A bit off ear (part 1 of 2?)
What makes a story newsworthy? I was enrolled in an introductory Journalism class in college where the question was asked and where we, easygoing teenagers, were subsequently told what made a story newsworthy. Isn’t this what college is all about? You are disillusioned into using your intellect only to be pinned down with what the curriculum dictates, the tried and tested body of knowledge that is to be imparted to you.
In 1996 I was living in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, and I was a quiet child who is curious, inquisitive and always looking to explore and learn. I remember going to a local library and asking to use a computer to browse the Internet. It could have been my first time on the Internet because I remember it vividly, and I remember that when I opened the Netscape Navigator, one of the “news” items that welcomed me was that of Mike Tyson biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear in a boxing match. I remember it because it headlined the other news items below it with a picture of the culprit and his victim along with the “sensational?” title.
What made the Tyson story newsworthy to a 12 year old girl who was not living in Las Vegas, Nevada? Did I click on the headline to learn more? You bet I did. Did I forget about it? No I didn’t, even though I don’t seem to remember what else I ended up doing on the Internet that day. In college in the US, I don’t seem to have registered the content of the lesson on newsworthiness either. All I remember is that there was a lot of debating going on in my head that I did not get to articulate and that I thought it was pretentious for whoever is in charge to curate, more like dictate, newsworthiness.
The question is one that keeps presenting itself to me, sometimes at many instances during the day, now that I can get headlines on my phone from a number of different apps. In Journalism, in 2002, we were taught to provide the reader with the most important information in the first paragraph of any article, one of the reasons being, that most readers will only skim most articles. I look now at my phone at a headline presenting itself to me from Chrome browser that reads: “How the circular economy can help save the planet — and the UAE.” I roll my eyes. The article is published in a local newspaper, The National, whose editorial team has yet to come back to me on an e-mail I sent and a tweet I posted. It has been more than 2 months. I click.
Nope, the article does not detail how the UAE or the planet can be saved by the circular economy, and the lead “paragraph?” confirms that this is about Finland and how its “commitment” could presumably help the UAE, but even there, the article itself does not deliver. I am all for unconventional journalism but this feels like somebody cutting corners and putting all the relevant keywords in an attempt to avoid a)properly covering an international forum b)doing the necessary field reporting and actually writing an article that is relevant locally. But that’s my humble opinion and for a while I have developed an aversion toward The National.
To be continued….
