Our business

Had a tidy solution at my last newspaper that the news editors bought into.
Anything about the Kobe Bryant in Colorado case that affected his ON-court status made it in the sports pages. Anything about the case that affected his IN-court status made it into the news section. Amazing how few stories ended up in sports.

 

i've never been prouder to be part of the toy dept. we're pretty much the same. news side? eh, not so much.

 

Actually, didn't some paper like Aspen or something decide it wasn't going to print anything about the Kobe case until it was resolved?

It'd be interesting if a paper or network tried to do that on another big story -- the problem is, if readers want it, is that really serving them?

 

Don't know if anyone remembered, but my last newspaper made headlines when we refused to run a single story about the possible baseball lockout (or strike...can't remember, it was 2002 or 2003) until both the owners and players got their crap in gear.

 

I think it all goes back to Wall Street. Pressures for profits have taken an ugly toll, just as they have in the newspaper biz. Believe me, most of the folks at the TV networks don't want to focus on this stuff. They want to focus on what they feel is important, legitimate news. But Wall Street dictates now, and Wall Street won't have it.

All that said, there are 3 things I think are newsworthy about Anna Nicole:

1) That she died.
2) How she died.
3) That the baby will be cared for.

 

I'll take a different view -- that the reason for saturation coverage was because the 24-hour news networks (who were leading the charge) knew this was ratings gold. It isn't about Wall Street--it's about attracting an audience. I don't feel quite so despondent, though, because the same cornucopia of media choice that has panicked news networks doing wall-to-wall Anna coverage also has plenty of spaces where one can go to get coverage on something else.

And the "we could spend this money in Darfur" argument is a bit of a straw man. We could cut all the sports departments, too, and spend the money in Darfur. After all, isn't a humanitarian crisis far more important than steroidal freaks and pituitary cases who can manipulate some sort of orb?

 

And, Bob, that's the thing. You're right: It's hard for sports people to criticize saturation entertainment coverage -- even coverage as unseemly as this. It's all entertainment, one way or another. And we're the business that does -- and was proud of it, by the way -- 24-page special sections on a single football game.

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0305/p09s01-coop.html

This seems germaine to the conversation.

 

But you attract an audience to sell more ads to make more profits to appease Wall Street, kwim?

 

My day job is at a nonprofit's pub, and WE'RE worried about attracting an audience. So Wall Street or not, as long as you have to make some money, you're worried about where (and who) your audience is.

 

The only reason you worry about who your audience is in TV pretty much boils down to this: Old people are hard to sell to.

My point was simply that corporate pressures are at an all-time high in TV-- and that's whether your network's losing money or making a billion dollars a year. Everybody's fighting to keep their job.

 

Pardon me if I don't see this as some sort of death knell. Yes, it's unseemly, but large legitimate stories can be unseemly, too. You think the guys at the SFChron will ever feel clean again after tangoing with that defense attorney? Let's face it, the news business is nasty. And it's nasty because dirt sells. Some publications' dirt is of higher quality than others, but we're all digging for dirt in one form or another. Was the coverage of ANS' death overkill? Maybe, but large numbers of people (who presumably are also readers and viewers) spent money to prop up her career, so in a sense the general public has a vested interest in what happened to her. That's their choice.