Back in February a public relations person from Zippia, a “career expert” website, sent The Valley Indy an email asking us to write a story about Derby and Shelton being on a list of the “laziest towns in Connecticut.”
“Based on criteria like the number of hours worked per week, commute times, and the average number of workers per household, Derby ranked 8th overall,” the spokesman pitched in a strangely upbeat manner.
“I thought that since you cover local news in and around Derby that this would be a great article to use for your next story.”
Clickbait “listicle” stories like this are bad for journalism, and we should all stop sharing them on social media. Clickbait is something designed to get web clicks first, rather than to inform. People love to share the lists, even if the data generating the list is dubious, as is clearly the case with Zippia, which makes a subjective statement based off “publicly available” info.
(Oh, and click here to read about how meme-obsessed publishers on Facebook are killing off boring old knowledge-based journalism)
But we agreed to interview the spokesman.
An edited and condensed version of the interview is below.
FYI, the lazy list has been updated since February. Now Ansonia is ranked high on the list.
We’re not providing a link, but here’s the sentence from the website that we found especially annoying:
If “you can’t bother to go to college, don’t spend any time at work, and have only one person per household bringing home the bacon, your town is probably pretty lazy.”
Ugh.
Valley Independent Sentinel: What do you think you’re adding to the world by coming up with a list like this?
Spokesman Guy: “Everything we write is based on strictly data. I guess the first thing I should say is that we never mean to show any disrespect or (to) step on your toes. It’s nothing, you know, we’re not hurting anyone or any particular place. We really just want people to have the information available and not necessarily say, ‘Oh this place is lazy.’”
Valley Indy: So it’s not insulting to say ‘no one wants to work with lazy people,’ on your website? Have you ever been to Derby or Shelton?
Spokesman: “No, I have not personally.”
Valley Indy: Do you know if anybody from your company has ever step foot in Derby or Shelton?
Spokesman: “Yeah, actually I think my boss is originally from New Jersey, spent most of his younger life in the northeast.”
Valley Indy: OK. Two young people died from overdoses in our community today. I’m just not sure how should I, as an editor, position your “Derby is lazy” story? Should I put it under the story about the deaths? Or next to it? How do you recommend we do that? How do we explain the part about this list not being an insult?
Spokesman: “Right. So I guess to the first question, yes we did do a bit of research. We did a binary of smartest, and on the other flip side, the dumbest cities of Texas a few months ago. And we delayed because they had just gone through some major natural disasters.”
Valley Indy: I’m looking at your website and I’m seeing a few spelling errors or at least grammatical errors. Zippia, where does it rank in terms of dumb websites?
Spokesman Guy: “Umm . . .”
Valley Indy: How dumb is Zippia?
Spokesman Guy: “Well, I don’t know if I can really answer that question in an unbiased manner, so . . .”
Valley Indy: OK, but you’re not going to deny the dumbness of it, though? You’re neither going to confirm nor deny?
Spokesman Guy: “No, I will come out and say no, I don’t think our website is dumb in anyway.”
Valley Indy: What do these lists add to the community? What good can come from this list of cities you’ve never visited?
Spokesman Guy: “I just want to reiterate that nothing we publish is anyway personal.”
Valley Indy: How is it not personal to the people who live there?
Spokesman Guy: (Silence)
Valley Indy: What’s the point of publishing this list? Isn’t it the definition of clickbait?
Spokesman Guy: “So, we’re just using, you know, publicly available data to kind of publish different lists and rankings of cities all across the U.S.”
Valley Indy: Oh. OK.
