Monica Moses: Newspapers not responsive enough to a critical public?
In a column today for CNBC, former newspaper designer (and currently an innovation and management consultant) Monica Moses writes:
Just yesterday, I read a “happiness tip” in an email newsletter: “Turn off the news three days or more each week. Trust me, you’ll still stay informed!”
This is what former news addicts are saying. My new instructors, my fellow students – the ones urging people to shut out the news – are not simpletons. They understand the housing crisis. They have an eye on Pakistan. They watched Obama’s speech Tuesday night. But they don’t think the commentators who come on afterward are helpful. They view them as part of the problem.
…If we were talking about any other product, the fact that smart, prosperous members of the public were uniformly finding fault with it would be a red flag. The news media would be looking not just at problems with the business model. They’d be reconsidering the entire paradigm: What are we telling people, and how are they affected by it?
…Maybe the media should be learning from its customers now and not just the other way around.
It’s a must-read. Find it here.
So what do you think? Does Monica have a point? Or is this just piling on the messenger?
February 26th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Monica does have a point. I’ve always thought the journalism should stay in the newsroom. The newsroom does not know how to promote itself or provide a business model to sell the product it is creating. Leave that to others.
Bad news day after day does stink. The Super Bowl coming to Tampa was a great thing in a recession year. Newspapers in the area only focused on how it would have been bigger if it were any other year.
Listen to the public, let them lead us. Newsrooms tend to be full of themselves some days. Not a good thing to only listen to your co-workers.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I do really think she is right. Being in newspapers and journalism for more than decade, I got used the “bad news” but everybody else in my family always bemoan the alck of good stories in teh paper and on tv news. I used to always tell them that a person volunteering at a school does not ahve the meat thata plane crash does or drug bust.
BUT why not. We relegate any good news to lifestyles (behind the bad diet stories and horror movie reviews) or some hokey volunteer page. I think we all clamped onto Obama for his hope and really reveled in the Hudson River plane crash because those stories were so different than the 98 percent of what news outlets put out.
For most of us watching our stock portfolio tank and friends get layed off and homes foreclosed upon, we don’t need the news telling us all the details of it.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:34 am
“For most of us watching our stock portfolio tank and friends get layed off and homes foreclosed upon, we don’t need the news telling us all the details of it.”
Excuse my bluntness, but this is the dumbest thing I have ever read.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I read no less than six daily Midwestern newspapers a day and all cover local news in detail and very well. I don’t know what Monica Moses is talking about. What I do read from people like Ms. Moses is very vague, artsy speak about subjects no one seems to be able to specify with regards to how newspapers should change. If newspapers are doing one thing extremely well, it is covering local news thoroughly and in detail.
Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana