I am sure the opening session at RTNDA was meant to be provocative and mind expanding. It gave me the creeps.
Michael Rosenblum, a lightning-rod character who evangelizes for the VJ concept, (sort of a newsroom full of one-man-band folks) told the audience that journalists should look at what videos online users watch most online all day and make those stories the core of the evening news.
If they don’t choose City Hall stories, he said, we should stop covering City Hall.
I could not help but wonder if, in the early ’80s the public would have chosen for journalists to cover the AIDS crisis that we all but ignored for too long. I wonder if we would have chosen to watch stories about the civil rights struggle in the last 50’s and early 60’s. I wonder if the public would choose Iraq War stories even today.
Let’s see what a national newscast might look like based on that recommendation. I will use Yahoo News’ most viewed videos:
Our newscast would include a story about Madonna, a Dear Abby letter, somebody asking President Clinton about American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar and the return of Peter Pan to the grocery shelves.
Journalism is not a popularity contest. Sometimes we tell stories people want to know. Sometimes we tell stories that people need to know-even if it is news they would rather turn away.
The one good idea I heard from the panel came from Terry Heaton from the consulting firm AR&D, who said TV stations should consider doing what Yahoo has done so successfully, amalgamating the best of the Web in your city. Heaton points out that there are hundreds of bloggers and content providers of all sorts in every town but there often is no single place to find everything going on. Here is an example of such a collection although I have to hope that it could be more relevant and meaty.
