America doesn’t care about real news. We’d rather hear about something stupid or sensational. The guy who runs Fark.com and makes his living off stupid news knows this and wrote a great commentary for the Christian Science Monitor about this subject. People care about crap news and not real news. For cripes sakes, Fox News devoted 12 times more coverage to Anna Nicole than Walter Reed (and this was nearly a month after her death), and while I have my feelings about the bias at Fox News, I still don’t think they would’ve done it had they not felt that it would get them better ratings.
I doubt we’ll ever see the day again where mainstream/major news outlets care as more about good newsgathering then they do ratings/visits to their site or channel. The best sources of news will be the small-town dailies and small-market news shows and blogs. Now if they just weren’t such a pain to find … .
Comments
Most MSM, large market or small, care about BOTH, Jake. And we’re not hard to find at all.
Yes, the News of the Odd gets more clicks on KTVZ.com than stories about Iraq, etc. Who can blame folks for wanting to escape the scary and/or depressing news of the day? I sure won’t, any more than I’ll blame the media (man, we’ve topped lawyers as THE whipping boys, eh? Shoot the messenger!)
So whatever we do in our new and improved Website, we’ll have the water-skiing squirrel stories (maybe even the video!) But as long as I’m involved, they’ll be “below the fold,” so to speak, and the REAL news will be up top.
I think most folks really do expect it to be that way. Our “Offbeat” section is at the BOTTOM of the page, and garners the most clicks. I think folks don’t want the People Mag stuff up top – and when it is, it rightfully colors folks’ perspective of that news organization’s beliefs.
Slight correction – the Offbeat news garners the most clicks of our AP copy. Local news still trumps it by far, of course. (And weather trumps THAT, click-wise, all you “why do they report the weather every 5 minutes?” folk;-)
I worked as a web producer for a Seattle television news station for nearly 3 years. I looked at the web stats everyday….I can tell you that people could care less about anything ordinary. The news is 100% entertainment… and it is all about ratings and page views. There is zero obligation to give you non-biased, local news.
That said, I must say that the Bend market is different though…people DO care about local news because it is a “smaller” town. If there is a pedophile that lives next to an elementary school in Bend, Oregon it is a BIG deal.
Ironically, in Seattle those stories were barely clicked…it was always the road rage story that resulted in a crazy twist that were top clicks. There is a detachment when people watch/read news in a bigger city that is hard to describe
To help capitalize on this when I was there I helped introduce a concept called “most popular stories” that populated automatically based on page views….take a look at it and tell me what you think people care about.
http://www.kirotv.com/mostpopular/index.html?rss=sea&psp=mostpopular
Oh and by the way…I love Bend and its news products…they are challenged with finding news in a place where it is EXTREMELY hard to find.
~Jeff
Barn: I wouldn’t put KTVZ in this same gripe. I’m talking major folks like Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc… . KTVZ does a great job on local coverage (still wish you had more prep sports coverage, though, at least online). And you do a good job of making sure that your news is easy to find. But in many small markets like ours, that isn’t the case.
The “next new” KTVZ.com will have more local sports online, Vic and Rashad are up for it, we just have to get over the hump of an entirely new CMS and (I pray) a new and improved layout.
And Jeff? I’ve NEVER – well, RARELY ever felt I had to scramble to find news in Bend over the past 16 years, or anywhwere I’ve worked in 30 years in journalism – from UPI to print, radio, TV, Web. Guess I’m just a news junkie who likes riding the daily news tide;-)
It’s such a sad comment on society as a whole when we know more about Paris Hilton’s latest DUI than we do about the horrific genocide in Darfur. Sad.
How on earth did we end up so fortunate to live in a country where the “disease” that makes the most headlines is Anorexia? A country so rich, so full of food, and we have people who choose to starve?
Amazing.