Staged journalism, nothing new. Dozen years ago, doing some job in buildings where newspaper offices resided, I saw whole departments in Russian newspapers, whose task was to quickly think out something hot, if there is still not enough articles to fill the issue. I think nothing changed when internet finally become main news agencies media. They still have some minimum amount of content to publish daily set by top and managers who will be fined if that schedule will not be fulfilled. Imagine - you have some main agenda, and you still don't have (or it does not pass due to censorship) an article to publish today. So, you go to the staged journalism department and they quickly do their job.
Staged journalism, nothing new. Dozen years ago, doing some job in buildings where newspaper offices resided, I saw whole departments in Russian newspapers, whose task was to quickly think out something hot, if there is still not enough articles to fill the issue. I think nothing changed when internet finally become main news agencies media. They still have some minimum amount of content to publish daily set by top and managers who will be fined if that schedule will not be fulfilled. Imagine - you have some main agenda, and you still don't have (or it does not pass due to censorship) an article to publish today. So, you go to the staged journalism department and they quickly do their job.
As simple as that.