"Garner clicks and eyeballs"

As I reported last month from the Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia, the Brewers Association has begun dabbling with media grievance as a new messaging tactic as it searches for a way out of the segment’s multi-year malaise. Matt Gacioch, the trade group’s staff economist, carried that victimhood gospel forth to the membership at large in a blog post earlier this week, lamenting that coverage of craft brewery closures is:

Setting aside the linear passage of time, and the fact that a story’s “newsworthiness” is a concept predicated in large part on how “new” it is (it’s baked into the term!), this is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the incentives of modern media cloaked in the conspiratorial faux-knowing rhetorical catnip for Facebook-addled dipshits who call everything they don’t like “clickbait.” See: many brewery owners. What Gacioch means is that stories about brewery closures get attention. They often do! But that’s not some scheme against the segment: it’s a natural and frankly necessary corrective to the breathless exaggerated of the industry’s fortune by mainstream outlets for most of last decade. If craft brewing had not been uncritically humped up and down every front page and social-media newsfeed throughout its second boom—and lord, was it—then its second shakeout would not be nearly as interesting to reporters or readers. Can’t have it both ways!

If you see beverage-alcohol corporatespeak in the wild that deserves to be the next Fingers Buzzword, submit it for consideration to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!