I recently came across some discussion about whether newspapers and TV news shows couldn’t take some tips from things like blogs and online video in order to focus more on the news story and less on some of the less important reporting around it.
One piece (which I’ve had trouble locating since) deconstructed a typical newspaper story to show that apart from the actual, fairly short, news item, there was lots of fluff that didn’t necessarily add anything to the story, only there as a holdover from earlier newspaper editorial practices. The argument was that people prefer to read a blog or online site which just summarizes the news item rather than wade through lots of useless information to read something that could be summarized in one sentence.
I don’t entirely buy that, but part of that may just be that I’m used to wading through all the typical trappings of a news story. But although I think familiarity certainly has its merits, it can be funny to watch these norms being deconstructed.
For example, here’s Charlie Booker on an anatomy of a newscast, which for someone who grew up watching BBC news regularly rings hilariously true.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
With all the current discussion about the future of journalism as we know it, maybe old and new media could learn a thing or two from each other. Maybe we’ll eventually see an amalgamation of the two…who knows what we’ll eventually end up with, as a way to make journalism self-sustaining, but I know I (and a lot of other people) are very curious, and very invested, in the outcome.
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