THIS week’s column is more of a lament than an opinion piece. The year that was 2015, in a sporting context, will not go down as a vintage 52 weeks. However it may well become known in time to come as the break out year for the dumbing down of sports coverage.
The advent of ‘clickbait’ (a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy) sites has led to a whole new way of people interacting with sport and indeed, news.
With more and more people willing to live their lives taking selfies and telling their daily stories in 140 characters, this hack laments the loss of good, some may call it old fashioned, journalism.
I am aware that I am a newspaper writer complaining about online, but that is not entirely true. I welcome online reporters, however I wonder where the new look “5 things we learned from watching Limerick” is going to get us in the future.
The “you’ll never guess who is signing for Munster” stories are just inaccurate and lazy, in my honest opinion. If this is what people want and if it does make money for those in charge, then so be it. But surely, true sports fans would like a little more in-depth analysis than just writing articles about tweets. No?
