Don’t be ashamed to serve the audience
He doesn’t post often but when he does people seem to listen, and especially when Rob Curley starts talking about local news and audience I start to listen.
Curley argues, again, the news industry should not be ashamed by giving the audience what they want, which is a hard reality for many editors and reporters to get.
At every newspaper I’ve worked at, I’ve seen this to be true. If you give the readers their Kansas Jayhawks basketball story — even on the front page if it’s a big game — then they’ll also find the story on corruption in the police department. You give them what they want and you give them what they need.
A perfect example at where I work is the fact that accident stories and crime are well read on our web site but often those pieces get buried in the B section of the print product.
However, online we do post the smoking ban story and how the city council won’t respond to residents at meetings any more, which actually has been getting a lively discussion going. So, in my opinion, we are giving the readers what they want and what they need.
Curley’s point is this and it has been said before: If we don’t listen to our audience we will quickly become irrelevant both as information providers and as solid businesses.
He starts off his post with a quote from Paul Swider, who was one of many who took part in a discussion forum about local news on Poynter, and I will end with it here:
… if we don’t ask what the customers want and respond, we’re done. Right now, we’re in a limbo between that and some idealistic view of journalism as art form produced for its own sake. I don’t think that when the readers ask for french fries we can insist they take brussels sprouts. We could offer nutritious french fries.
The productivity of a work group seems to depend on how the group members see their own goals in relation to the goals of the organization.