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Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
Every morning, sometime between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, I plow through my list of articles available on the subject of the Cleveland Browns. Every morning, as soon as I check the Google News or Yahoo feeds, I'm confronted with dozens of recycled, horrible clickbait articles clogging up the feed, making it nearly impossible to find anything decent and original. Every morning, I jump into this article and rage about it. Rinse, repeat.
I can write about the state of parasites dominating the media ecosystem until my fingertips bleed. But what am I going to do about it? Trying to lead by example doesn't work. All it means is that we pass on all those glorious page views that come from ripping off original content creators and repackaging their work, sacrificing badly needed income in the process.
I should either cynically join them or try to take them down. Whining here does nothing.
I'm contemplating a new series of articles, which I'm calling "Clickbait Knockout" or "Clickbait KO", where I take a current topic of misleading clickbait and rip it apart, explaining how it manipulates the audience. The tricky bit is that I won't want to link the clickbait and give them traffic, so I'll instead offer examples of titles and the exaggerated analysis behind them.
I'm going to try one or two of these and see how they do. If they're a success, I'll become the raging anti-parasite warrior.
There are downsides to this, of course. One is that it will tick off the clickbaiters and aggregators, who will double down on efforts to avoid linking the OBR and will pounce on us if we make a mistake. Another is that a large portion of fans don't care about such things, making it very much a niche article.
Screw it. You can whine or take action. I'm a man of action. Granted, that action mostly involves beer and various things I shouldn't eat, but I'll try it and see if people are interested.
Boxing Gloves
Sooner or later, you have to fight back. (Photo: Unsplash.com)
Speaking of interest, there isn't much to be found in the articles available to the OBR Daily Newswire this morning, which are mostly about the team's quarterback battle.
THE DAILY SHEDEUR: It was even tough to find non-clickbait articles about Shedeur Sanders this morning. Of course, that was not the case during the draft, when the Entertainment Sports Programming Network spent most of their airtime raging about Sanders slipping in the draft. Loyal employee Mike Greenberg doesn't think that ESPN overdid it, though, and explains how the network decided to handle the drop.
That same network is still talking about Sanders, though, as excellent local reporter Daniel Oyefusi looks at whether it's a possibility that Sanders will emerge at QB in the Browns offense. Actually, no. Oyefusi examines each unit of the Browns' offense and how they're adapting to an offense tweaked by Tommy Rees' emergence. The title of the article, though, includes Sanders, so it makes "The Daily Shedeur".
QB BATTLES ARE FUN: The near-exclusive focus on the four-headed monster at quarterback will continue until all page views have been squeezed out of it. There's still talk about Joe Flacco saying that he'll mentor by the way he treats his responsbilities, which is discussed by NFL.com today. In addition, our old friend Jeff Schudel agrees with Flacco that he's a quarterback, not a mentor.
Meanwhile, Terry Pluto speculates and ponders and such about the Browns QB battle in a free article. Mike Florio does that same, wondering who will be the odd man out. The Akron Beacon-Journal zeroes in on Pickett and how he plans to use his experience to make a mark in the competition.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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