Over the course of the last week I’ve been publishing a series of posts where I point out a number of media conventions and tendencies I’d like to see come to an end.

These mostly involve being more specific, cutting out unnecessary labels and offering a bigger picture look at the issues being shared. I’m rounding up all those posts here for easy reference and will add anything further I publish going forward.

Add More Context: Some recent stories offer examples of cases of where tieing *this* story into what else is known would create much more value for the reader, cut down the hyperbole or strengthen the point being made.

Only Use Demographic Labels When Pertinent: I don’t need to reiterate here how ridiculous the whole “Millennials Are Killing [industry/company/category]” press narrative is. The stories that have become a laughing stock seem to be predicated on two assumptions.

Stop Saying “Tweet”: In the early days of social media it was common to dismiss what someone posted to Twitter or Facebook as being somewhat…less than. These comments were easily waved aside as the kind of off-hand brain droppings that weren’t necessarily worthy of much attention. I’ll admit I’m as guilty of this as many professional journalists and others.

Abandon the David vs Goliath Narrative: The problem with this framing is that it turns the named company into the gold standard, assigning some amount of infallibility and prestige that has more in common with an op-ed than news reporting.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

The headline used by Nieman Lab on its recap of a study conducted on how labeling the source of a link within a story impacts the trust assigned to that story is this:

When a link to a news story shows the source of the story, some people end up trusting it less

That’s technically accurate. It doesn’t, though, address the bigger issues revealed in the study. A more high-level headline and one that more accurately encompasses the findings might read like this:

The reputation of the source a news story links to impacts the trust people put in the story itself

See the difference? My version gets to the core issue identified in the study, which is that readers will judge your story based on the reputation of the sites you’re linking to.

Put in a more actionable way: Be careful who you link to, because their reputation will become your reputation.

This has, of course, always been the case. Ever since the early days of the blogging web you could instantly judge someone based on who they included in their blogroll or otherwise linked to. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why legacy publications refused for so long to link to sources or commentary outside their own walls, because they didn’t want their reputation tarnished by officially associating themselves with anyone questionable.

At its core, the findings corroborate the old adage “You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep.” The same can be said for the links you share.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

Something weird happens when a company attains a certain scale, and particularly when it moves into the position of largely dominating its market: The media begin to treat it as an assumptive leader, the yardstick by which all others in that market are measured. See if this headline framing seems familiar:

“WeWork Competitor X Emerges From Beta”

“X Launches to Take on Facebook”

Get the drift? I understand why this happens, of course. As these companies grow they garner more and more coverage, so readers are likely to be familiar with them. So they are used to create a level of instant familiarity with the audience, who can quickly comprehend what they’re about to read.

The problem with this framing is that it turns the named company into the gold standard, assigning some amount of infallibility and prestige that has more in common with an op-ed than news reporting.

It’s objectively true that a new coworking company *is* a competitor to WeWork. But it’s also going up against every other similar company operating in the markets it’s active in. And yes, Facebook is the BSD of social networks, so everyone is technically vying to take whatever percentage of its market share they can.

That headline tic, though, only serves to reinforce whatever dominance there may be. If you view everyone who comes up as taking a shot at the king, you are by necessity acknowledging the party sitting in the throne as that king. That only serves to increase whatever power the market leader already enjoys, thereby diminishing the up-and-comers.

Consider, then, how different the same stories might be if they used these headlines instead:

“New Coworking Company X Launches in Cities”

“X Launches to Add [new value proposition] To Social Network Space”

Very different impression, right? Suddenly we’re thinking about *that* company, not immediately considering them an also-ran to someone else.

There’s a very real problem right now where too few companies – Facebook, Google, Amazon and a couple others – have a great deal of power over everyone’s lives. That problem isn’t going to be solved if the media keeps framing all competition as pretenders to the title instead of a new service offering something new (or not in some cases) to the market people may find intriguing.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

For years now, many of those in my generation of social media marketing professionals have been trying to get people to stop using outdated terminology. Sometime around 2007 it was no longer really accurate to say “new media” when referring to blogs and podcasts because those media had largely gone mainstream.

Words, terms and phrases like that are often introduced at the outset of a new technology’s arrival to differentiate it from what’s come before, giving first adopters an added sense of being on the cutting edge. Those formats are usually unique but many are quite similar, just facilitated through different means. What is the real difference, for instance, between a “post” and an “article” when both are accessed via the web by clicking on a unique identifier? Not a whole lot.

Their continued application so long after they’ve lost their unique nature is, to some extent, an attempt by legacy power brokers to continue assigning them second class status, to dismiss them as something silly. It’s important that these be seen as less important or worthy of notice to help maintain the illusion that they are the true arbiters of what’s to taken seriously.

In the early days of social media it was common to dismiss what someone posted to Twitter or Facebook as being somewhat…less than. These comments were easily waved aside as the kind of off-hand brain droppings that weren’t necessarily worthy of much attention. I’ll admit I’m as guilty of this as many professional journalists and others.

It’s long past time when that was no longer the case. For several years now CEOs and others have used social media platforms to issue official statements. The President of the United States seems to be dictating foreign and domestic policy from his Twitter account. Whatever you might think of his tendency to live-Tweet “Fox & Friends” and contradict previous statements on a whim, those are official statements from the President, not the incoherent ramblings of someone whose family urgently needs to place him in an elder care facility, and need to be treated as such.

The same applies to comments made by actors, executives, media types and everyone else. Rightly or wrongly, social media has become the new press conference. Instead of calling reporters together on the courthouse steps, you post a screenshot of a statement you’ve typed out in your Notes app.

So here’s what I’d like to see media professionals do going forward: Stop using “Tweet,” “…posted to Facebook” or any other indicator of where the statement was made that assigns it some secondary status, relegating it to novelty. Instead simply say “In a statement by X, they said…” or something along those lines. That’s more accurate and, importantly, puts it on the same level as if it were said out loud or issues via press release.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.

I don’t need to reiterate here how ridiculous the whole “Millennials Are Killing [industry/company/category]” press narrative is. The stories that have become a laughing stock seem to be predicated on two assumptions:

1. That this is the first time in the history of civilization that one generation has dared to exhibit different consumer preferences or tastes than those that came before
2. That consumerism is somehow a civic duty, that they are someone how neglecting a responsibility when choosing not to dine at Buffalo Wild Wings

The designation of that age group in particular seems designed to appeal to older audiences who can shake their heads at those damn Millennials what with their insistence on not falling in line with destructive capitalism, belief that corporations should be advocates for progressive social policies and desire to somehow, someday get out from under the crushing student loan debt they’re saddled with.

To some extent that’s understandable, or at least expected. As someone in the Gen X age group I’ve already had to sit through endless streams of stories about how my generation was just a bunch of slackers who couldn’t get off the couch long enough to get a job and variations thereof. We were just lazy, while Millennials have been positioned as violently disruptive.

In some recent cases, though, the subject of the story has been identified in the headline as being a “Millennial” despite membership in that group being completely inconsequential to the story itself. I won’t link to it, but here’s eht headline:

“How one retired Millennial made more than $60,000 in passive income last year”

The story goes on to explain how the person had built up enough of an audience for their blog that through a combination of ads and affiliate links they were able to bring in tens of thousands of dollars in revenue while putting very little effort into the blog.

Cool. Good stuff. Not terribly useful or groundbreaking, but that’s alright.

That fact that she was in the Millennial age group didn’t matter a whit, though. This wasn’t about something that was unique to her generation as the advice would apply to anyone from 15 to 75 years old. It was used, it seems, simply to get people’s attention and ride the trend of stories about that specific demographic.

I would hope that if demographic membership is going to be singularly identified, there’s a purpose behind it. Stories about Millennials and their habits and preferences are overdone as it is, superfluous usage of the label only creates more confusion and, quite frankly, resentment.

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist who lives in the Chicago suburbs.