The question of how, as journalists, we can make news fun while still giving people what they need stood out to me as a controversial and difficult challenge. The tension between the two seems obvious. People want to read stories that are entertaining, fun, and fascinating. But with all the problems around us, it is crucial that we have a well-informed and educated public. Absolutely crucial. And I feel that it is the responsibility of journalists largely to make sure that people are reading the news and being informed. To get people to read the news, I feel that we need to sometimes mix the hard news with the storytelling, just like we talked about in class.
As I thought of ways to do this, the first thing that came to my mind was the subject of news called “small town pastoralism” that we talked about a few weeks ago. This value of news is the idea that we want to get back to our roots; that we want to hear about the small countryside and the farmer who is struggling.
I opened a New York Times Wednesday and immediately found an article that mirrored this small town pastoralism. It was about girls from a small town in Idaho that stay natural and refuse to fake tan. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/us/melanoma-leads-idaho-to-consider-limit-on-tanning-salons.html.)
To me, these articles connect what we need to hear with what we like to hear. By connecting a larger idea, in this case the idea of fake tanning, to a person from a small town that we can connect with, a story is formed. A story that we want to read as consumers. Thus, the “story” aspect brought on by small town pastoralism pulls people in. And in addition to this, people then learn about a subject and become better informed in that.
Another way that I thought we could mix together is through simply storytelling whatever news story it is. The website http://www.storynet-advocacy.org/news/Psychology%20Today%201-16-2011.shtml it says that “Stories are authentic human experiences. Stories leap frog the technology and bring us to the core of experience, as any good storyteller (transmedia or otherwise) knows. Our brains still respond to content by looking for the story to make sense out of the experience. No matter what the technology, the meaning starts in the brain. There are several psychological reasons why stories are so powerful. Stories have always been a primal form of communication. Stories are about collaboration and connection. Stories are how we think. They are how we make meaning of life.”
No matter what article we are writing, especially if it is one that we can’t make a small town pastoralism story, we should keep in mind our audience and connect with them through telling the story of the news.
I think that this can be hard when trying to be unbiased. Often, when we think of storytelling, we think of taking an angle on something. But in news, it is very possibly to make your story interesting with still being objective. (Find many storytelling tips to still remain unbiased at http://www.newsdesigns.com/industry-news/innovations-industry-news/15-free-tools-for-better-online-storytelling/.)
kaylee1133 