Today Michael Jackson’s funeral is all over the news. While this is an interesting story about one of the most famous celebrities ever, there are much more important stories the public needs to know about. Forest fires in California and health care reform for example.
I find it troubling that I see more soft news on the front pages of dominant publications and websites every day. The important stories are there, but not as much as I would like to see.
Consumers of media want to be entertained, especially on the internet. They go there for interesting feature stories. Why read that depressing story about war when I can read that interesting story about the new actor on “Entourage”.
In one of my classes earlier this week, the students were instructed to choose an interesting story from the BBC for a class exercise. This was the story that caught the class’ eye.
This funny feature story is what the class was interested in. It doesn’t affect CU students, but it’s an interesting story. Consumers are searching out softer news, not the hard news that they need.
The three most read stories on Denverpost.com are all sports stories. One about the Broncos, one about the CU/CSU game, and one about the Dallas Cowboys being the most valuable team in the NFL. I enjoy sports just as much as anyone else (probably more), but I think people need to be informed about issues other than sports. People should be reading the stories about President Obama’s speech and forest fires – Things people need to know about.
People are choosing to consume stories about Michael Jackson, monkeys and sports rather than politics and the economy. The media feels they have to make people happy by keeping the interesting, softer news stories coming because that’s what people want to read.
But should the media cater to the public’s desires in this area? Is it the media’s job to inform the public so they can be an informed citizen in a democracy? Does covering what people want to read rather than what they should read conflict too much with traditional media ethics, or is this just the way that contemporary ethics are going?
It’s good for consumers to be able to customize what news they pay attention to, but they are choosing to pay attention to fluff news and passing over important issues.
So what can the media do? Why aren’t people watching? What are their options? The media can’t force information down people’s throats. They can’t make people care about the important issues.
The media can wait for consumers to want hard news or rely on the ones that do. They can keep covering important news the same way and hope people want to read it. They can change how they cover important issues and try to get people excited. Maybe there is a way to be informed and entertained.
Either way they need to figure out why people aren’t interested in things like politics and the economy because those are important things everyone needs to know about. If the media doesn’t inform, this will be less of a comedy and more of a reality.
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Interesting points in this blog! The rise in popularity of entertainment news is definitely noticeable and concerning to those of us in the media.
ReplyDeleteI think this was a good attempt at blogging. The paragraphs for the most part are short and snappy and keep the reader engaged.
The links are used well and I can hear some of your voice coming through. I would still like to hear a bit more of you in there. I want to hear your personality!
Good work and I'll be on the lookout for your next blog!
Good use of voice. Keep that up.
ReplyDeleteA few things we want to consider:
1) A few points of style. "Internet," not "internet." "Web sites," not "websites."
2) Your link is broken because the period to your sentence was inadvertently added to the address. Remove it and it'll work fine.
3) Let's talk about the use of "the media" frame in class. We shouldn't rely o this frame, because it is a vague frame that many understand differently.
Good start. Keep at it.
I relly liked your post, mainly because this is soemthing that really upsets me, too. But I think we as journalist have to consider if it's the media forcing this trivial BS on the audience or if there is a change in societal values creating the demand. I think it goes both ways, but the audience craving soft news plays the bigger role.
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