Main Character of the Week: Escaping the algorithm
Here’s the Trending team’s main character of the week: It’s escaping the algorithm.
This month Google changed its algorithm. Happens about three times annually and those of us in digital publishing have learned to deal.
During these algo tweaks, Google rolls out improvements and cracks down on spammy content. In practice, these changes mean short-term turmoil for all of our dang web traffic. It’s frankly demoralizing to realize just how much is outside your control as a professional. That’s the nature of business: You create your own luck by anticipating trends, and then you go heads-down trying to bake a bigger pie.
When this happens and suddenly our traffic is 50% less than what it was a week ago, however, all you can do is breathe. We’ve continued to produce steady, strong news stories knowing that their ceiling is temporarily lowered as Google rearranges the internet.
And we try not to panic. It’s possible that our website is being dinged for some kind of structural deficiency. Equally so that another competitor has been deemed to be providing higher-grade stories than us and therefore our standing has been usurped.
But whatever.
There is a time to look under the hood and put your thinking cap on, and there is a time to escape the algorithm and return in a few days with a fresh perspective. This holiday week I’m choosing the latter.
Pacing yourself
As an internet culture publication, the news never stops. We publish 365 days a year. I love working on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.
If I can put in 3-to-4 solid hours of editing and managing the news desk during a holiday, that gives us a real edge. Most of my contemporaries are resting, so my stories have more room to garner traction.
I also work on holidays to create space for my team, and also because I want every day to be a holiday.
It’s therapy talk but it’s true: You are in control of your experience in this world. My advice to young journalists when I speak to classes is to understand the value of your work and make sure the work itself plays to your strengths. So that you enjoy it. If you dislike your job but enjoy its core duties, that’s usually a misaligned process brought on by poor management.
So I work a little bit every day so that I can circumvent an overpaid exec with bad ideas trying to force them onto my plate.
Logging off
And when I’m offline, I make room for joy.
What a great couple weeks for music it’s been. I have a “best songs of the year” Spotify playlist that I’m tinkering since the office is quiet. I loved the all-in performances from Wicked. But there’s no place like live music.
As a resident of Austin, Texas, I can assure you that we bring the noise. Every patio is a stage and even the Dell engineers have SoundClouds. The other day I was arguing with a stranger over the merits of Oneohtrix Point Never, a producer that 99.9% of Americans do not care about.
One of the great guitar originals of the 21st century, Jack White, just played intimate shows at the Continental Club and Mohawk. The Mohawk gig was so invigorating that the next morning I edited like six stories by lunch.
We all live somewhere special and yet we never go out. We resent the transplants who move here and post about Franklin barbecue. We complain about Sixth Street being for tourists.
Take Gary Clark Jr., the prodigious Austin guitarist. Last week, he performed at Austin City Limits during the PBS mainstay's 50th anniversary concert. (It’ll air early next year. Everyone plays like two songs. You’ll want to watch if only for Rufus Wainwright’s “Hallelujah” cover.)
Clark Jr. was onstage for maybe 10 minutes, covering Stevie Ray Vaughan. His solos were crisp, sharp, and miraculous.
But when I profiled him for the local newspaper, he told me that he felt like a mascot in this town. He’s a chill guy that people recognize from area murals but they can’t otherwise place. We don’t interact with his art.
As we slow down this holiday season, let's make sure to enjoy local. Find a market. Or at least shop Black Friday deals IRL so that you can feel that mosh pit energy and remind yourself that you’re alive. Dine at the heralded restaurant… Even if some horrible 20-something already made a Reel about it.
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