Tuesday, July 03, 2007

When it bleeds, it leads. Why?

The old saying in journalism is bad news is good news. Similarly, when it bleeds, it leeds.
After being disconnected from the media world for a while, I get really upset when I turn the TV on or read gthe newspaper and the bad news fall on me like a landslide. Reading the newspapers it seems, that everything is wrong in our world. However, when I am not reading newspapers, life seems perfectly fine.
I wonder, are these sayings still correct? Should it really lead, when it bleeds? Do readers really want bad news all the time?
In the time, when the media analysts recommend that journalism should turn to local news (and local often means high school basketball games and profiles of soccer moms, not tragedies from all over the world and media scandals involving high-profile politicians attacking one another) and when citizen journalism and bloggers (who again are probably not reporting about one boring political party press conference or another) are increasingly taking over some of the jobs of journalists, I wonder if the maxim shouldn't change.
Perhaps readers want something else from their newspapers, as well, something that help them understand certain things - for example the world of their children, like the beautiful piece Thirteen did.
Or am I wrong?

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