This site has three primary functions, which are divided into the three primary pages visible in the menu at the top of the page.
If it Bleeds, it Leads
This page is a blog meant to examine current media events, exploring how legacy media organizations are presenting the news. This section includes blog posts, videos, and discussions of what is in the news today.
If it Bleeds, we can Kill it
This page is a collection of in-depth explorations of how various media entities have handled stories, reporting, ethics, editorial policies, the transition to digital media, and more. The writing here is meant to be a postmortem examination of events that have ended, hence the name of the page.
If it Jumps, it Dies
This page hosts neutral, simple-language explainers on contentious subjects.
“Why did you give your website and its pages such weird names?”
I have a long history of working in the news and there are two sayings that I heard constantly when I was writing for newspapers and laying out stories.
“If it bleeds, it leads,” is an informal newsroom rule which dictates that a story which is bloody, frightening, emotional, or otherwise provocative is going to be the focus of the page that it’s featured on. If it’s in the A section, it’s going above the fold. If you’re putting a teaser on your broadcast, the bloody story is first back from the break. Give it a big color photo or flashy graphics and a loud sting. The reason for this is that tragedy gets eyeballs. “If it Bleeds, it Leads” means “get me clicks or sell my papers by riling up the readers.”
In my opinion, this attitude is at the center of what is wrong with our information ecosystem, so I’ve titled the front page of my site “If it Bleeds, it Leads” as a criticism of this approach to reporting.
“If it jumps, it dies,” is more descriptive than prescriptive and makes up the other big part of what I think is wrong with how people get their information.
A “jump” is the newspaper layout term for a story moving from one page to another. If the full front-page story doesn’t fit on the front page, you’ll see a little line at the bottom of the last column on that page that says “continued on…” that will then list the section and page where the rest of the story picks up. Readers almost never continue a story past the first page, so if a story “jumps” then whatever is on the second page “dies.”
The same is true of readmores and paywalls. Readers rarely click to see more of a story. This has become a disaster as many people now get their news from embeds on social media platforms that may include a paragraph or two of information, but rarely show the whole story.
The “If it Jumps, it Dies” section of this site is meant to host information that wouldn’t have been included in a front page story – I want to give readers context they might have missed and tools to assess the information they come across in the future.
“If it Bleeds, we can Kill it” is because I really like Predator. (And because we should rip media organizations to shreds when they do their work badly.)