More copy, worse copy

The effects were already noticeable in 2006, when the journalist Nick Davies undertook a study with researchers from Cardiff University looking at news stories from The Times, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Independent and the Daily Mail between 1985 and 2005. They found that the average journalist was filling up three times as much space in 2005 than they had in 1985. They had, typically speaking, a third of the time to do their job. It escalated from there.

More copy is the coward’s response to copy nobody uses. Output rises immediately. Thinking can be postponed.

The journalist filling three times as much space with a third of the time has discovered no miraculous compression technique for verification, source development and judgement. Those stubborn activities get replaced by press material, familiar angles and yesterday’s claims wearing today’s date.

Commercial teams perform the same conjuring trick. One customer question becomes five generic articles because the target says five. The fifth piece exists to complete a row. Its audience is the reporting period.

Quantity has prestige because items are countable. A good explanation may prevent a support call, change a buying decision or get forwarded privately. Those effects arrive slowly and belong partly to other people. Publishing another item belongs neatly to the producer.

So the machine accelerates. Twelve articles, thirty-nine social posts, eight videos. Reader questions answered: unknown. Evidence checked: somewhere in the work. Distinct decisions supported: an unfair standard introduced by a difficult person.

The rot spreads into language. When nobody has time to find a sharp fact, everything becomes “key”, “important”, “innovative” and “in today’s rapidly changing world”. Volume supplies the noise used to justify more volume.

The next item is submitted at 11.58.