court, this was the best story she got from the trip. A desperate young man charged with robbing the United petrol station, threatening the attendant with a syringe full of unidentified red liquid. The offensive, grammatically-challenged threat the syringe-wielding bandit shouted at the poor man behind the counter was the sealer. Sandra knew it. People would read and be outraged.

Perfect.

Unfortunately, her editor thought otherwise.

It would be different, Sandra thought, if she still worked in an actual newsroom. The cut-and-thrust of heated discussion over what story should run, and what headline should go with it, was something she missed in this era of work-from-home journalism. But those days were gone, and arguing with an editor in a different town via text messages, emails and teleconferences just didn’t have the same authenticity. Especially when they were the only two people still working for the paper.

Not that there was any paper anymore, either. Just the website.

News meetings via zoom and stories to be uploaded to the website. Quotas throughout the day, not a deadline for a paper. This many stories to be uploaded, by 8:00am. This many by 12:00pm. This many by 5:00pm. 8:00pm. Midnight. Add a poll, or a photo gallery for people to click through. Trawl Twitter for some glorious trash. Eyeballs and clicks, clicks and eyeballs. Drive engagement, onto the next one. Drive engagement, onto the next one. Drive engagement…

And everyone knew, nothing drew eyeballs and clicks like outrage. Nothing could drive engagement for a website (paper) like an angry audience. The trick – and this is where Sandra and her editor differed – lay in working out what would draw and drive the outrage.

For the editor, bigger was always better. The United servo robbery was simply too small, in his opinion. And the robber’s threat, while certainly eye-catching, would be more likely to have readers outraged at the paper (website) for publishing it, than towards the robber for saying it.

Sandra knew better. Sandra knew that the smaller the crime, the better the outrage.

Local crime drew more clicks than international crime.

A mother murdered by a violent thug in a local park got the clicks. An entire congregation gunned down by violent thugs in a church in Nigeria? Not so much. A company caught dumping waste near a popular fishing spot? Outrage. A multinational behemoth destroying the ecosystem, flushing the fertilizer waste of a million acres of corn farms into the Gulf of Mexico? Not so much. Desperate fools breaking into a house in the suburbs to steal a couple hundred dollars? Outrage. Billionaires stealing billions? Not so much. Mass shootings? Outrage. Mass extinctions? Not so much.

Sandra knew that when crime got big enough, it disappeared. Vanished in plain sight. A government could engage in blatant corruption for a decade, then make opposing an anti-corruption committee a key platform for an election campaign and it would barely raise a comment on the website (paper), beyond the few political die-hards. A dictator could have his major political opponent gunned down in broad daylight, on the day that opponent was supposed to deliver a report into the dictator’s illegal actions, then announce he was going to personally take over the investigation into the murder and the world would not bat an eye. A handful of billionaires could destroy the planet, for billions of people to suffer the consequences, and it would not drive engagement like a local pub-owner on trial for burning down his pub for the insurance.

So, the smaller the better. A servo-robbery with an ugly threat as a hook? Perfect.

As to the editor’s second point…Sandra knew it did not matter. It did not matter at all whether readers were outraged at the crime itself, or the paper (website) for publishing the details of the crime. Angry comments about a crass, offensive opening line of the article were still comments, as far as the website (paper) was concerned. The metrics for hate-clicks don’t measure where the hate is coming from, nor where it is directed. Only the clicks. Get those angry comments. Here, click this button to share your outrage on Facebook and Twitter. Get enough engagement that the story gets picked up by Shit Towns of Australia on the socials, let them share it around for you. Generate more clicks and comments. Keep that rage coming 24 / 7.

Old journos with ink in their veins used to call the paper a beast, ever hungry. Fill it up by the deadline. Then rest for the night and fill it up again tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and fuck Macbeth and his Lady. But the internet is never full and can never be filled. Online, there is no rest, tomorrow never comes and Macbeth laughs madly.

Anyway, all this was a moot point. Sandra knew that all she had to do was delay until the last minute, and she would be able to start the story in whatever way she wanted. This many stories, by 5:00pm, after all. The quota had to be met. Besides, with only two of them running the paper (website), the editor would have too much else taking their attention to worry about Sandra getting her own way on a lede for long.

Much like the readers. They might get their fix of outrage at a story or a lede or a headline, but there was just so much content out there, competing for attention. They would move onto the next one soon enough.

Everyone knew that living online led to shortened attention spans. Do shortened attention spans lead to shorter tempers? Sandra knew that they did. The entire world was holding onto the handle of civility by its collective fingernails, ready to fly off at the slightest hint of provocation. A thousand straws a day, heaped upon our backs by an amoral algorithm. Until all backs are broken.

What is left, in a world of instant gratification when so very, very few are gratified?

Rage. Rage. Rage.

Not long to go until 5:00pm now. Sandra knew she just had to waste a bit more time, so she scrolled through the website (paper). A headline from the newswire caught her eye – “Is TikTok killing movies?”

Perfect. Useless.

TikTok was a great villain-of-the-moment. You could accuse it of any murder you wanted.

“Is TikTok killing newspapers?” What a laugh. You might as well ask “Is TikTok killing classic literature?”

We used to write epics. Now we don’t even write headlines. We produce 15-second videos, saying nothing. People used to get their news from the paper. Then the website. Then from Facebook (who in turn, got it from Twitter, who then got it from TikTok). Imagine Woodward and Bernstein on TikTok, releasing Watergate in tiny videos, edited to be understood by people watching on their phones at work with the sound turned off. Current affairs through pantomime. Fuck. This is where we are, Sandra knew.

How much longer can those fingernails hold on? Is there even anything left to hold onto? Or is this just the inertia of a once-mighty bull, staggering on after being skewered at last by the fancy man with the red cape? Staggering those last few steps before falling in the bloody sand, dying to the programmed cheers or a virtual crowd, in a world so starved of reality that they cheer for reality’s destruction.

Onto the next headline – “Back from the dead: is crypto rising again?”

Useless. Perfect.

Sandra knew what the crypto bros wanted, and where they were coming from, and to be honest she respected it.

Everyone knew the game was rigged, but everyone was still looking for a way to win. A way to win before the dealer declared bankruptcy. Crypto. NFTs. Gamestop. Memestocks. A mad scramble to get what the world had promised, before the promise was broken forever.

And when that last, desperate bet failed?

Rage. Rage. Rage.

What is left? What else is there? What is left, in a chew-it-up and spit-it-out culture, when everything has been chewed up and spat out?

Rage. Rage. Rage.

The world is dying and it is a crime that will never reach the courts – Sandra knew. A monstrous crime, for which no-one will ever face charges, much less consequence. A crime of such awesome magnitude the mind shies away from it too late, like a horse stepping in a hidden tangle of barbed wire.

Civilisation getting smothered by a pillow by its carers in its sickbed. Who will be arrested? Who will face trial? What is the imminent collapse of society, but a crime?

A message tone beeped at Sandra, breaking her train of thought. She glanced down at her phone and saw the terse message from her editor.

“How is the servo robbery story coming along? Almost 5.”

Shit. Finish writing the story. Upload it. Onto the next one. At least it was so close to deadline that the editor would have to allow her story to run as she wrote it, with the opening line from the robber's threat intact.

___

The story does numbers. The opening line helps generate clicks and comments.

It ends up getting onto Shit Towns of Australia’s weekly list at number 7, all over social media. Surely that’s worth a follow-up article. That’s a win. Back to Magistrates’ Court tomorrow.

Onto the next one.

Onto the next one.