People aren’t getting what they want from local news
Survey results will surprise you
Every news manager asks themselves this question a hundred times a day: “What does our audience want?”
A new survey will surprise and disappoint experienced journalists who think they know what news is and what people want.
When I ran the news operation at a local TV station, I started each day with a 9:30 a.m. meeting of all hands on deck. We talked about what we knew would happen that day – a trial or a news conference. And then we went around the room with each reporter, photographer or editor required to put one idea on the table. We wrote them down then decided what we thought viewers would want to know in that evening’s newscasts. We repeated the process several times a day, always adjusting the game plan based on breaking news or other events that happened.
But the truth is that deciding what to cover and not cover is a guess. An educated guess based on experience, roots in the community and lots of input from our staff, but a guess nonetheless.
It turns out our best guesses might often have been wrong. A new survey by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism asked news consumers in Chicago what they want to see and read from their local news outlets. Medill says the survey of 1,004 people in the Chicago area is “one of the most comprehensive examinations ever of news consumption in Chicagoland” and “can be taken as a microcosm for what is happening locally across the country.” Meaning, there is not much difference between Chicago and Iowa, or wherever you live.
When asked why they consume local news, the top two reasons were “it helps me save and manage money” (60%) and “it helps me stay healthy” (52%). What about the lofty goals of being an informed citizen? Many fewer people answered, “It helps me stay connected to my community” (15%), “it helps me take action to address issues I care about” (12%), and “it helps me stay informed to be a better citizen” (10%).
That is eye-opening for an old-school journalist like me who thinks there’s more to quality journalism than helping people save money.
You be the editor
Let’s look at some examples from this week. A major story in most Des Moines media outlets is 118 workers being laid off at the Bridgestone-Firestone plant. To me, that’s a story that needs to be covered because it affects more than 100 families in our town, it has an economic impact on those families’ spending power, and it speaks to the decline in farm income. On the other hand, I don’t personally know anyone who works at the plant and chances are most of our viewers don’t either. I don’t own a farm tractor, so don’t need tires from the plant. It doesn’t affect me directly. It doesn’t save me money. It doesn’t make me healthier. What do you think?
FEMA sets up disaster recovery center in Pleasant Hill. Sure, we all had a few tree limbs down from recent storms, but most of us don’t live in Pleasant Hill. Thousands of people do, but is it something YOU need to know?
I could go on, but you get the point. People are busy. Journalists should use their audience’s time wisely and not bore them with stories they don’t care about.
That’s one reason why TV and radio news stories tend to be short. Because they’re delivered in linear fashion, viewers can’t turn the page if the current story isn’t relevant to them. They will stay tuned, in hopes the next story will be of interest. With newspapers, readers can skip around and only read stories of interest. (But the Northwestern survey has awful news for newspapers, with only 9% of Chicagoland readers saying they regularly read a newspaper.)
A tall task
The question is what should news managers do with this information? Do they stop covering local government because news consumers don’t care? Do they re-assign the education reporter to cover health news? Should the lead story at six o’clock tonight be how to save money at the grocery store?
I hope not. I think what the survey respondents are saying is “make the news relevant to my life.” People are busy working and raising kids and they don’t have time for complicated issue stories. They need help getting through the day.
The task for journalists – and it’s a tall one – is to make important stories relevant to a majority of news consumers and to get the mix right. We need to feed the audience plenty of vegetables – the city council coverage, plant layoffs and the like. But each news outlet needs a generous serving of dessert, too – stories that impact people regardless of where they live. Everyone can relate to consumer and medical stories, for instance.
This column is aimed at helping discerning news viewers understand media issues, so I’d love to know what you think. Do the survey results concern you? What is going on in society that leads to these results? And what should news managers do about it? Click the comment link.
Proud to be a member of the growing Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
If it bleeds, it leads is still too often the mantra local TV news operations follow. Yet the crimes committed don’t happen in my neighborhood and the bad folks aren’t deterred by stories about trials and prison sentences of those convicted.
If it moves, we’ll show it to you. Again, visually interesting but not newsworthy stories infest our newscasts. A hot air balloon brushes electric power lines, sparks fly but no one hurt. Another wrong decision. Another wasted TikTok moment.
A final mantra is true, tell your audience what they want to know and tell them what they need to know. City council meetings, school board meetings, local elections are important (even if only 8 percent of voters turn out as in last Tuesday’s primary elections).
The Medill findings should be useful but not much will change in how the media cover our communities. News organizations remain important even if fewer consumers pay attention.
Andrea, in response to your questions:
-Commercial time is pre-formatted in days in advance. So it sometimes happens that an advertiser drops out at the last minute, so the station plugs in a promo to fill that time. Yes, it’s always possible to drop the spot and add some more news content, but newscasts are carefully timed and it doesn’t always work out.
Another possibility is that a planned-for story drops out. Perhaps a live shot does or something. Then they have a hole to fill so they grab a promo.
National news should not be in the 6pm. It normally isn’t during the week but I see it on occasion on weekends and I don’t like it if it follows a national newscast. Then again, local news can be pretty slow some weekends, so they fill with what they can, often national news.
Hope that helps. I should write a column sometime about the intricacies of timing out a live newscast to the second!