I’ve heard a lot of complaints by business people about the media and how it has hurt them by writing bad news. Sensationalizing, they say. Trying to sell papers, they say.
My kneejerk reaction is to say you’re wrong, we’re just reporting the news. My second reaction is to say, well, maybe, there has been a lot of bad news and people do seem to be pretty down. I’ve looked for the good news nuggets and tried to get them in the paper. And we’ve gone out of our way to differentiate between the disastrous national housing market and the merely mediocre local one.
My third reaction is to get a little ticked off: people need to know what’s going on to make important decisions. For every retailer or salesman who says we should tone down the coverage, there are hundreds of people who probably ought to think twice before spending $1,000 on Christmas. In these times, being a little scared is appropriate.
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Those business people are wrong. People usually won’t read good stories. They will read stories that interest them and alert them to concerns. This lets them also see the ads. They won’t notice the ads if the paper is mostly fluff.
And there have been plenty of good stories lately. Write what people need to know and they will spend with those businesses whose ads are next to the stories. Readers will notice their offers and remember the businesses names.
And really, things are still amazingly good.
Lets use an analogy: the weather report says we will have a snow storm during the day. So, perhaps by alerting me to that it reminds me to take hat, gloves, and ice scraper. That is useful information.
You’d be surprised – and saddened, I suspect – by the amount and direction of the pressure to, shall we say, twist the news a bit this fall as the economy declines.