This piece from the San Francisco Chronicle covers a recent study showing lead stories in mainstream news outlets differed significantly from top topics in user-governed news sources (e.g., Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us).
What sources do you use for news? Should an editor at the Wisconsin State Journal be more trusted when it comes to what's worth running or should you pay attention to rankings based on what's tops among millions of readers/viewers? (The State Journal took some chiding when it set up a system to let readers vote online to pick one story for each day's front page.) What is a legitimate news source? Should news consumers have more of a voice in news decisions?
Saturday, October 6, 2007
User-News and the "MSM"
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3 comments:
Ratings are always important. And not just important to the news media, but also for the viewers. Nearly every Web site has a list of mostly read stories of the day. When you look closer, most of the time the top viewed is not identical to the ranking of the editor. I've noticed especially on TV station websites that this list usually includes maybe one or two legitimate stories and then usually a few of the wacky regional news stories. What this shows is people are interested in reading what's gross, funny or crime related--usually not all that pertinent or investigative. Editors know this. I think they also know their job is to work around it, but not to cater directly to it. For instance, ratings show people like sex-related stories, so an editor might try to play up stories that include these details when they are relevant (ex: trial of a sex offender) to grab readers. But, I think editors are also bestowed with the power to show the public what is important. Their job is to deliver the truth of what's going on. This may be influenced by what people are truly talking about but it certainly is not a mirror of it. When you buy a paper or visit a Web site, aren't you in a way saying, I see this news source as legitimate and I trust it? We have to trust that the decisions that editors make in ranking is well-thought out and never just thrown together. Doesn't mean we can't challenge it. These online sites like reddit are a healthy way of doing that. Journalists and editors should surf them, but shouldn't be directly swayed by them. The news source should always maintain a certain bar or set of standards readers can identify every day of production.
Editors are constantly choosing what to play where. Some of it is based on what is news, some of it is based on what will draw more readers to the paper. Not everybody wants to read about Iraq, not everybody wants to read about a dog that survived a week in a trash bin. Editors have to balance that mix to keep selling papers. They've gotten to where they are based on their good judgment. Readers have to choose which outlet serves them the best.
this is an interesting idea, and also leads me to thinking about the "top emailed stories" on nyt.
on the one hand, editors do choose what is relevant for the front page, what is news-worthy, etc.
on the other hand, one of the first things we learned in j-school (and kind of already knew) was that publishers, and ad companies have a heavy hand in deciding what does and doesn't get covered, to some extend.
I have always thought it is wisest to use many news sources on any story. Kind of a circular approach...
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