Move over purists: if it grabs eyeballs, it’s a news story

After a Fox News anchor walked off the set last Friday refusing to present a segment on the Kardashians, the debate over what constitutes news has again come to the limelight.

Elder sister Kimberly is famous as much for her fashion sense as her marriage to rapper Kanye West. The family has been in the news lately for the transition of patriarch Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn, which has received its own programme on the E! network, called “I am Cait”.

Was Brown’s outburst justified? It is perhaps fair to argue that there is no reason for the clan to command so much media attention since their contribution to society, if it can be called that, is restricted to tips on how to spend their riches or how to look glamorous for an important evening. But, on the other hand, going by the public response to them, it would be churlish to not concede that they are stars in their own right.

It is true that actors and other celebrities who are covered by the media tend to get focus due to the work they do. Tom Cruise gave multiple interviews this past week due to the release of the latest franchise of the Mission Impossible series. The Kardashians, or for that matter, a bevy of other modern celebrities such as Paris Hilton make the news just for being famous.

But some of their allure can translate into real gains. Even though Kylie is still in her teens, her social media popularity has ensured that she gets highly rewarding modelling contracts. She has been signed on to promote Nip + Fab, an anti-wrinkle skincare line.

In fact, this trend runs deeper. The Kardashians are only the most celebrated among a new class of celebrity brought forth by the advent of social media. Troye Sivan was just another Australian teen until he decided to start posting daily videos on YouTube. Today, his YouTube feed has 3.5 million subscribers and he has just released a new album.

The Sacconejolys is another British celebrity couple whose fame stems from posting daily videos of their family life. They have been doing this for close to five years in which duration they have had two children who are today big stars with their own Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. One user recently made a video of their daughter Emilia from the time she was born to today, when she is nearly four years old. Their channel has over a million subscribers.

With YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, anyone can share his or her story and if that story connects, followers come in hordes. In fact, brands are now seriously targeting these celebs to reach out to their target audience.

The Sacconejolys now make regular trips around the world where hundreds gather to watch them and their kids. Disneyland in California sponsored a trip after the company saw how interested their Emilia is in Disney princesses. The entire trip was webcast on the YouTube page and afforded Disney real, traceable, analytics-driven publicity.

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report for this year has revealed the extent to which the online medium has come to displace not just print but even TV as a news source. It found that 43 per cent of Americans use online sources as their “main source of news” compared to 40 per cent for TV, which has traditionally been the main news source in America.

What this will entail for traditional news media is a juggling between serious news and the more flippant, personal variety, a struggle that does not always yield the right reaction, as the Brown episode shows. There is now a new element to news gathering that focuses on upcoming stars that create buzz online. When it came to light that YouTube gaming star PewDiePie earned close to $7 million in 2014 from his channel, the information was extensively covered in traditional media as well.

Purists may argue that what these people do is not media, or at best only a fringe element of it. But the fact is the money is going to these new-age stars, because they are getting the eyeballs. Slowly but surely the media landscape itself will dramatically shift in not merely where news is watched, but what constitutes news.

Some online outlets are starting to walk the middle ground, presenting serious journalism in a fun, youth-oriented way. One of the more successful among these is Mic, which presents short pieces on the major news of the day, in a conversational, informal style with lots of pictures and videos. This week, their growing reach was confirmed when Barack Obama sat down with them to explain the Iran deal.

Back home, luckily, senior journalists are not expected to present stuff on celebrities who cannot be classified as genuinely mass. There is, of course, a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge journalism on channels such as B4M and Zoom but nobody expects these to show quality programming. The trend of serious YouTube stars is restricted to comedy channels like AIB, and it is perhaps an indicator of the things to come that Arnab Goswami recently did a segment with them during which he showed a rarely-seen funny side.

Perhaps anchor John Brown and others like him should shrug their distaste and take the new media in their stride. After all, that’s where the future of news lies.