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Posted by Jeremy on October 13, 2010 · 13 Comments
Jay Rosen, as usual, beat me to the punch with his thoughts this morning on the Chile mine story. This is why I tweet more than I blog; sometimes you just say it and fill in the gaps later. I did a bit of mini-ranting last night, at least. Anyhow, Rosen:
A big story and a great story, but does 1300 journalists covering the Chilean miners have anything to do with reality?
I’ve been mulling this post for a few days and have wrestled with the cadence. I don’t do the curmudgeon thing very well, but this story has me feeling really, really cranky.
The Chile miners story is a wonderful news story about perserverence, ingenuity, working together, and triumph. That is what most of the world is seeing, and I know a lot of us have been hoping for a safe rescue. But this story depresses me.
I see a story about journalism. To know that 1300 journalists have descended on this mining town to cover a worldwide story is a little disconcerting in an era of closed foreign bureaus and budget cutbacks. Many might question that thought given the intense interest in the story; my Twitter and Facebook feeds were lit up last night as the first miner descended ascended up the 2000-foot shaft. But the public doesn’t think in terms of resources when it consumes journalism; it only has what it has in front of it.
Thirteen-hundred journalists – imagine what we could do with that. Journalism organizations are pouring resources into this as if it is the Baby Jessica 1980s and ’90s, with fatter newsrooms and no Internet. Really, does every major TV news network in the U.S. need a camera crew and reporters out there? In an era of satellite feeds and citizens on the ground who can pipe in material, does the U.S. media have to parachute in on a story like this?
Foreign stories are worth covering, but let’s be honest that this is more a human interest story with a small impact on a large population than something such as the earthquake that occurred in that same country of Chile just eight months ago. The proportion of response to story impact is perhaps the best illustration of the insanity we seen in media business choices today.
The choice to shuttle all these resources to Chile does have an impact on what we cover at home. My former Mizzou colleague Lene Johansen posted a heart-wrenching story earlier this week about poverty in Philadelphia in the wake of the Great Recession. Heart-wrenching because of the details, but more so because this kind of thing isn’t on our radar everyday. Poor people don’t buy newspapers. Significant resources go to cover whatever shiny object the American consumption class will chase these days. The Chile miners story, while interesting and heart-warming, is really just the flavor of the week, another form of reality TV in the eyes of the business executives making the call of what resources to spend where.
The actual story has zero effect on people in the U.S. with real problems; it’s a wonderful distraction, which would be fine if it was distracting us from coverage of bigger problems at home. But that’s not the reality of this reality TV news story.
Cover it, but let’s keep some perspective here.
The biggest problem here is there is not really a need to devote so many resources to this because of the wonderful advances we have made in technology. I have barely tuned in to the coverage on my TV or online. I have my Twitter feed; I knew when the first miner emerged at roughly the same time everyone else did. We have Chilean journalists – both professional and citizen – who are already embedded in that community and region who can cover it well. It’s not our story. Perhaps the biggies like the NYT should be there, but is it necessary to send anyone else? Do the news networks – cable or otherwise – really need their own camera crew and on-the-ground reporters for this?
The public sees a great story, and that’s fine. It really is. But on the media side, I see an industry chasing hits and page views by wasting valuable economic and human capital. Let’s cheer for the miners, but let’s not forget that there is suffering here at home and it should get the same, if not more, resource allocation.
Will we band together and help out the poor and downtrodden here, or is this Chile story really just a welcome break from our routine of ignoring those suffering among us? Journalism has a part to play in how we answer this question.
Filed under Blog, In the News · Tagged with chile, miners, new media
Comments 13 Responses to “Chile is a story about journalism’s failure” Anna Tarkov says: October 13, 2010 at 11:21 amAfter spending some time thinking about this, I think it comes back to the same thing a lot of stuff comes back to: presentation. The “hard news” that so many orgs despair about being able to fund like local politics, police, labor, etc. is just not written about correctly in American newspapers these days. Some magazines are doing a better job. The Atlantic for instance. But the daily paper that many Americans still do read (in some format) is not putting things in such a way that people are compelled to care. If you’re middle class and only want to read about iPads, what’s going to make you care about the poverty in your city’s slums or the horrible schools there? Your neighborhood is just great and your kids go to a good school. What’s going to make you care about the plight of people you never see, never meet, never encounter in any way until they are billed as being a drain on your tax dollars?
These days, the obsession is with finding a business model. I’m afraid this too sometimes sends us in the wrong direction. A business model needs money coming from somewhere and, again, money comes from the people who can afford to spend it on the advertisers you service. But the problem isn’t just the business model: http://www.annatarkov.com/the-problem-with-journalism-is-not-only-the-b
Jim says: October 13, 2010 at 2:32 pmJeremy, Thank you for venting what anyone who cares about all that’s being left unsaid feel. Action item: how do we grow journalists to see this and become so angry, they consistently commit to the pursuit of compelling stories, content, ideas, that make this sort of gluttony impossible to feed?
Aurelie says: October 14, 2010 at 12:49 amHuman-interest stories have always exerted a special fascination on Americans. I remember when I first moved to the US how surprised (not in a good way) I was by the number of insignificant local stories in the news, especially on TV. This was in the late 1990s. The situation has become more pronounced now because of the crisis faced by media outlets, who are tempted to pander to their audience, but the way human-interest stories overshadow more important ones is not new.
(I am reminded of the hoopla surrounding the attempted rescue of miners in W.Va. – the Sago Mine Disaster of January 2006 – and the face of Anderson Cooper when he was told live by a local resident that only one miner had survived, instead of all of them as had been believed. Also, have you ever watched “The Big Carnival”, a 1951 movie with Kirk Douglas? The media frenzy has a way to “blow up” in people’s faces. I’m glad it didn’t this time, though.)
Journalists do worry their competitors will be dispatched on the ground. No TV station has an incentive not to send someone and appear “left behind”. It is a vicious circle in the quest for relevance. The question becomes, can journalists use the current interest in the miners to also educate their audience on issues such as the quality of life in Chile, the aftermath of the earthquake, the living conditions of blue-collar families? What I find the most annoying is that many people don’t seem to care about the big picture – they want to be uplifted by a feel-good story, and they’ll take whichever comes their way. You could argue that the journalists are not really sent to cover the amazing survival and rescue of 33 brave men, but instead to satisfy the gluttonous appetite of the media for happy endings. There is an “exploitation” side of it that is quite nauseating.
Shazza says: October 14, 2010 at 3:36 amIt was a fanastic story of humanity, but 1300 journalists? That’s all about the marketing … you know, the promos that refer to ‘our man in Chile’ … And it’s in and out. Nothing complex, nothing lasting too long … ‘Firefighter’ journalism. Will they be around to investigate mine safety, the environmental impact of mining in Chile, the long-term health and employment ramifications for the men and their families? I think not. On to the next big thing.
WD Favour says: October 14, 2010 at 5:32 amThis is a cute observation. I for one was in my study when the news broke on my twitter feed. I followed the news on twitter even though I had my cable tv on and tuned to CNN. (I live in Nigeria). But my tv is in the room and I was in the study, very busy with work on my blog and other sites. I’d already been following the news on other channels like my NYT and yahoo news feeds. So I knew that the operation had an almost 100% chance of success. So, why would I get up and walk to my room when I could just continue my work in my study and follow the news through tweets? In the end, I retweeted a couple of the tweets and had a few interesting conversations along the way. I think the point is — and I absolutely agree with you — sending 1300 journalists to Chile to cover the news, in this new era was absolutely unnecessary, and a waste of precious resources.
Diane Daniel says: October 14, 2010 at 8:30 amTouche, totally true, yes, yes, yes! I was thinking a similar thing. Most of my life has been in feature writing and mostly regional. For a few weeks I worked on a national radio program that chased news stories. There I was trying to find the one person who hadn’t been interviewed in Gulf spill disaster and on and on. Sure, that was a real story, but it’s that “ants to a picnic” mentality that I found really depressing. Now the picnic is gone and so are the ants. You just don’t need all those journalists in one spot. You need them at home, doing the proactive stuff (along with some reactive, of course).
Whit says: October 14, 2010 at 9:56 amI agree with you that parachuting in 1,300 journalists to cover this story appears to be a waste of journalistic resources. But, at the same time, I have a problem blaming the news orgs. While most people reading this blog probably consume news through RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook, I would venture to guess that a large portion, if not a majority, of Americans don’t. And while the idea of sharing resources to cover international stories like this one make sense on paper, and in the context of the conversation we’re having in the journalism world, we have to remember that these news orgs are still competing for eyeballs. If every news org used the same news footage, anchor and print correspondent, there would be no reason to watch one station over another, or visit one newspaper’s website over another. I don’t think news orgs want to lose their identity like that, especially when a story like this attracts the interest of the entire world.
David Rosen says: October 14, 2010 at 10:34 amSure the coverage was overkill, over the top, and consumed way more resources than needed, but at least it was a positive story, a miraculous one really, that engaged not just Americans but people and media around the world. It was a legitimate and compelling human interest story. I get more upset when news media resources and coverage descend on meaningless bad news stories involving celebrity gaffs and missteps, whether it’s it’s Lindsay Lohan falling off the wagon again, Tiger Woods cheating on his wife or Bristol Palin and the Situation on Dancing with the Stars.
Diana Bogan says: October 14, 2010 at 10:55 amInteresting. I had a completely different take on the coverage until I read this. I wasn’t thinking about how many reporters were on the ground at all. I first heard about the accident when it happened via NPR radio. I never once picked up a newspaper to follow the story, I don’t have television and I don’t follow twitter for news either. So when I heard (on the radio) that the rescue was beginning I felt at a loss that I might not actually get to see any aspect of how it was being done. It had become such a topic of discussion, even in my daughter's grade school class, that I was beginning to feel out of the loop. However, late yesterday I found that the UK’s Telegraph had live stream video of the entire process (great quality) and a live blog that was updated every 90 seconds. See what remains of it here: http://tinyurl.com/34fcqdx. So instead of wondering how many reporters from the US had converged upon Chile, I was excited to see real time, good quality reporting online. I thought it was a really great example of the new age of journalism and what is to be expected of up and coming journalists as our profession adapts to technology. This post, however, leads me to wonder just how many of its own reporters the Telegraph had on the ground in Chile to provide such coverage. Did they use fewer, more or the same number of resources than their American counterparts?
Neither was I much thinking of whether the “story” mattered to me when I went looking for a way to tune in. I just wanted to be able to join a conversation should it come up. But since watching the live feed, I’ve found several friends discussing what’s wrong with mining in our own country, and if Chile can rescue 100% of its miners, could we have done the same. Now a smart news editor would take this story and turn inward to focus on our own mining industry, quickly before the interest of Americans fade. That would have more news value.
As for the question as to why no one seemed to care about Lene Johansen's “Heart Wrenching” story about poverty in Philly…well there was poverty when I lived there, I saw it in the soup kitchens where I volunteered, I saw it in the faces of the children I cared for while their parents took time to deal with their own HIV status, I passed it everyday on the street. So, although I haven't read the article yet, my heart is not particularly wrenching over the idea of this story either, mainly because it sounds like nothing new to me. And unless you’re proposing some type of viable action, I don’t want to read about how much harder it surely is now in the current economy to survive in Philadelphia. No offense, it’s just that If I still lived in Philadelphia, I’d probably still be out there volunteering to do what I could. One thing I agree with is that news should cover issues that matter at home, but more so, news is personal – people will still only read about what makes a difference to them in their own lives. And poverty in Philadelphia no longer holds personal relevance for me in the same way stories about building Tent Cities in Tampa does.
When I was a regional editor for a publication, I took note of these big circus-type media stories and always found a way to capitalize on it at home with something that mattered in the small speck of Florida's GulfCoast where our publication's reader's lived.
And, just because 1300 US reporters were on the ground, doesn’t mean we’re listening does it? In the end I didn’t get my news from any one of their American news outlets. But, I still found the news I wanted. In this digital era, there is something worth thinking about there.
beachcomberT says: October 14, 2010 at 11:46 amHuman-interest news and celebrity news have been crowding out hard news and investigative pieces for years. The result is an unrelenting dumbing down of the American population. We bounce from crisis to crisis — earthquakes, mine collapses, oil spills, mass murders, teen suicides — without hardly ever looking back to see what we’ve learned.
MineMineAllMine says: October 14, 2010 at 11:49 amIt seems to me that there’s more US coverage of the Chile miners than the West Virginia coal mine explosion that took place earlier this year and killed 25 men. Seems a bit out of whack, don’t you think?
Trackbacks Check out what others are saying about this post... How many reporters does it take to cover a mine rescue? - Lost Remote says: October 13, 2010 at 1:34 pm[...] Blogger Jeremy Littau adds: “[T]his story depresses me. I see a story about journalism. To know that 1300 journalists have descended on this mining town to cover a worldwide story is a little disconcerting in an era of closed foreign bureaus and budget cutbacks… Foreign stories are worth covering, but let's be honest that this is more a human interest story with a small impact on a large population than something such as the earthquake that occurred in that same country of Chile just eight months ago.” [...]
‘The journalists had become cameras, not human beings anymore’: reflections on the Chile miners story | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog says: October 14, 2010 at 12:34 pm[...] Blogger Jeremy Littau from Lehigh University added that Chile is a ‘story about journalism’s failure’. I see a story about journalism. To know that 1300 journalists have descended on this mining town to cover a worldwide story is a little disconcerting in an era of closed foreign bureaus and budget cutbacks. Many might question that thought given the intense interest in the story; my Twitter and Facebook feeds were lit up last night as the first miner descended up the 2000-foot shaft. But the public doesn't think in terms of resources when it consumes journalism; it only has what it has in front of it. [...]
Recent blog posts Chile Mine Rescue: Twitter questions if too many reporters – Online Social Media How many reporters does it take to cover a mine rescue? – Lost Remote Chile is a story about journalism’s failure What journalism gains from the read-write Web A news semester: time for second gear Recent Comments ‘The journalists had become cameras, not human beings anymore’: reflections on the Chile miners story | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog on Chile is a story about j
Filed under Blog, In the News · Tagged with chile, miners, new media
After spending some time thinking about this, I think it comes back to the same thing a lot of stuff comes back to: presentation. The “hard news” that so many orgs despair about being able to fund like local politics, police, labor, etc. is just not written about correctly in American newspapers these days. Some magazines are doing a better job. The Atlantic for instance. But the daily paper that many Americans still do read (in some format) is not putting things in such a way that people are compelled to care. If you’re middle class and only want to read about iPads, what’s going to make you care about the poverty in your city’s slums or the horrible schools there? Your neighborhood is just great and your kids go to a good school. What’s going to make you care about the plight of people you never see, never meet, never encounter in any way until they are billed as being a drain on your tax dollars?
These days, the obsession is with finding a business model. I’m afraid this too sometimes sends us in the wrong direction. A business model needs money coming from somewhere and, again, money comes from the people who can afford to spend it on the advertisers you service. But the problem isn’t just the business model: http://www.annatarkov.com/the-problem-with-journalism-is-not-only-the-b
Jeremy, Thank you for venting what anyone who cares about all that’s being left unsaid feel. Action item: how do we grow journalists to see this and become so angry, they consistently commit to the pursuit of compelling stories, content, ideas, that make this sort of gluttony impossible to feed?
Human-interest stories have always exerted a special fascination on Americans. I remember when I first moved to the US how surprised (not in a good way) I was by the number of insignificant local stories in the news, especially on TV. This was in the late 1990s. The situation has become more pronounced now because of the crisis faced by media outlets, who are tempted to pander to their audience, but the way human-interest stories overshadow more important ones is not new.
(I am reminded of the hoopla surrounding the attempted rescue of miners in W.Va. – the Sago Mine Disaster of January 2006 – and the face of Anderson Cooper when he was told live by a local resident that only one miner had survived, instead of all of them as had been believed. Also, have you ever watched “The Big Carnival”, a 1951 movie with Kirk Douglas? The media frenzy has a way to “blow up” in people’s faces. I’m glad it didn’t this time, though.)
Journalists do worry their competitors will be dispatched on the ground. No TV station has an incentive not to send someone and appear “left behind”. It is a vicious circle in the quest for relevance. The question becomes, can journalists use the current interest in the miners to also educate their audience on issues such as the quality of life in Chile, the aftermath of the earthquake, the living conditions of blue-collar families? What I find the most annoying is that many people don’t seem to care about the big picture – they want to be uplifted by a feel-good story, and they’ll take whichever comes their way. You could argue that the journalists are not really sent to cover the amazing survival and rescue of 33 brave men, but instead to satisfy the gluttonous appetite of the media for happy endings. There is an “exploitation” side of it that is quite nauseating.
It was a fanastic story of humanity, but 1300 journalists? That’s all about the marketing … you know, the promos that refer to ‘our man in Chile’ … And it’s in and out. Nothing complex, nothing lasting too long … ‘Firefighter’ journalism. Will they be around to investigate mine safety, the environmental impact of mining in Chile, the long-term health and employment ramifications for the men and their families? I think not. On to the next big thing.
This is a cute observation. I for one was in my study when the news broke on my twitter feed. I followed the news on twitter even though I had my cable tv on and tuned to CNN. (I live in Nigeria). But my tv is in the room and I was in the study, very busy with work on my blog and other sites. I’d already been following the news on other channels like my NYT and yahoo news feeds. So I knew that the operation had an almost 100% chance of success. So, why would I get up and walk to my room when I could just continue my work in my study and follow the news through tweets? In the end, I retweeted a couple of the tweets and had a few interesting conversations along the way. I think the point is — and I absolutely agree with you — sending 1300 journalists to Chile to cover the news, in this new era was absolutely unnecessary, and a waste of precious resources.
Touche, totally true, yes, yes, yes! I was thinking a similar thing. Most of my life has been in feature writing and mostly regional. For a few weeks I worked on a national radio program that chased news stories. There I was trying to find the one person who hadn’t been interviewed in Gulf spill disaster and on and on. Sure, that was a real story, but it’s that “ants to a picnic” mentality that I found really depressing. Now the picnic is gone and so are the ants. You just don’t need all those journalists in one spot. You need them at home, doing the proactive stuff (along with some reactive, of course).
I agree with you that parachuting in 1,300 journalists to cover this story appears to be a waste of journalistic resources. But, at the same time, I have a problem blaming the news orgs. While most people reading this blog probably consume news through RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook, I would venture to guess that a large portion, if not a majority, of Americans don’t. And while the idea of sharing resources to cover international stories like this one make sense on paper, and in the context of the conversation we’re having in the journalism world, we have to remember that these news orgs are still competing for eyeballs. If every news org used the same news footage, anchor and print correspondent, there would be no reason to watch one station over another, or visit one newspaper’s website over another. I don’t think news orgs want to lose their identity like that, especially when a story like this attracts the interest of the entire world.
Sure the coverage was overkill, over the top, and consumed way more resources than needed, but at least it was a positive story, a miraculous one really, that engaged not just Americans but people and media around the world. It was a legitimate and compelling human interest story. I get more upset when news media resources and coverage descend on meaningless bad news stories involving celebrity gaffs and missteps, whether it’s it’s Lindsay Lohan falling off the wagon again, Tiger Woods cheating on his wife or Bristol Palin and the Situation on Dancing with the Stars.
Interesting. I had a completely different take on the coverage until I read this. I wasn’t thinking about how many reporters were on the ground at all. I first heard about the accident when it happened via NPR radio. I never once picked up a newspaper to follow the story, I don’t have television and I don’t follow twitter for news either. So when I heard (on the radio) that the rescue was beginning I felt at a loss that I might not actually get to see any aspect of how it was being done. It had become such a topic of discussion, even in my daughter's grade school class, that I was beginning to feel out of the loop. However, late yesterday I found that the UK’s Telegraph had live stream video of the entire process (great quality) and a live blog that was updated every 90 seconds. See what remains of it here: http://tinyurl.com/34fcqdx. So instead of wondering how many reporters from the US had converged upon Chile, I was excited to see real time, good quality reporting online. I thought it was a really great example of the new age of journalism and what is to be expected of up and coming journalists as our profession adapts to technology. This post, however, leads me to wonder just how many of its own reporters the Telegraph had on the ground in Chile to provide such coverage. Did they use fewer, more or the same number of resources than their American counterparts?
Neither was I much thinking of whether the “story” mattered to me when I went looking for a way to tune in. I just wanted to be able to join a conversation should it come up. But since watching the live feed, I’ve found several friends discussing what’s wrong with mining in our own country, and if Chile can rescue 100% of its miners, could we have done the same. Now a smart news editor would take this story and turn inward to focus on our own mining industry, quickly before the interest of Americans fade. That would have more news value.
As for the question as to why no one seemed to care about Lene Johansen's “Heart Wrenching” story about poverty in Philly…well there was poverty when I lived there, I saw it in the soup kitchens where I volunteered, I saw it in the faces of the children I cared for while their parents took time to deal with their own HIV status, I passed it everyday on the street. So, although I haven't read the article yet, my heart is not particularly wrenching over the idea of this story either, mainly because it sounds like nothing new to me. And unless you’re proposing some type of viable action, I don’t want to read about how much harder it surely is now in the current economy to survive in Philadelphia. No offense, it’s just that If I still lived in Philadelphia, I’d probably still be out there volunteering to do what I could. One thing I agree with is that news should cover issues that matter at home, but more so, news is personal – people will still only read about what makes a difference to them in their own lives. And poverty in Philadelphia no longer holds personal relevance for me in the same way stories about building Tent Cities in Tampa does.
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