LITTLE ROCK — Years ago, the late Dr. William B. Hudson said he felt my craft badly needed to emphasize more positive and relevant news, as opposed to continually showcasing the latest crime or death as the most significant news of the day.
“I’m tired of the same negative news being highlighted day after day,” were his exact words. “Why can’t a TV station and you newspaper types emphasize more positive or informative news? If I had a newspaper, that’s what I’d do.”
I’d chuckled and told him he’d also go broke, so he’d best stick with root canals.
A publisher reportedly once did try the positive-news-only approach with a paper in his town called the Good News. He also soon went broke. That publisher even refused to print the bad news of his paper’s demise because it would have violated his principle.
Standing on principle is admirable and noble but doesn’t pay worth a darn. Still, that idealistic newsman did have a point that surpasses state borders.
Just the other day during a visit to Santa Fe, a man told me how exhausted he’d become of reading and watching a steady stream of information about murder, rape, thefts, molestations, fatalities and all the other negative events in his community.
“Why can’t we have a lot more news focusing on all the good things constantly happening around us everyday? Those things lift us and make us better.”
That let me know there must be many out there who feel likewise. The daily drumbeat of death and distress ballyhooed in bold letters and over newscasts is bound to have a wearing and distressing effect on a lot of psyches.
But during my 42 years in this business, I’ve also been told by predecessors that you, the readers, respond to negative news more so than the positive. We humans apparently find the downfalls, dilemmas and shortcomings of our fellow men and women far more interesting than all the good those same folks might also have achieved.
Consider supermarket tabloids. The goodness just isn’t as interesting and titillating as the smarminess and failure of human frailty, right?
In television news, there’s a decades-old adage that insists, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Those who watch local newscasts more often than not see that scenario repeated endlessly.
Over the years I’ve become convinced that reporting superficially on negative events is just more profitable than investing resources in rooting out the positive and informative stories that might make a difference. Those are known as “enterprise stories.” And they cost time and money to produce in newspapers and TV stations.
The traffic accidents and crimes are easy and cost relatively little to pass along. Those events wind up initially reported on public police blotters before winding up re-hashed as the “top news” of the day. And they make it relatively easy to fill the daily holes on a front page, or 30 seconds on an evening newscast.
I’ve always called these the “process stories” because they are quite literally generated and processed by the governmental systems and operations. That also means they require very little shoe leather, other than a reporter stopping by the cop shop for a copy or attending a meeting. These safe stories also don’t step on toes because the news agency can fault the public record for actually causing their story.
I’m not saying I believe all the crime and negative stories shouldn’t be in a local newspaper. The words that describe ever-present darkness are as much a part of history in every community as those that reveal the light of our spirits’ activities that inspire a sense of belonging.
Yet each newspaper and station does have control over where those stories are placed for public consumption, how they are characterized, and how they are presented as somehow relevant to the majority of readers.
On the morning I sat to write this column, these were seven of the eight top stories of the day listed on this paper’s website:
Greenwood Man Gets 30 Years for Child Porn.
Six Year-old’s Death Probed as Homicide.
Two Found Dead in Maumelle Home.
Man Charged in Parent’s Death.
Ex Philander Smith Recruiter Gets Five Days in Sex Case.
Ward Man Accused of Throwing Child Down Hill.
Four Sentenced in Fort Smith for Federal Meth Charges.
Just tossing out some crumbs of thought today in an area that I’m convinced deserves greater public dialogue and further consideration in my chosen industry that is struggling nationwide to keep itself relevant, respected and credible.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial, Pages 13 on 11/27/2012