I followed a link from Krsitine Lowe to Paul Berton’s mildly-amusing predictions for 2008 at the London Free Press. A number of the predictions were no-brainers, some were promotional, and this one drew a groan:
- Some … articles about high-level misdeeds will be too complex for most readers to decipher, so they’ll turn instead to the endless coverage of celebrity news while criticizing newspapers for running all that trivial information about which movie stars are buying new homes or helping African villages.
Uhmm, if the the stories are “too complex for most readers to decipher” might it not be the fault of the reporters and editors? Maybe they need to lay off the multimedia and video (“Websites such as lfpress.com, which already posts many videos each week, will double or triple that number in the coming months. Look for more slide shows, interactive graphics and up-to-the-minute reports by Free Press reporters.”) until they get complexity thing under control.
TAGS: CRITICISM, JOURNALISM, NEWS, STORYTELLING
Ha, ha…I should perhaps left a question mark at the end of the title of that post, but I thought: damn, here’s us working so hard to pinpoint the biggest movements in the indutry next year while Berton said all the obvious things, that yes, if we hadn’t tried to so hard to reinvent the wheel, could easily have predicted, while still putting a smile on my face. Still, since we’re in the NEWS industry, it was definently worth it (will blog a bit about it when time).
As for blaming the readers: I have heard several US journalists blame the readers for the US media’s supposedly complacent coverage of the run-up to, and initial stages of, the Iraq war, usually boils down to something like “because the readers are so patriotic”, hmm… another quote or to I should amend not blogging, time allowing…