Sean McKinven's Newsround: 8 June

Hello. Bettridge’s law of headlines goes: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

Studies have shown that Bettridge is not quite correct on that one. In that light I would like to propose a new McKinven’s law of headlines: “Most headlines that end in a question mark can be answered with the phrase it depends.”

Let’s put my law to the test. The BBC asks Could humanoid robots be heading for the battlefield? – it depends. The Economist asks Can the stockmarket swallow SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI? – it depends. Will the UK embrace electoral reform? asks the FT and, to everyone’s surprise, the answer was, it depends.

What about the trade press? Well, Citywire quite helpfully incorporated McKinven’s law into this one: Is AI slowing down advice recruitment? Recruiters say it depends. Money Marketing asks Can quantitative investing deliver bond market alpha? – you’ll find the answer is it depends.

Now, obviously this is open to challenge. Someone might also take issue with the wiry nature of my wording, essentially meaning I can conveniently ignore: At the Helm: Are career changers creating recruitment challenges for advice firms? Where the answer was yes.

But to be fair to Bettridge and me, we weren’t really setting out a law so much as exaggerating for rhetorical purposes. Bettridge’s full quote is:

“This story is a great demonstration of my maxim that any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word “no”. The reason why journalists* use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bull****, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up but still want to run it.”

It was a response to a notion that those pesky little journos might look to hide behind. Is this happening? Should you be worried about this? Is this about to fall off? as a way to distract from a lack of credibility and increase engagement for a vacuous story. Some may call this “clickbait” and it’s almost like a precursor to vagueposting.Does this happen? Absolutely. Does it happen even most of the time? Who can tell? And does it matter?

One Steve Nelson wrote in the TCWU last week about the rise in AI content. That came in a week where the City AM editor-in-chief talked out about AI-slop pitching and submissions. Whatever your views on its role in content creation, I think if we are talking about degradation in quality and where it’s used to produce monotonous slop, one of things it’ll negatively impact is our ability to negotiate and challenge what we’re reading.

Bad journalism and content have always existed; quality can only be discerned in a world where there are varying levels of it. Moreover, it can then demand good readers and an environment where we can suspend judgement, mount a challenge, or move the conversation forward. Bettridge’s maxim may be exaggerative, but it was perhaps a sign of something else: a media environment where a reader was alive to the varying levels of quality in content and able to look at a question headline and challenge it.

If we become accepting of the monotony of slop, people will be less engaged and the media environment will be less open to constructive discussion. What purpose is content supposed to form in that scenario? That’s what we should thinking about.

*Maybe a little sensational as traditionally it was the sub-editors that wrote the headlines. Nowadays, journos do tend to write headlines for digital stories, but Bettridge was writing eons ago… like 2009 or something.

The News:

LANG CAT & CLIENT MENTIONS

Evergreen partners with Pilot to power core technology platform

Pilot working with Evergreen.

Source: Money Marketing

MPS Allocators make a call on alts versus cash in a riskily rich market

Shanti Kelemen, co-chief investment officer, 7IM appears on the show.

Source: Citywire WM

Platform veteran Geoff Towers joins Platform One board

He joins as a NED.

Source: Money Marketing

Novia Global completes GBST SaaS platform upgrade

Novia Global continues its partnership with GBST.

Source: Money Marketing

Mobius launches asset manager subscription service to boost public and private access across UK

Mobius looks to increase asset manager access to UK pensions and wealth markets.

Source: Investment Week

ADVISERS

From Childline to counselling: How planner Shaw spots client vulnerabilities

An interesting look into the human angle of advice.

Source: Citywire NMA

Tax a ‘significant issue’ for clients but capital loss tops concerns

I’d like to meet the clients of the 1% of advisers who said their clients were not concerned at all about tax. Must be pretty chill folk.

Source: Professional Adviser

PLATFORMS

Many platforms are surviving on cash interest – Integrafin CEO

He wants to see some consolidation.

Source: Citywire NMA

JP Morgan Personal Investing stops interest on cash-only pots

Interesting.

Source: Citywire NMA

INVESTING & WEALTH MANAGERS

Saba’s Weinstein offers reward to Baillie Gifford whistleblowers

This continues to deliver drama at every turn.

Source: Citywire WM

Want to know the future? Don’t trust the stockmarket

Rationality of markets. Or something not like that.

Source: The Economist

REGULATION & POLICY

Andy Burnham’s ambition to abolish inheritance tax

Blimey. John Rawls hated that. Burnham repotedly interested in scrapping death duties in favour of a system that taxed “the wealthy properly while they are alive”.

Source: The Times

Consumer trust in AI on the rise: Trustpilot

Interesting.

Source: COVER

PENSIONS & RETIREMENT

‘Damaging’ impact of salary sacrifice changes revealed

Folk set to cut back on pension saving as a result of the policy.

Source: FT Adviser

Standard Life’s Mike Ambery: Triple lock is unsustainable and needs changing

Another week, another gunning for the triple lock.

Source: Citywire NMA.

Only 9% of savers on track for a comfortable retirement