"So what?" is one of the most important questions a journalist needs to answer and they need to do so in every single story they tell. Answering that question tells the public why you, the journalist, felt the need to do the work to tell them this story in the first place. If a citizen feels as though the question is not being answered, they won't be watching or reading your stories for very long.
So how do we know what is relevant? Is relevant what the public needs to hear? Or what they want to hear?
The answer is both. People come to the news to find out important information about the world around them so they can keep up to date on current events, but they also come to read things that are interesting and attention grabbing. The key is making sure both those types of stories, the hard news and the attention grabbing, focus on only the most relevant facts.
Diana Sugg was able to do just that. She took a story that at face value could have been a feature on a twelve year old boy struggling with sickness, on the verge of death, and the pain he and his family were going through. But she was able to turn the story into piece that was based on Rj (the twelve year old boy) but explored the larger issue of the pain that families have to face when going through situations like this. It explored whether there was a productive way that families could deal with their pain and help their dying child. (The story is found at the Diana Sugg link above). Sugg took an attention grabbing story and made it very relevant to those who read it. This is what we as reporters need to do for every story we write. Sugg answered the question, "So What?" by bringing in the bigger picture.
Writing coaches Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlan explain that there is a type of scale to follow to keep your story relevant and interesting. On one end of the scale is civic clarity which is information citizens need to know. On the other end is literary grace which is more storytelling. The perfect journalistic piece is found in between these two, in the middle of the scale. For instance, a hard news story on an upcoming election that would usually be on the civic clarity side could bring in humanizing elements of the candidates (their family, etc.) that would give it a little more of a story telling element and lead it towards the middle of the scale. A feature story on a church youth group donating their hair for those in need could take a deeper look into the lives of those who need the hair for wigs, and their conditions. That gives it a little more of an edge and more people can relate to the relevance because someone they know, or themselves, might be going through the same thing.
A journalist needs to make any kind of story relevant in the lives of the audience. Otherwise the audience won't be interested anymore. Always remember to answer the question "So what?" before the audience decides that your story doesn't apply to them.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Map of Journalism
"Journalism is our modern cartography. It creates a map for citizens to navigate society."
This quote helps to explain the responsibility that journalism has to cover the news. Journalism must cover things that will informative to citizens so that they can 'navigate society.' But just as a map that isn't correct will make it so that someone gets lost, if a news story is not correct, people will figuratively get lost, and not trust that news institution anymore.Almost as important as being truthful and accurate, journalism needs to be in proportion to what is important. A journalist who focuses on celebrity scandal because it will sell more is like a cartographer in the old days drawing England as big as Greenland because it is a popular place to be. Eventually it will catch up with them because it misleads the traveler/or the reader of the newspaper which will hurt there credibility for not covering for most pertinent information.
In this sense, proportion is they key to accuracy in journalism just as it is in map making. The job of the journalist is to predict what is most pertinent in the lives of the public so that they can get the information they need. It is possible that a celebrity gossip story will initially sell a newspaper, but people will look to other articles in the newspaper for more in depth and serious stories. If those stories aren't there, then people will start looking other places for them. Because people really do crave the information and stories that are more pertinent and relevant to their lives, I am surprised that magazines like Star sell at all.Although I guess that people who are going to buy magazines like Star are really only looking for entertainment news. Weekly World News on the other hand is a complete mystery to me. Do people actually believe the stuff that they print? There are no actual hard news stories. They are all just crazy 'mutant'-type stories. They have no credibility whatsoever.
As a journalist I obviously will not be working for Weekly World News, or Star for that matter. But I will make sure that no matter what my specific beat is, I will look for stories that will fulfill the public's need for hard news and help them to 'navigate society.'
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