Chapter 9: Make the News Comprehensive and Proportional
The news must be representative of all types of people. It must be comprehensive on a certain level and proportionally. In the 1980’s newspapers began to write to only the higher educated part of society, because they believed if they didn’t, they would lose advertisers and thus, money. This strategy however didn’t make much investment in the youth of America. Stories were long and sophisticated, “some even required college degrees to follow” (Elements p.211). This resulted in a very small demographic of people reading the newspaper, and so they were getting way too much information, it turned into a snowball effect. Here is an article explaining how the newspapers began to be this way in the 1980’s:
There was a survey done that was referred to in the book that showed that viewers preferred a wider variety of topics. Here is another study that further verifies this statement:
Another aspect of journalism that this chapter explains is “the naked body” effect. How often do businesses do something dramatic and extreme in order to draw attention to themselves and gather a crowd and thus, increase income. The book says the following “ A news organization has to operate, to some extent, according to a faith or philosophy, since empirical models of the past may not work in the future.” Here is an article that explains how Hurricane Irene was hyped much more than it actually turned out to be:
We as journalists should shy away from the “naked” effect, and tell the truth without hyping up a story too much.
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