Newsworthiness with demographic

By: Hannah Pickett

This week was the most political of the 52 weeks in a year with the election held Tuesday. Tuesday's election was not just to determine our country's next president, but also local communities' sheriff, and other offices.

With the Madisonian's deadline Tuesday night, the main editor decided to stick around and wait for the ballots to be counted to run a lead story on the results. I thought that went without saying, but also thought that the front page headline would have more to do with community results. I imagined it would read something about not only the presidential results, but about the county's offices.

When I looked at the paper after it was printed Wednesday, the main headline stretched across the front page was "It's an Obama Nation" and the sub-heading read "McCain leads in Madison County." Much to my disappointment, there was one sentence in the story naming the county's newly elected sheriff, but the key point of his story was a lazy version of a CNN report announcing Obama the winner.

I was more disappointed to read the last line of the story saying more results of the local election next week. More? Try all of it.

The main problem here is realizing what news is to your demographic, to your key readers. If I wanted to know who won the presidential election, I am not going to wait for the Madisonian to come out Wednesday afternoon to find out. I will turn on my television, get online, or read a daily more credible newspaper for the inside scoop.

The readers of a small town paper already know who the presidential elect is by the time the Madisonian is available; what they don't know is who won the local election seats. Writing a knock off, lazy report on Obama sweeping the country and mentioning McCain's Madison County victory is not what the average Madisonian reader will be interested in. That stuff is reported everywhere. It's like beating a dead horse after a while. People get sick of it and want to see new angles.

People want to read about what changes their votes have made that will directly affect them; i.e.:sheriff.

Considering newsworthiness of a topic within your publication's demographic is very critical in my opinion, and is something that I think should be taken more seriously.

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Economic crisis doesn't phase Facebook

By: Alex Jones

Through these hard economic times there is one company that is not having troubles coming up with enough money.

Facebook has a staff of over 700 and is still hiring. The company is growing in their revenue and has no problem finding the advertisers necessary to fill their Web site. 

In a time where more media is moving to the Web, it is no surprise that advertisers themselves are jumping from traditional print advertisements to Web advertisements. Media will inevitably follow the money.

This is just another contributing factor to the slow decline of print media. Low readership and advertisers that are moving to the Web are slowly but surely going to drain print media for good. 

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Did she say that?

By: Pat Tierney

Recently in class we have been talking about what media can and cannot publish.

This reminded me about a story that appeared in a local paper, the Record Herald. This small town paper has a distribution of roughly 14,000 but is owned by America's largest newspaper publisher, Gannett.

A couple of weeks ago, a story was written by a staff writer, who interviewed a woman who has had a relatively traumatic battle with cancer for over 10 years.

This story of Teresa Jacobsen documents the ups and downs of the last few years and currently she is fighting one of those "downs."

The story opens with a little background, all of which sets her story, but then about half way through she discusses why she hasn't given up.

"I'm too big of a bitch to die." Jacobsen said.

I realize that "bitch" really isn't the worst of curse words that could be pulled out, but I thought that it was interesting that a Gannett owned paper, in little old Indianola, Iowa would choose to run the quote.

Not only did the reporter have to be sensitive in talking to a woman (who is in pretty tough shape) and her family, but he had to use discretion as to put the quote in the story or not, all of which are things that we just got done talking about in class the last week.

This article got a little bit of buzz around town as well.

When talking with some people at work, they thought that putting the comment about her being a bitch was unnecessary, even though Jacobsen did say it.

So was the newspaper right? I believe that if you are old enough to have read all of the article down to that point and understand it - then you are old enough to hear the word bitch.

No, putting that quote in the article wasn't overly flattering to Ms. Jacbosen, but that's what she said, and that my friends, is the job of a journalist.

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