We need to do a better job of covering stories that matter to our readers.
Instead, too many journalists are focused on covering stories that matter to judges in competitions — competitions that are judged by peers, not be readers. Most journalism isn’t big, Fourth Estate Journalism. Most journalism is community journalism.
And good community journalism focuses on what people in the community want. Tribune’s new owner recently got into a spat with an Orlando Sentinel photographer. Zell suggested that Tribune’s employees need to start covering topics that matter to readers.
The photographer, of course, shot back with how readers just want fluff stories about puppies. The response was the typical journalistic arrogance, as Zell put it. Zell insists that his journalists need to make enough money to be able to afford to cover puppies and Iraq.
In Orlando, Sentinel photographer Sara Fajardo asked Zell at the staff meeting for his views on “the role journalism plays in the community, because we’re not the Pennysaver, we’re a newspaper.”
Zell, standing at a podium, responded, “I want to make enough money so that I can afford you. You need to in effect help me by being a journalist that focuses on what our readers want that generates more revenue.”
Fajardo told Zell that “what readers want are puppy dogs,” presumably referring to soft feature stories. She added, “We also need to inform the community.”
Zell shot back: “I’m sorry but you’re giving me the classic, what I would call, journalistic arrogance by deciding that puppies don’t count. . . . What I’m interested in is how can we generate additional interest in our products and additional revenue so we can make our product better and better and hopefully we get to the point where our revenue is so significant that we can do puppies and Iraq.”
And the only way to make enough money to afford to do it all — and to afford lots of journalists — is to cover stories that matter to readers. There has been a fundamental disconnect between journalists and readers for years. Journalists far too often cover stories because they think those stories will do well in competitions or because those stories matter to the journalist but not the readers.
Those competitions often bare little resemblance to what readers want to read about. If we cover stories that matter to our readers, more people will read and use our products. It’s that simple.
Forget all that talk about how journalists aren’t supposed to care about the business side of journalism. We need to care. If we don’t care, we can’t do that big Fourth Estate Journalism.
We can’t do journalism if we don’t care about what people want.
Fourth Estate Journalism — the gate keeper of democracy journalism — has to be subsidized by something. That should be community journalism that matters to our readers.
And you know what, sometimes it might be about puppies or the local prom or high school football. So what? If it matters to our readers, it will sell (whether it be newspapers or ads on a Web site)
Zell, as most of you by now, got in a bit of hot water for saying, “fuck you” at the end of his talk with the photographer. But I like his attitude, because the old way of doing things isn’t working. We need to give this journalistic hubris, which says that only stories that win awards matter, the big F-U.
I want to cover the stories that matter in peoples lives in the formats that people want.
What do you want?