Looking at the “meatier” newspapers,
the New York Times and the Washington Post, the headlines are
dominated by sequester developments. Across several stories, politics are at
the vanguard of their publications. I suspect that may be an anomaly due to the
unprecedented political drama unfolding on Capitol Hill at the moment. The
sound bite politics of an all-day, all-year election cycle mean that the
partisan drama of our democracy will remain at the forefront as long as
grandstanding remains the preferred form of “governance.” I would like to
believe this is a recent development.
On both sites, priority is given to
the opinion section after politics. I would venture a guess that this is
because the opinion columns are the biggest draw for readers but the editors
understand that they cannot lead with Ross Douthat or Ezra Klein. From this
observation, I assert that a key tenet of newsworthiness is the view of news
personalities.
This makes sense because hard news
cannot be made as entertaining as a first person narrative or the more
interesting partisan arguments of known personalities. News stories are being
overlooked because the headline says as much as many readers are interested in.
Opinion columns and blogs can take sides and be offensive, personal, or so many
other things more interesting than cold, hard journalism. It is the difference
between Transformers 3 and Ken Burns’
The Dust Bowl.
Public relations is much more than
arranging celebrity endorsements, but the public opinion of known personalities
has great weight today. Practitioners should consider the growing importance of
this trend when considering newsworthiness. However, the alternative to winning
over a public figure is creating a vocal, public persona for yourself or your
CEO. I expect to see more “newsworthy” CEO personalities in the coming years,
as we have seen recently with Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein.
No comments:
Post a Comment