Informing the News by Thomas E. Patterson

Author:Thomas E. Patterson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780345806611
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-10-07T21:00:00+00:00

5.

Knowledge-based stories about people and their problems often cannot be told in a hurry or in a few words, which might be considered a problem in today’s marketplace, where people expect to get their news in a flash.

In fact, the news audience does not routinely choose brevity over depth. The Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted an extensive study of 154 local TV stations, tracking for five years their audience ratings and news content to determine what people watched and why. Contrary to expectations, the project found that the longer the story—the more depth it possessed—the higher its audience rating. When the entire newscast was examined, a comparable finding emerged. Newscasts with a small number of well-produced longer stories had higher ratings than newscasts packed with shorter items. The study’s authors concluded: “The consistent message that comes through all our research is that viewers reward stations that do a good job of gathering information and telling stories.”61

Philip Meyer conducted a similar study of local papers. Using data from two dozen media markets, Meyer examined the relationship between newspapers’ content and their circulation. He wanted to find out whether the quality of the reporting paid off with reader loyalty. Over the five-year span that Meyer studied, quality did matter: The newspapers that delivered the stronger content had the greatest success in holding on to their readers,62 a finding supported by a subsequent Northwestern University study based on 35,000 consumers in 101 newspaper markets.63

National Public Radio’s track record also illustrates the power of solid reporting. Compared with other broadcasters, NPR runs longer stories64 and devotes less time to political infighting and more time to policy issues.65 NPR also does more bottom-up stories—those that explore policy problems from the perspective of the citizen.66 NPR now has one of the largest and most loyal audiences in the industry.67 Since the 1980s, a period in which other broadcast news outlets have lost half or more of their audience, NPR’s audience has increased by more than 500 percent.

If there was ever any doubt that quality matters, a 2013 survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism should lay it to rest. Although a majority of those polled said they had heard little or nothing about the financial woes facing the news industry, or the resulting cutbacks in news staff and coverage, a third of the respondents said they had stopped paying attention to a particular news source because they had noticed a decline in the quality of its coverage. Moreover, those most likely to have stopped reading, watching, or listening to a news source because of a perceived decline were more highly educated and affluent than those who did not—in other words, they are the people who are generally more interested in news, and better able to pay for it. “The job of news organizations,” the study’s authors concluded, “is to come to terms with the fact that, as they search for economic stability, their financial future may well hinge on their ability to provide high quality reporting.

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