It isn't about clicks; its about value-add.

From Journalism is being eaten alive by opinion by Jesse Singal. I don't disagree with the headline and there are plenty of points in the piece which match my own comments over recent years. I think Singal still doesn't quite get the magnitude of the challenge which the sector is facing. He also never explicitly addresses the challenge of integrity. Whether I like a news source or not (based on conscilience with beliefs and knowledge), the requisite is that I need to be able to trust them.

If the news source is consistently wrong about too many non-disputable things, then they are no longer a news source.

Singal ends with the core of the issue, too little discussed. Emphasis added.

To be clear, a return to a slightly more “traditional” understanding of journalism’s mission won’t save us. We’re probably doomed either way, but our doom is only going to come sooner, and be far uglier, if we can’t demonstrate our ability to add value, if we advertise, loudly and sanctimoniously, that we have nothing to offer an increasingly hyperkinetic and confusing informational ecosystem other than just another set of screaming outraged Twitter avatars.

Are they adding epistemic value? That is the question. If all they are providing is opinion, then that is a form of reassuring therapy or entertainment, not news.

And on that topic - adding epistemic value - journalists are generally hard pressed. They have no time. Their owners are not investing (the very reverse in fact) in fact-checking and sourcing. Any journalist with integrity faces innumerable challenges to produce the sort of well-sourced, validated, fact-rich information which is value-add.

Writing in a fashion to get clicks is usually the antithesis of value-add reporting and yet that is the mould into which their economic model forces them.