We columnists imagine our articles going viral, sweeping the world, carried into cabinet rooms, changing history.
And then I wake up. Today I’m sharing with you my clunkers, columns that were read by … well, perhaps by my wife. And my mom. If they weren’t busy.
This is my annual list of my columns that no one read. I’d say that they bombed, except that would connote impact. Let’s just call them duds. Flops. Busts. Losers.
In fact, you may not care to read any further.
My No. 1 Worst-Read Column in 2019 was from Hong Kong, “Straining Through the Tear Gas.” Hong Kong is one of the great cities of the world, and I was privileged to live there as The Times’s bureau chief in the 1980s. But it’s now a battleground in the fight for global freedom — and I fear where it’s headed.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, sees any compromise as a sign of weakness, and protesters have been radicalized by police violence, so it’s hard to see any exit ramp. I worry that Beijing may eventually send in the People’s Armed Police for a violent crackdown.
“China’s Orwellian War on Religion” was another column that no one read. It focused on the roughly one million Muslims in the Xinjiang region in western China who have been confined to modern concentration camps — apparently the largest internment of people based on religion since the Holocaust.
China reportedly is forcing Muslims to violate their religious principles by eating pork or drinking alcohol. It is even dispatching men to move into the homes of families from Muslim minority groups, where they sometimes share the beds of women whose husbands are locked up.
The assault on Islam in Xinjiang is sometimes called a cultural genocide, and it’s accompanied by heightened repression of Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. China is complicated, and the paradox is that religious people in China are more likely to see their children survive and go to a university than a generation ago — but also more likely to see them arrested for their faith.
China’s repression of religion may seem remote at a time we’re so focused on American politics. So I’m particularly proud of the outstanding work my Times colleagues have done in covering this important story, including obtaining documents that lay out President Xi’s directive to show “absolutely no mercy.”
Columns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela were also high on the list of those that were ignored. I made two trips to the region in 2019, meeting children who were starving, including a year-old child who weighed just 11 pounds. Some Venezuelan children already are dying, and it could get much worse.
Then there was an unread column from Paraguay about growing evidence that hope is a critical factor in overcoming poverty. Another dud noted that global health efforts are succeeding: The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis has saved an astonishing 32 million lives so far.
Knowing that policy stories aren’t sexy, I’ve tried to be creative. A colleague, Stuart A. Thompson, and I painstakingly created an online tool that let readers take the money that President Trump wanted for the border wall and reallocate it for programs that would do more for the security and well-being of Americans and foreigners alike. Readers stayed away in droves.
I’m not allowed to give page-view numbers, which are proprietary, but suffice it to say that a typical Trump column doesn’t just do 20 percent better than a Venezuela column, but at least three or four times better.
(We have data only for page views for online articles. We really have no idea what is read in our print editions, and what lines bird cages.)
As I look through my list of clunkers, one lesson is clear: Trump sells, and international stories don’t, especially when they are about humanitarian issues and aren’t embarrassing to Trump.
Then again, while I periodically write lousy columns, and I also regularly write columns that no one reads, these aren’t necessarily the same ones. What The Times and I both care about is quality journalism, not page views.
I count myself very lucky that I work for a news organization that lets me fly off to Venezuela or Yemen on expensive, potentially dangerous reporting trips even though we all realize that my readership will plunge as a result.
Invariably when I give a talk at a university, someone will lament that more journalists don’t cover humanitarian stories. The challenge is this: If more journalists covered these issues, more news organizations would go broke. We in journalism are still working out the business model for such stories, and philanthropic nonprofits like ProPublica and the Pulitzer Center may be part of the answer.
In the meantime, I’m deeply grateful this holiday season to a newspaper that gives me free rein to cover these stories and to all of you readers (beyond my wife and mother) who stick with me when I do!
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Source: Read Full Article
Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | It’s Possible No One Will Read This Column
Opinion | It’s Possible No One Will Read This Column
We columnists imagine our articles going viral, sweeping the world, carried into cabinet rooms, changing history.
And then I wake up. Today I’m sharing with you my clunkers, columns that were read by … well, perhaps by my wife. And my mom. If they weren’t busy.
This is my annual list of my columns that no one read. I’d say that they bombed, except that would connote impact. Let’s just call them duds. Flops. Busts. Losers.
In fact, you may not care to read any further.
My No. 1 Worst-Read Column in 2019 was from Hong Kong, “Straining Through the Tear Gas.” Hong Kong is one of the great cities of the world, and I was privileged to live there as The Times’s bureau chief in the 1980s. But it’s now a battleground in the fight for global freedom — and I fear where it’s headed.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, sees any compromise as a sign of weakness, and protesters have been radicalized by police violence, so it’s hard to see any exit ramp. I worry that Beijing may eventually send in the People’s Armed Police for a violent crackdown.
“China’s Orwellian War on Religion” was another column that no one read. It focused on the roughly one million Muslims in the Xinjiang region in western China who have been confined to modern concentration camps — apparently the largest internment of people based on religion since the Holocaust.
China reportedly is forcing Muslims to violate their religious principles by eating pork or drinking alcohol. It is even dispatching men to move into the homes of families from Muslim minority groups, where they sometimes share the beds of women whose husbands are locked up.
The assault on Islam in Xinjiang is sometimes called a cultural genocide, and it’s accompanied by heightened repression of Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. China is complicated, and the paradox is that religious people in China are more likely to see their children survive and go to a university than a generation ago — but also more likely to see them arrested for their faith.
China’s repression of religion may seem remote at a time we’re so focused on American politics. So I’m particularly proud of the outstanding work my Times colleagues have done in covering this important story, including obtaining documents that lay out President Xi’s directive to show “absolutely no mercy.”
Columns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela were also high on the list of those that were ignored. I made two trips to the region in 2019, meeting children who were starving, including a year-old child who weighed just 11 pounds. Some Venezuelan children already are dying, and it could get much worse.
Then there was an unread column from Paraguay about growing evidence that hope is a critical factor in overcoming poverty. Another dud noted that global health efforts are succeeding: The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis has saved an astonishing 32 million lives so far.
Knowing that policy stories aren’t sexy, I’ve tried to be creative. A colleague, Stuart A. Thompson, and I painstakingly created an online tool that let readers take the money that President Trump wanted for the border wall and reallocate it for programs that would do more for the security and well-being of Americans and foreigners alike. Readers stayed away in droves.
I’m not allowed to give page-view numbers, which are proprietary, but suffice it to say that a typical Trump column doesn’t just do 20 percent better than a Venezuela column, but at least three or four times better.
(We have data only for page views for online articles. We really have no idea what is read in our print editions, and what lines bird cages.)
As I look through my list of clunkers, one lesson is clear: Trump sells, and international stories don’t, especially when they are about humanitarian issues and aren’t embarrassing to Trump.
Then again, while I periodically write lousy columns, and I also regularly write columns that no one reads, these aren’t necessarily the same ones. What The Times and I both care about is quality journalism, not page views.
I count myself very lucky that I work for a news organization that lets me fly off to Venezuela or Yemen on expensive, potentially dangerous reporting trips even though we all realize that my readership will plunge as a result.
Invariably when I give a talk at a university, someone will lament that more journalists don’t cover humanitarian stories. The challenge is this: If more journalists covered these issues, more news organizations would go broke. We in journalism are still working out the business model for such stories, and philanthropic nonprofits like ProPublica and the Pulitzer Center may be part of the answer.
In the meantime, I’m deeply grateful this holiday season to a newspaper that gives me free rein to cover these stories and to all of you readers (beyond my wife and mother) who stick with me when I do!
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Source: Read Full Article