Good news, bad news…
A Norman Lear Center and Annenberg study shows that “just 8% of the local evening newscasts in 11 of the nation’s largest TV markets devoted time to local races and issues…55% of the newscasts included reports about the presidential race. And ‘eight times more coverage went to stories about accidental injuries’ than to local races and issues.” Further, about 60 percent of citizens in these markets get their news primarily from local TV.
Let the hand-wringing begin. But I think this is good news and bad news.
Let’s start with the good news: TV is a terrible medium for political journalism. It is a time-bound medium that flattens any hierarchy of importance. TV is visual and emotional, so it isn’t conducive to a rational and/or expository presentation of serious propositional content. TV encourages us to create illusionary personal connections with politicians. That local TV news largely ignores local politics (at least according to the study) is a good thing because it then requires citizens to seek information elsewhere, e.g. the local newspaper. Newspaper editors across America should be celebrating today–assuming they are willing to offer their readers serious coverage of local issues, which might mean cutting back on the fluff.
The bad news: 60% get their news from local TV.
As I have said before, TV handles breaking news better than print. And it is an efficient headline delivery medium. When news breaks, I turn on the TV first. Every day, excellent journalists do a damned good job of making a difficult medium work. Despite their efforts, TV just cannot handle politics well, and there’s little a good journalist can do about it.
I believe the fate of print journalism in America will be decided, among other things, by how willing print journalists are to separate themselves from television and its time-bound, visual/emotional messages. It is time for print journalists to acknowledge that they practice a different form of journalism and to eschew those forms that TV handles best.
The local scene is about more than the latest bloody car wreck. Local politics and governance have a profound and day-to-day effect on citizens’ lives. A print editor doesn’t need to convince potential readers that civic issues are important; a print editor needs to offer potential readers serious and sustained local coverage (by the civic journalism model). And they need to tell a different story.
(Despite limited budgets and other obstacles, such local coverage is possible. I have been impressed with the local coverage of the Springfield News-Leader–a Gannett paper. It’s coverage of problems at City Utilities and the hiring of a new president for SMSU have been excellent examples of exactly the kind of coverage I’m talking about.)
For more on the fate of print journalism, I recommend Tim Porter’s extended review of The Vanishing Newspaper, Saving Journalism in the Information Age.
(The internet is also good for breaking news. This just in: Deal struck on SMSU name change. Woo-hoo!)
Here’s a little gem from today’s Media Notes from Howard Kurtz: “In the month before the Washington governor’s race–one so close it took three recounts to sort and settle–95 percent of Seattle newscasts had nothing, zilch, nada.”
[Boring anecdote] My first assignment as a cub newspaper reporter was to interview a few homeowners who had written to complain about new floodlights at the nearby state prison.
“Gawd, how tedious,” I mumbled, and churned out what I thought would be a short, one-off story. It ping-ponged between the indignant homeowners and the perplexed prison warden, who couldn’t understand why people were so pissed off about something that made them more secure.
I was soon inundated with calls and letters from readers throughout the community. A Committee Against the Lights formed, and demanded a public meeting with the warden. Prison guards responded that people were bitching about aesthetics, when their very lives were on the line. The saga went on for more than a year, eventually involving the head of the state DOC and the governor. Finally, the state agreed to put shields on the lights that directed the beams downward onto prison property.
I didn’t realize it at first, but the crux of the story was not the lights (which were indeed extremely bright, casting a glow across the entire valley). It was that people felt they were being bullied and patronized. The prison, expanding over the years from a boys’ home to a maximum security facility, had fundamentally altered the community’s character largely without its consent. People felt that the rest of the state was dumping its problems on them.
It had also become a mysterious citadel, whose inner workings were virtually unknown to most residents. Fortunately, the warden didn’t hold the fact that I had unleashed the light brigade against me. He granted me unprecendented access for a continuing series. I experienced a near riot during a fire drill that went awry; spent a day in a “boot camp” for first-time offenders; and interviewed guards and prisoners, including a very articulate multiple murderer who had earned a law degree and successfully sued the state for unsafe living conditions.
To the warden’s relief, instead of calling for his head the community became more supportive. From then on, he called public meetings to gather input on proposed expansions or the addition of a new sewage system, all of which I dutifully covered.
I don’t know if all this is apropos of anything. I just thought it was interesting how one little “stupid” story about bright lights could cause so much ruckus. [/boring anecdote]
R- Good find!
S- This is exactly what I’m talking about. What’s sad is that most young reporters, I think, would approach that story as if it were unimportant and boring. But once your eyes have been opened to how such things actually affect citizens’ lives, the importance of such reporting becomes immediately apparent.
Now this looks like a blogospheric frenzy I can get behind. Fight the power, dude!
I also love his well-written, cantankerous commentary on the local political scene, even though I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum. Great stuff.
Ok, one more link. I have to take issue somewhat with the proposition that “TV is a terrible medium for political journalism” after watching this series.
I can honestly say that in this case, I learned more about the 2004 election from watching roughly 30 minutes of video than in reading hundreds of pages of news coverage.
S- I don’t doubt that’s true. It tells me more, however, about the quality of print reporting your encountering. Print reporting of politics is, IMHO, in a very sad state right now.