There is a reason why dozens (if not hundreds) of residents don’t read the daily newspaper. There is a reason more people read it online than in print.
That reason, in part, is because of the lack of investigative and hard news reporting. Much of the news today is soft news, yesterday’s news, news that is so inconsequential that it is no wonder why people comment it is fluff.
This is not a rant against a particular daily rag but against all of them. Whether due to advertising or history, there is a reason why newspapers circulate daily and not weekly. Why do articles tend to answer the What? more frequently than the Why? Granted investigative reporting can not occur every 24 hours, but what about once a week?
In an article in the Columbia Journalism Review last fall, Dean Starkman compared newspaper reporters to hamsters on a wheel:
The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s motion for motion’s sake. The Hamster Wheel is volume without thought. It is news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no…. But it’s more than just mindless volume. It’s a recalibration of the news calculus. Of the factors that affect the reporting of news, an under-appreciated one is the risk/reward calculation that all professional reporters make when confronted with a story idea: How much time versus how much impact?
This informal vetting system is surprisingly ruthless and ultimately efficient for one and all. The more time invested, the bigger the risk, but also the greater potential glory for the reporter, and the greater value to the public (can’t forget them!). Do you fly to Chicago to talk to that guy about that thing? Do you read that bankruptcy examiner’s report? Or do you do three things that are easier?
Journalists will tell you that where once newsroom incentives rewarded more deeply reported stories, now incentives skew toward work that can be turned around quickly and generate a bump in Web traffic. . . .
None of this is written down anywhere, but it’s real. The Hamster Wheel, then, is investigations you will never see, good work left undone, public service not performed.
How many daily news reporters in your community write for the web? Is traffic ever a consideration in which story is assigned and which is reported? Are headlines optimized for search engines? Or, do editors and reporters run up and down the Hamster Wheel with no end in sight?
How often do reporters walk? How often do reporters talk?
Chances are, your local reporter prefers to talk the easy way out because walking to find a story is so damned expensive.
Your answers to these questions, most likely, are unfortunately more similar than different. And that’s a shame.
Photograph by polyvinyl. To read the Federal Communications Commission report on communities and news that sparked this diatribe, click here.
About Ari Herzog
Agreed with what you have said but I prefer and will prefer to read news online rather than on newspaper because it’s my own preference and I don’t know why? Anyways your article was really informative and on a unique topic.
Great round up Ari. This is my first comment here and I am happy to do it on such a subject. My own experience of reading local or even national newspapers is a bit different. I started out as local reporter when I left high school, waiting to get to university. I did walk a lot for my work at the time.
Fast-forward to today. I practically do not read any local or online newspaper now. Why? Just because social media is somewhat better. More active, quick, to the point and you don’t have to wait that much to get the info. Search engines catch up social posts quicker than the time it would take for reporters to write a good indexable article.
How sad but true. I don’t think being a reporter is as investigative of a job as it used to be. I would rather read blogs online about a topic than search for it in a newspaper.
I feel genuinely blessed to have the benefit of the Guardian newspaper – both in print and online – here in England.
I think people abandoned newspapers as their attention spans got shorter. The newspapers changed as they struggled to keep their legs under them. People wanted photos and video, colors and action.
I worry most about our shift to watching only sources that say what the individual wants to hear, a shift that is exacerbated by Google and Facebook algorithms that feed us more of what we ate yesterday instead of challenging our palates.
Very interesting article. It’s something I’ve been working on. I’m taking on my local newspapers and trying to answer the why and not the what.
For a while I wasn’t sure if I was headed in the right direction, but this article helped solidify my drive.
Lets don’t blame solely reporters and newspapers. I think that they are also there for the money, and the audience and what they want to read/see has changed in those years drastically .
People today wants one day sensations, something volatile and easy to forget.
It sad but that what i noticed.
Despite more news being published on the web, rather than in papers, I think there is something about newspapers that makes (some) people still want to read them. It’s there, yes you could view it on an iPad, but that has to load it, and it’s not as physical or tangible.
I see what you mean about the cost of reporting, but surely an increase in adverts could sort this out…
Since at the click of a button we get to know everything, people are more interested in extracting information from the internet rather than straining the eye searching in the paper. With the number of information on the internet users gets very choosy most of the time and a few seconds is enough to decide whether to read the post or not. Still, newspapers are a good source of information and a good company during layovers at the airport.
Agree, and that’s why newspaper is a dying industry.
Besides the fact of the lack of “news”, the accessibility that the Internet offers to information seekers is much more satisfying than what newspapers can offer. I personally prefer online reading materials (especially the Google is now able to fetch breaking news for your searches), simply because of the accessibility of other resources that you might want to look for in case the news you have read lack news.
I believe the news lacks news because publishers and editors are watching out for the bottom line of their companies. There’s simply no time or staff resources to let a reporter spend on really investigating something thoroughly. They’re also watching out for stepping on toes, regardless of being society’s “watchdogs,” they’ve got to tread carefully.
Albeit I wrote feature stories (truly the “fluff”) for three years, I had the opportunity to be on the inside of a newspaper newsroom. I saw how the reporters had to crank out three stories a day to satisfy the managing editor and publisher (imagine trying to get that done when your sources aren’t calling you back or stand you up for the interview). It was very stressful for all trying to make sure there were “local” bylines in the paper and not just stuff pulled from the AP. To rub salt in the wound, they’re not paid very much for all their efforts, either.
The audiences are changing, too. I agree with this comment. Attention spans are shorter and newspapers are adapting the best they can to the changing demands and consumption tastes. Hence, you’ll see inked “teasers” to go online and see the video or photos related to the story.
It is easy to criticize if you’ve never walked a mile in the shoes of someone else. Be patient with your local newspaper reporters and staff. And if you truly care about keeping your local newspaper alive and thriving — get a subscription!
In my community I should say we have hard time with the press in general and it is very hard in fact to find any paper which is objective in fact. If we have an web paper, I am sure that editors don’t care about the keywords or anything of the kind as they just don’t know that something should be done or don’t want to know.