Now There's A Concept: Newspapers Should Add Value To The News
from the why-hasn't-anyone-else-thought-that-one-up dept
It’s certainly been rather painful watching newspapers struggle to adapt to the internet age. While there’s more demand for news today than ever before, many news organizations are still struggling with the fact that their old way of doing business has gone away. Romenesko points us to a useful, if somewhat obvious quote on what newspapers need to do from the chief marketing officer of Northwestern’s Kellog School of Management: “The majority of ‘news’ customers are past ‘what happened’ — they want to know ‘how it happened.'” What’s scary is the idea that news organizations need to be told this. “News” today is a different beast than it was in the past. The basic facts, people can get anywhere. What they’re interested in is being able to dig down and learn more. In other words, they want journalists to actually add value. What a concept.
Filed Under: adding value, newspapers
Comments on “Now There's A Concept: Newspapers Should Add Value To The News”
from the summary:
“The basic facts, people can get anywhere. What they’re interested in is being able to dig down and learn more. In other words, they want journalists to actually add value.”
Yes !
Tell me something I do not already know.
The Economist
I just renewed by subscription to the economist at $130 a year. It is one of the few news orgs that can provide context, analysis and comment in one page, and it is because they do this that they can charge more than any other news magazine for content.
Re: The Economist
I agree with TJM.
In business, I’d like to pass along that WSJ does a great job of “concepts” and “why” things happened. I recently renewed my print and electronic subscriptions.
Also, Harvard Business Review does an okay job, but as of late they’ve become a bit soft, like Strategy+business. This comes apparent when doing a side-by-side comparison to content written 4 years ago.
I think this may be because they are often the first to break a story, and are able to get more candid interviews, whereas later-published articles seem to be re-interpretations of the same story..? I dunno, but I am also not a journalist.
People don't read the news
My experience with a fairly large news website suggests that people don’t read the news. Of the tens of thousands of readers that see our list of headlines every day, less than 20% actually click through and read the stories. Now, many of the headlines we run are informative enough — “5 Die in Iraq Explosion” — but that is exactly what the guy quoted says people don’t want. It appears that the vast majority of people just want to know what happened.
Re: People don't read the news
Sometimes I just skim headlines – especially on major news sites – because I’ve read enough stories to know just from the headlines what the first 3 or 4 paragraphs are going to say. If it says “5 Die in Iraq Explosion” there’s going to be 1 paragraph with mundane facts that say much more than the headline. Paragraph 2 will be background about the war I already know. Paragraph 3 will be about how General Petreus says the surge is working. Paragraph four will be a quote from a critic or Democratic presidential candidate.
We read past your headlines because we already know what they’re going to say.
Instead more people are getting their news from Drudge, Digg, Fark, or other aggregators because those sites filter out the cookie cutter stories and focus on news that has a little more meat. Otherwise, the headlines are usually enough and the meaty stories get lost among the cookie cutter stories.
Re: Re: People don't read the news
“… that don’t say much more …”
I hate when I have that one typo that completely ruins the meaning of a paragraph…
Re: Re: People don't read the news
A lot of our stories are “meaty”: we are effectively a filter (with an ideology) on US foreign policy news.
Don't Take This The Wrong Way...
… but isn’t that what almost every newspaper in existence (with several unfortunate exceptions) has always done, or is the press in the United States actually as lame as some of the meaner-spirited Guardian columnists have implied over the years?
Too much boring news, too little interesting news.
…and too many people who are tired of wasting their time reading stuff they thought might be useful.
I spend a lot of time on sites like Digg, Slashdot, and Techdirt. Perhaps I’ve been focusing on the wrong topic but I find I have more interest in seeing what people have to say about something than the something itself. That is to say… I find peoples highly opinionated/agendized takes on what happened more interesting than what happened.
As some one noted above most of the stories are cookie cutter. After you have read enough of them even the stories about man eating rabbits and murderous office chairs start to become repetitive. However, occasionally I read something that IS useful. Like an update on the ongoing war with the RIAA and MPAA that does more than declare “F*CK THE RIAA.” Stories that actually point out some of the ways the RIAA are losing or gaining ground. Or how about a story on how Hillery wants the government to take further control of how parents raise their children (which lost her my vote long before Obama even announced running).
Perhaps the solution isn’t adding more superfluous information. Maybe the solution is taking all the superfluous information away. Maybe the problem itself is as simple as supply and demand. Too high a supply of stories (both low and high quality) with too little demand has resulted in a lessening of the value of all stories, interesting or not. The news market is flooded with low quality stories and only a few useful stories can be found. I do believe this scenario, coupled with other factors not present in the “News Industry,” was the primary cause of the Video Game Industry Crash of 1983. Perhaps the solution is to cut back on supply, so that demand can catch up with it. They should focus only on bringing news forward that is actually interesting and HASN’T already been reported by another news source or that at the VERY least hasn’t been reported from that angle (assuming the new angle is, in and of itself, worthy of a story).
I’m no economist (and I don’t play one on tv) but the high prevalence of low quality stories is why I don’t even bother with news sites. Nine times in ten the stories seem obvious or just bore me. Then again, Perhaps I’m just so jaded that nothing interests me any more.
/2 cent
What’s a newspaper? Is it something like a CD?
Newspapers still have value
I live in a small rural community, and our local newspapers (yes, our community supports two local dailies) are the primary source of what is happening where and other BASIC news functions. So don’t write off print media just yet.
Mike's obvious description of the obvious
Really Mike? This had to be pointed out?
I’m not sure which is sadder, that newspapers need to be told to provide richer content, or that you feel pointing out the idea that someone else pointed out the idea was worthy of TechDirt.
C’mon man, you’ve done your best to make sure I don’t expect quality from you, but this sets new lows.
wOw ...
— what the hell i thought this was an unblocking site .
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and you people actully right comments on this shit your fuckin stupied as fuck!!
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