Back in college, I took several journalism classes as part of my requirements for my Professional and Technical Writing program. I had written for my high school paper for three years and had done some freelance work early on. None of the concepts were new to me. But in my Introduction to Journalism class, I remember a heated debate over what made a story newsworthy. See, even back then, students were becoming cynical about the news and challenged the professor over real-world journalism's day-to-day practices, which were seemingly contradictory to his assertions in class. In typical, out-of-touch academic fashion, our professor made journalism sound like an industry of untouchables. I wondered if he had turned on a television since 1960. Newsworthiness is really an important topic that is lost in today's 24-hour cable news cycle.
I have formulated a principle for modern journalism I call the Effort to Report Principle. Basically, the Effort to Report Principle states that the amount of effort any journalist must put into a story to ensure the story is accurate and newsworthy is easily trumped by: video images, sound bites, competition with other news organizations, ratings, being first to broadcast, and cost of production. In other words, if the reporters have to make an effort, the story may not be worth it to the news organization.
I've been thinking about this whole newsworthiness stuff lately and after yesterday's Senate hearing behind closed doors, I've given up on expecting anything from any news organization. One of the criterion for newsworthiness is if the story is unusual. What is unusual about Senators having a news conference? Honestly, they do it every day and you can predict what the Republicans and what the Democrats will say nearly verbatim. Blah, blah, blah. It's just not news anymore. Even though the closed door session was unusual, hours and hours of CNN with a split screen between pundits on the left side and note on the right side that reads "Senate in Closed Session" hardly follows the unusual or interesting criteria for newsworthiness. Other things actually happened yesterday, too. But if you go back to the Effort to Report Principle, you'll see it was so easy and cheap to have hours of broadcast time devoted to, well, nothing.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Unrest by Parkway Drive