Thursday, October 16, 2008
Media Grim Realities Or Good Tidings: What Do Readers Want?
Posted by Brantley Hargrove on Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 12:40 PM
Comments (6)
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"Would people buy (or in our case, pick up) a newspaper if contained no bad news? If all the publication chronicled were good deeds?"
Who knows? It's never been tried.
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It has been tried. In the late 1980s, a newspaper in some northern midwestern state, Minnesota I believe, vowed to print nothing but positive news. I don't recall the exact figures, but as I remember its circulation eventually began dropping and the paper eventually went back to reporting all news. As a former newspaper editor who faced this question constantly, it's just an untrue assumption. Newspapers print positive news in every issue. I dare anyone to present a complete issue of any newspaper in which there is no "good" news. News, by it's very nature, is usually "bad," that's what makes it "news." Murders, crimes, wrecks, fires, wars and such are not the norm, therefore they are the "news." If interest in a news story is gauged by sales of that issue, I can tell you without any hesitation that in 16 years at a local newspaper the top 10 selling issues all had either a murder or a wreck on the front page. A former publisher told me there are two kinds of news: news the public needs to know (i.e. government actions, safety issues, health and welfare stories) and news the public wants to know (my experience indicates this has been and always will be crimes, tragedies and, even worse, celebrity hijinx). Someone who wants only to read "good" news really just doesn't want any "news."
Never been tried? My how quickly we forget The Happy Times Monthly (thehappytimes.com) and the Tampa Bay Informer (tampabayinformer.com).
Many years ago I edited a rural town/county newspaper and heard the same thing constantly. So, as an experiment, I put nothing but good news above the fold. Rack sales went into the toilet.
So, the woman asks why don't you report SOME positive news and then you recast that as a propositon for a publication printing nothing but happy talk.
How about printing a balance of both - something that might actually resemble reality?
Too may "journalists" mistakenly think their job is advocacy rather than reporting.
