Feature

Desire and Necessity: Reporters Contend with Two Evils

 

What does the audience want to read?

A question posed each day by newspaper editors and reporters alike, readership retention and interest is top priority among print media moguls watching their industry fall apart. Understandably, newspaper editors request that reporters propose stories of intrigue and interest to the general public – an audience interested in the story subjects will likely purchase and read the newspaper. 

Yes, people like humorous and heartwarming stories of humans doing good deeds or when dogs save lives; throw a tragic story into the mix and newspapers will disappear from the shelves. But do we really know what the entire audience wants to read? Or do we focus on one type of reader, and hope that they will suffice?

My own adventures into the field as an intern for the Utica Observer-Dispatch revealed that newspapers often do not appeal to the low-income district, people who do not care whatsoever about the latest additions to the city zoo. People from the low-income district want to know about actual change in the “slums” of the city, or at least why change does not come. Reporters quickly cover the events that attract attention – tragic shootings, huge drug busts, and jaw-dropping scandals – but attention needs to be brought to the corruption, the dangers, and the lack of change that happens in every city, not just the “what” but the “why” as well.

Herein lays the problem: editors and publishers desperately want to – and need to – produce news that the audience wants to read. However, there are multiple audiences in each city, and newspapers have difficulty reaching separate audiences.

Kris Worrell, editor of the Utica Observer-Dispatch, emphasizes the need to keep the audience happy. Every day, she asks her staff: “What does our audience want to see?” Based upon the stories found in local papers across the United States, many editors seem to think that the audiences’ desires are obvious, that a cover of the local fire truck exhibition or a cute report on children petting exotic animals balances the tragic news that often appears on the front page.

Utica is not the only small city in which the local newspaper slights the low income population. Shootings, robberies, and rapes in the low income district of any metropolitan area often go unnoticed by the larger public, and newspapers rarely report on the death of a poor boy from the “wrong side of town.” But if the incident somehow involves a prominent community member and becomes public knowledge, in that case the poor boy’s tragic death captures community sympathy in an instant.

It cannot be a call for only “happy” news; people love to read tragedies. Perhaps budget cuts and the consequential size restrictions or lack of reporters limits the number of stories brought to the paper. Or, maybe the important thing is not the audiences’ happiness, but the power of city authorities who want to have control over the way the newspaper represents the city. In an age where newspapers are “dying out,” we cannot eliminate the idea that money, power, and favors do not exist together in the realm of free speech.

 But why can’t reporters cover the news that the audience needs to read?

             Affluent districts need to know about the struggles of the less affluent. We cannot foster change within communities without the knowledge that things are wrong in the first place. I do not mean superficial knowledge – of course there are problems in every community, of course there are things that can change. I mean the conscious knowledge of people concerned with the well-being of others and the drive to witness and enforce positive change, particularly among the youth.

             Realistically, not every incident can be reported on. And sometimes, the community wants to revel in events that uplift morale and spirit – the enjoyment and celebration of “happy” events is perfectly acceptable. Humanity needs to know that good things happen.

            But, ultimately, do newspapers have a responsibility to report news that the public wants to read or needs to read? Reporters have the ability to voice concern about the atrocities of society each day, even the smallest ones; I think it is time that we re-learn how to use that voice, to let it bellow across communities until change is reality.