In my still relatively short journalism career, this will mark my seventh year in the biz (post-college) there is one criticism that I hear repeatedly. And it's not just from random passerbys, I hear it from my wife's own Grandma.
"I stopped taking the newspaper because it's all bad news" or "all I read in the paper is bad news."
Honestly, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me, people. Because to me, it's not a matter of good news, it's not a matter of bad news. It's news. Crime happening, businesses closing, it's not uplifting, it's just what happens. It's our job to keep people informed.
The problem with the only print good news theory is that no one can ever susbtaniate it. What's good news? A set of twins being born, how about octuplets? That started out as good, heartwarming news but now it's tabloid fodder.
If I knew that putting fluff on the front page of the paper would sell as many copies as a story of a shooting or a car accident down the street, I would have jumped on that a long time ago.
Some of our competition in Brighton stakes itself on only sharing good news. In fact, they market themselves as an alternative or replacement to us on that fact. Which is fine.
But in the effort to be sacharrine sweet, when does one become a gatekeeper? It's nice for the city council to pat you on the head and say "we like you a lot better because you are nice and don't say anything mean about us." But who are we serving here? I think it would become such a handicap that you would not be able to take critical stances on anything. If this paper hadn't taken a skeptical stance on Union Pacific relocating and educated its readership on what it meant, then Brighton sure wouldn't be espousing the benefits of Vestas today.
What do you think?
