As humans, we like to simplify and dichotomize: good versus evil, young vs. old, science vs. art, us vs. them. The world is a lot easier to live in when we choose to categorize things as polar opposites destined to always oppose one another.

That’s partially why so many people are grabbing on to a supposed tech vs. journalism feud. To be fair, there has plenty of evidence that there is tension between the industries, shown by The New Republic’s meltdown and the tech-funded tensions in media enterprise First Look Media. 

The latest discussion piece is Andrew Marantz’s profile for The New Yorker on budding media entrepreneur Emerson Spartz, a 27 year-old media entrepreneur known for creating sites like Mugglenet, GivesMeHope and Dose in a hope to make content go viral.

Spartz’s passion for virality has lead to Spartz Inc., which oversees 30 aggregator sites that uses hyperbolic headlines and complex algorithms to land on the top of Facebook’s newsfeed. The choice to repackage content instead of make more original content is driven by Spartz findings that “people are no more likely to click on them.”

Data drives the ethos behind Spartz. Inc, as does traffic. According to Spartz, Dose receives about 60 million page views a month thanks to Facebook. Emerging as a player in tech & content, Spartz, Inc. has raised 8 million dollars in venture-capital funding. Comparatively, BuzzFeed and Vox Media, with about 150 million monthly users and 115 million unique pageviews per month, have recently raised about $50 million each, adding to their valued $850 million and $380 million fortunes, respectively. Buzzfeed

Underneath the fascinating and entertaining profile is an ominous tone, at times subtly and overtly critical, of the tech company’s desecration of Marantz’s old-school journalism values. (When Marantz mentions The New York Times’ leaked internal report The NYT’s leaked internal report mentioned a “tension between quality control and expanded digital capabilities.” Spartz disagrees, seeing no difference between quality and virality, but he also recognizes that what he does is not journalism.)

Almost immediately after the article, backlash ensued (and that backlash got backlash). Vox said that “the whole thing reads a bit as if the New Yorker told John Connor to write a profile of Skynet,” and offered three reasons why Spartz’s site isn’t threatening any values since it never tries to be journalism in the first place. Uproxx wrote a list of reasons why it’s a fantastic hate read. People took sides (often nuanced sides, it must be noted) and it feels like the “war” between tech and journalism is all but confirmed.

But why does it always have to be about pitting things against one another? Why are we turning this into a tech vs. journalism war when both “sides” need each other? The tech and journalism “feud” is more like a marriage—a marriage between tech and editorial that is featuring some harsh downs and wonderful ups (information is infinite!). Just as science and art can coexist—and actually complement one another—tech and journalism can do that too.

This is what we believe in. We want to help bridge towards that partnership of tech and journalism, and we love blending methods, ethos and values to do that. Tech offers engineering ingenuity to create tools for journalism. Journalists offer comprehensive storytelling and editorial abilities. Are there problems in both industries? Absolutely. But for the future of the internet age, they’ll need to learn from each other and work together to move forward.

In fact, let’s stop pitting them against one another because tech companies and journalism institutions are not polar opposites. We should be working to address these tensions between industries, not perpetuate them.

Image Credit: Kim Faires via Flickr