Insanity...

As journalist we are always told to make our stories engaging for our readers. Many times when we do this, we forget the most important part of the story, making it relevant.  The Elements of Journalism states the definition of journalism perfectly here, "Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. That purpose is to provide people with information they need to understand the world." If we try too hard to make our story engaging, it will lead to sensational journalism.

As I was reading this chapter this idea came to mind: Sensationalism has spurts of popularity, but the real hard news will always have its place and need in society. Think of it like the Harry Potter verses Twilight war on websites like http://mlia.com. Twilight is popular every time a movie comes out or whenever the guy who plays Jacob Black takes his shirt off, but Harry Potter will always be important to the readers.

The point is that we need to be wary of this type of journalism. If all we do is give them celebrity gossip stories, that is all they will want to hear about. We need to find a way to make real hard news an important part of the readers life. So how do we tell a story, make it engaging, but still keep it relevant? The book gave us several ideas of how to do this:

1. Do a profile- on the people, place or event behind the story. The National Geographic did a profile piece on the first African American to explore the North Pole. It was a super interesting article. http://tinyurl.com/6uzd78u

2. Do an explanatory piece; why something happens, how it works. "When bugs fight back" was a Pulitzer Prize winning article about bugs and pesticides I read in the Library. I can't find it online unfortunately.  

3. Issues and trend stories- on things like crime, or the economy, or health. http://tinyurl.com/nksw
This article explains very interestingly about how different sleep positions affects your health.

4. Investigative- look into a wrong doing. The New Yorker did an investigative work on the religion of Scientology. Super interesting. http://tinyurl.com/3f3qhek

5. Narrative- A story with a character- http://tinyurl.com/7gvu9sn

6. Descriptive- A day in the life type of story, like this interesting article about the day in the life of a tour de france bike, written for a bike magazine. http://tinyurl.com/6notukc

7. Voice or perspective- Tell the story in a unique way like Q&A. http://tinyurl.com/7aqhdep

8. Visual- spices it up with charts, pictures, video bits. Because of this article I can actually understand the European debt crisis (http://tinyurl.com/84stayx).

If we feel that hard news is losing to sensational journalism and there is no way to change that, our attitudes are wrong. This would be, as Albert Einstein said, Insane. Insanity is doing something wrong over and over again but still expecting the same results. If our stories aren’t selling it isn’t because the readers aren’t interested in hard news, it’s because they are bored. The burden falls squarely on us as journalist to spice things up. We need to be creative with our work. If we dedicate ourselves to make our work true, accurate, and interesting, there is no way we won’t have readers.