March 13, 2007

An Editorial Everyone Should Agree With

by Andrew McGregor

Alan Boyle of MSNBC exhibited some of the new online technologies, such as audio slide shows, that can illustrate the theoretical look of a moon base and things of this nature.  The multi-media potential of the internet certainly has not been explored.  Yet, what everyone in the room seems to be ignoring is the role of good writing and good journalism in attracting an audience: basically, quality.

During my graduate studies in journalism I was often baffled at the way new technologies were blamed for the impending death of the newspaper.  This was exquisitely strong at USC as many a faculty member arrived there courtesy of a buy-out-deal from the tempestuous LA Times.  My demographic of the younger male variety was particularly called out as not reading newspapers in addition to variegated economic considerations like ad revenues from the employment and real estate sections.
I confess, I don’t subscribe to a single newspaper; instead I read them online.  However, the reasons for this have absolutely nothing to do with technology because you know what? I do read journalistic periodicals on real paper: for example every week I read ‘The Economist’.  A British weekly news magazine.  I do this because it is well-written and honest in its stances on news coverage and interpretation.  I also trust ‘The Economist’ over anything I read online.  It is a bit pathetic that I have to seek news from across the Atlantic Ocean because I don’t want to read articles that make me feel like I am bathing in processed food.  I don’t think I’m alone in this, I met with one of their editors a few months ago and he told me that The Economist’s circulation is up 46 percent in America.

Strange isn’t it? Good writing and good reporting leading to an increasing and loyal readership? Hmmm, something odd is afoot.

Many of the brilliant and talented writers in this room have voiced similar complaints to their higher-ups and the response they have ineluctably received is that, “the average American just doesn’t care about this.  The average American isn’t educated enough to understand this…” Has anyone considered the possibility that the average American would read the newspaper more if it didn’t suck?

Certainly there will always be a steady American Idol/Britney Spears portion of the population.  This perception cannot help but be encouraged by the fact that the companies that own newspapers own American Idol and if not Britney Spears herself then her likeness and persona.

However, the insistence on these new technologies is also a convenient sell for additional cost-cutting measures.  The internet and digitization of technology now allows one reporter to take photos, edit video, cut an online radio broadcast, and write a brief story.  The field of journalism should just take the US Army’s recruitment line: A Reporter of ONE.

The new technologies are making it possible to cut news staff even further and given that the internet is starving for content there is no logical way this will lead to an increase in quality.

It would be swell if the profound potential of the internet could be employed to the betterment of science writing and journalism in general.  However, I fear that all this talk of technological innovation online is actually a justification for further reducing the pool of available journalism jobs.

Technological innovation will not solve the current problems of science writing and journalism as a whole.  In what other field could one cut resources, remove local personnel and then when customers turn away blame the public for being too stupid to understand?

The road to quality cannot avoid hard work and sacrifice and the current batch of journalists are doing both; they are just having the road torn from beneath their feet.

March 12, 2007

Not the Be All-End All

There are different levels of science journalism. I look at the kinds of science news we do at Discovery News - text and video - as a kind of invitation to people who want to know more, not the be all and end all on a topic.

Our text stories are limited to about 400 words—occasionally we’ll go longer if the topic warrants it or we want to cover something more deeply—so we can’t really go very deeply into things. And our video stories (http://www.discoverynewsvideo.com) are usually around 3 minutes.

But hopefully, through succinct reporting that presents a good overview of what any given research is, we’ll prompt readers to go deeper into the topic. We try to facilitate that through sidebar links or video content that’s relevant to the story.

Lori Cuthbert, Director, Discovery News