Soft News, Hard Sell
(Page 2 of 4)
March/April 2000
Suzanne Braun Levine The Nation (www.thenation.com/)
Much 'real news' is ostensibly about civic life, which sounds like it should reflect how families function within the community, but most of the stories are bloodless reports about buildings--the Board of Education, City Hall. Bloodless but, perhaps to attract the attention that gray stone doesn't, brutally confrontational. E.J. Dionne pointed out in Why Americans Hate Politics that the way the media typically report politics--titanic struggles between irreconcilable forces and scandalous behavior by unworthy leaders--only polarizes the issues beyond recognition, and beyond resolution as well.
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In the scramble to save declining newspaper readership, 'reader-friendly' has become the talk and 'civic' or 'public' journalism the walk. The Pew Center for Civic Journalism, created 'to stimulate citizen involvement in community issues,' has funded countless town meetings and focus groups convened by local news outlets in an effort to reconnect with their readers. Their valid premise is that the 'people' are living the stories the journalists should be telling more of, but I am concerned about the implied assumption that the people will say what those stories are. Citizens will eagerly say what they want to read, but their suggestions are circumscribed by the conventions of what qualifies as a 'news story.' Moreover, a person's most troubling concerns are not likely to emerge in response to the question 'What are your most troubling concerns?' It takes a skilled reporter to push and pull until the story is told. In a focus group we express our opinions, but we don't surprise ourselves.
Recently I interviewed young fathers for a book about how they define a new commitment to parenting. The conversations were rambling, anecdotal, and protected by the promise of a pseudonym. I was struck by how, under safe and expansive conditions, the men expressed hopes and anxieties about their work, wives, and children that were as fresh to them as they were to me. I learned that men and women experience everyday family problems--the news beat I am advocating--very differently. Men consider a problem of any kind a challenge, an enemy to be subdued as efficiently as possible. Women, on the other hand, use problem-solving as an opportunity to do several things: to deal with the problem, of course, but also to communicate with others, to clarify thinking, and to gain and offer emotional support.