Hot take

{{Short description|Immediate opinionated commentary on news events}}

{{For|the webtoon storyline|Live with Yourself!#Plot{{!}}Hot Take (Live with Yourself!)}}

In journalism, a hot take is a "piece of deliberately provocative commentary that is based almost entirely on shallow moralizing" in response to a news story,{{cite magazine |last1=Reeve |first1=Elspeth |authorlink=Elle Reeve |title=A History of the Hot Take |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/121501/history-hot-take |accessdate=13 April 2015 |magazine=The New Republic |date=April 12, 2015}} "usually written on tight deadlines with little research or reporting, and even less thought".{{cite news |last1=Rios |first1=Tomas |title=A Brief History of Bad Sports Writing |url=https://psmag.com/social-justice/a-brief-history-of-bad-sports-writing-64380 |accessdate=13 April 2015 |work=Pacific Standard |date=August 15, 2013}}

It originated as a term in the industry of sports talk radio (and in turn by shared televised simulcasts of those shows to fill dead time on networks and sports-related debate shows, sports television itself), referring to the tactic of hosts picking "a topic from the sports zeitgeist, often one that has no business being discussed because the answer is unknowable", making "loud, fact-free declarations" about the topic, eliciting angry listeners to call in and providing show content.{{cite news|title=Do You Get the Show|authorlink=Michael Schur|first=Mike|last=Schur|date=April 13, 2018|url=https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/espns-dan-le-batard-built-a-sports-talk-empire-by-talking-about-sports-as-little-as-possible.html|work=Slate|accessdate=2019-02-11}} The New York Times Styles section defines a hot take as "a hastily assembled but perhaps heartfelt piece of incendiary opinionated content".{{cite news |last1=Lucas |first1=Jake |title=What's Behind All Those Hot Takes |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/reader-center/hot-takes-summer-insider.html |work=The New York Times |date=25 July 2019}}

The term gained popularity in sports journalism in 2012 to describe the coverage of National Football League quarterback Tim Tebow and was analyzed in a Pacific Standard article by Tomás Ríos. It became increasingly used in other forms of journalism in 2014 after a piece on The Awl by John Herrman to describe the economic pressure on online publishers to produce instant, often glib, responses to current events.{{cite news |last1=Turner |first1=Julia |authorlink=Julia Turner (journalist) |title=In Defense of the Take |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/culturebox/2015/04/buzzfeed_dove_ad_post_ben_smith_doesn_t_like_hot_takes_but_are_takes_really.html |accessdate=13 April 2015 |work=Slate |date=April 10, 2015}}

In April 2015, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith wrote on Twitter: "We are trying not to do hot takes", to explain the deletion of two articles that were critical of the site's advertisers. Jezebel{{'}}s Jia Tolentino argued that the articles were instead "actually in service of an idea" and that based on Herrman's definition of hot take, ideas were positive alternatives to hot takes.{{cite news |last1=Tolentino |first1=Jia |authorlink=Jia Tolentino |title=How to Tell the Difference Between a Hot Take and a Good Idea |url=http://jezebel.com/how-to-tell-the-difference-between-a-hot-take-and-a-goo-1697039184 |accessdate=14 April 2015 |work=Jezebel |date=April 10, 2015}}

Hot takes are often associated with social media, where they can be easily shared and commented on by both readers and other journalists, a lucrative environment for publishers that encourages recursive "meta-takes", which John West described as "a black hole from which no attention can escape".{{cite news |last1=West |first1=John |title=How hot takes drowned out journalism and ruined our Facebook feeds |url=https://qz.com/649210/how-hot-takes-drowned-out-journalism-and-ruined-our-facebook-feeds/ |work=Quartz |date=29 March 2016 |language=en}} The prevalence of hot takes on social media has also contributed to the term taking on the broader sense of an unpopular or controversial opinion outside of journalism.{{cite news |last1=Heinzman |first1=Andrew |title=What Is a "Hot Take", and Where Did the Phrase Come From? |url=https://www.howtogeek.com/442145/what-is-a-hot-take-and-where-did-the-phrase-come-from/ |work=How-To Geek |date=9 October 2019}}