editorials pov radio magazines paper connectivity writing
Stuff we’re not talking about, things I value in a newspaper, views from a young member of your target audience.
What about newspaper editorials & opinion pieces? They’re an important part of the paper, something that no other media really does. There’s tons of editorial and opinion online, but it doesn’t have as much thought and effort put into it as the things I read in the LA Times.
A newspaper tries to be comprehensive…a lot of small but important things are in a newspaper, things that might be ignored otherwise. The point of view is coherent (ideally), usually some slant off of neutral. I expect different things when I pick up a USA Today and a Christian Science Monitor. Blogs have a certain point of view too, but the views are more specific, they aren’t comprehensive and rarely attempt to be neutral. Maybe “neutral” news is a myth…do people complain about encyclopedias trying to be neutral?
People still listen to radio news, especially in the car. Maybe young people don’t listen to it as much anymore, but have they ever? I’d be interested in some statistics on the demographics of radio news, but I haven’t seen any. Some news radio stations are supported by advertisements – is radio news dying, is advertising a dying business model? Does radio news not really matter?
News magazines, too. How are they doing? What makes people buy news magazines, how might newspapers learn something from that? News magazines seem to be more obviously slanted – is that their appeal? The glossy pictures?
Computer screens are small, hard on the eyes, relatively low-resolution. I enjoy reading on paper more. There aren’t as many distractions (animated ads, instant messaging, etc), so I read more deeply and remember more. Print is better for those big photos, elaborate illustrations, and complex layouts that would take a year to load online and wouldn’t look so good on a screen. It costs more to print those colorful images, yeah, but maybe raising the cost of the newspaper would be ok. I wouldn’t mind paying $1 for a richly illustrated, good-looking paper.
Also, not everyone has Internet access, not everyone wants Internet access. My high school journalism teacher hates the Internet and only uses it when he absolutely has to. I didn’t even tell him why I’m missing school today…
Newspaper writing is generally good quality – so they dumb down the LA Times to an 8th-grade reading level, but it’s pretty good, clear, correctly spelled (yay for copyeditors). One of the things that makes blogs so remarkable is the lack of anyone editing them. That’s great for personal expression blah blah blah, but the writing ends up not being as good as I’d like it to be (mine included). I don’t think good writing is appreciated enough.
