What is ‘news’?
News to one audience (and one news director) is completely irrelevant, uninteresting or generally lame to another outlet and its audience.
CNN, Us Weekly, Fox News, NPR, Sports Illustrated, MSNBC, TMZ, CBS news all clearly define what qualifies as ‘news’ on a daily – if not hourly – basis. Each media outlet tips its hand when they are forced to decide which stories make the top-of-the-hour news, magazine cover or newspaper front page.
The ‘golden age’ of journalism has faded away, replaced by lesser ancestors. Watergate was the watershed mark. ‘60 Minutes,’ once as a TV-ratings cornerstone, is now consistently outranked by unremarkable reality TV shows and multimillion dollar game shows. The undeserving heirs to the enduring legacy pioneered by ‘Hear It Now’ and the ‘Hunter-Brinkley Report’ are unfocused (and easily distracted) 24-hour news networks and a platoon of pundits of questionable credibility.
But the goal of this blog is not to lament the long gone days of yore. Instead, it’s to focus on the media as it exists TODAY – a new media that extends well beyond just newspaper headlines, Web site coverage and in-depth magazine features.
The goal of this blog is simple: to review which stories became ‘news,’ analyze what factors made it relevant/entertaining/etc and to absolutely question newsroom judgment when ‘legitimate’ stories are buried and frivolous tripe becomes the top story … and the ponder what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ story in the first place.
WHO is deciding WHICH stories becomes the day’s top stories? WHERE are all the rest of the stories being shoved off to? WHAT is the criteria being used to separate the stories that require in-depth coverage from the stories that end up stuck with a brief headline and a small mention in the local section? HOW are these editorial decisions being made – and how do they affect editorial judgment across the industry?
But most important of all: WHAT is news?
