The bait-and-switch battle for eyeballs

Forbes goes the extra mile in shoving an Apple reference into an article that is actually about something else completely:

The headline: “No iPhone Bump For September Retail Sales”

The first paragraph: “Even though U.S. shoppers raced out to buy the latest model of the iPhone, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates consumers kept an otherwise-tight grip on their wallets in anticipation of the dampening effect of the government shutdown.”

So it’s really an article about the U.S. retail sales report for September. But without an Apple mention, it’s just news, not linkbait.

If journalism is dying, Forbes is sticking the knife in, twisting it, and licking the blood off of it…