Notes on How to Cover News for the 21st Century

May 09, 2012 13:15

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villagecharm May 9 2012, 20:25:20 UTC
I would also say, spend time in churches. Church is the most popular non-biological thing Americans do; more people do it every week than go to the movies, go to pro sporting events, etc. An old editor once asked us to contrast the resources we spent covering primary elections (considerable) with the resources we spent covering church (negligible), and then to consider how many people vote in primary elections (a handful) with how many people attend church (a great deal ( ... )

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purejuice May 9 2012, 20:48:50 UTC
i completely agree with you. w had a whole faith-based charity dealio in place, which i think ron suskind wrote about, and which suggests the canker at the heart of the republicanism of it all.

i'm trying to think of how i'd cover this for my 30 year old reader, with money, since my newspaper needs advertisers.

the cambodians all converted in the ref camps so they could get church sponsors to enter the country as refs. oncce here the mormons,, who were the only xtians to learn khmer, drove them to dr's appointments and told them they'd be reunited with their dead families in morm heaven. it's a huge story and hard to cover as a "real" thing, yannow? help me out.

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villagecharm May 10 2012, 01:48:32 UTC
The first thing is there can't be a "Religion" reporter who covers everybody from Pentecostals to Zoroastrians. Every news outlet makes that mistake, and it leads to inch-deep, mile-wide coverage that at its best parachutes into big stories and at its worst just produces a lot of gee-whiz features that can be boiled down to "Local people observe traditions ( ... )

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purejuice May 10 2012, 04:36:14 UTC
one of my buds out here used to organize migrant workers in georgia. she said all those nice catholic boys joined the evangelical prot latino churches in the scraggy little mall storefronts because they invited them to thanksgiving dinner.
authentic altruism, how does it work? yes yes yes.

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aliceinfinland May 9 2012, 23:17:51 UTC
Workplaces. Working conditions. What people do at work. What tools they use. What tools use them and use them up. Mostly off limits to news coverage except for some public-facing businesses. Where is the Studs Terkel or Gay Talese (or Gloria in bunny suit) of knowledge workers, which almost everyone is now?

Unions. Despite all their problems, nobody else does their job. I've loved union reporting when I could use the fiery quotes. Housing activists. Tenant lawyers.

Science for the people, let's bring it back. Bombs less of an issue now than healthcare.

Generational inequality as you say in 4. Double-edged sword of public pension funding.

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purejuice May 10 2012, 00:10:17 UTC
What tools they use. What tools use them and use them up.

ohhhhhh grrrl.

science for the people, you're so right. i think the internet and its telescopes and ornithology labs (did you know you can type a bird into the cornell one AND HEAR ITS RECORDED CALL?????? this is a revolution in orn -- my father had to sit in the woods with a professor and memorize) has given the data to people from 2 to 102. what the mashup is, -- such a good story.

unions. i don't know. i got mad when they started being anti immigrant. but it's a story, fer real.

please keep thinking about this. especially the alternative to politico. how cover politics and the real issues that drive voters lives.

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oneroom May 10 2012, 22:59:37 UTC
According to our local alternative news blog, the I Can Haz Cheezburger conglomerate will soon add a news feed to their lineup.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/05/08/whats-he-building-in-there

The only woman on their web page is Soraya Darabi.

I feel not too excited.

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purejuice May 11 2012, 00:04:47 UTC
sounds like citizen journalism, ie., people send in their dispatches and ben has an app for that. the news as mind control? good luck with that.

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