Editor’s note: The Daily runs a media literacy column by Sarah Cavanah, interim executive director of Oklahoma Scholastic Media and former Daily staff writer, every Tuesday to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at The Daily and media coverage in general.
On Oct. 18, The Daily received a letter from petroleum engineering graduate student Nabil Chavez Majluf questioning The Daily’s coverage of the dramatic mine rescue in Chile — or the lack thereof.
Chavez Majluf, originally from Bolivia, said he thought The Daily failed its readership by not giving more notice to the mine rescue. It’s a frustration I know I’ve heard several times from international students and residents, not just about The Daily, but about the U.S. in general. We can look a little self-centered.
But, I would argue that Chavez Majluf isn’t really seeing the famous “ugly American” phenomenon at work. Instead, I think he’s seeing one of the holes in the news net.
Reporters at The Daily would give their eye teeth for the opportunity to be a witness, interview the miners and their families and report the story.
Obviously, The Daily can’t send reporters to events halfway around the world, and neither can most local news outlets.
For most media, local is king. Before the Internet, local was everything. A printed newspaper is only distributed so far beyond its newsroom, and a television signal can only reach so far. Consequently, generations of journalists were trained to look for what was newsworthy or important in their own backyards before looking beyond the coverage area.
Even when it comes to world events, for instance the Haiti earthquake, the stress is on journalists to find out how that event affects the publication’s audience. In The Daily’s case, that meant finding out what happened to OU students who were in Haiti at the time, and finding out what Haitian students at OU were going through while searching for news.
And here’s where the hole in the net comes in. Chavez Majluf rightly points out that “many students do not have TVs in their dorms or apartments… Many of these students rely on The OU Daily to get informed about events happening… around the world.”
Before the Internet — before radio even — newspapers set up a system so that their local readers could get important news from around the world, just for this purpose. The Daily, for instance, can’t send a reporter to cover the mid-term elections in Delaware, but Delaware papers also can’t send reporters to cover the Oklahoma governor’s race. So, they trade stories.
Many major papers, including The Daily, are part of a collective effort called the Associated Press. Every day, papers upload their stories that might have an interest to readers outside their publications’ reach. Other papers can chose from this pool and run the stories. We call these “wire stories,” and you can find them everywhere from the front page to state, national and world sections.
The system worked — pretty well, at least. But then came the Internet and the great reduction in newspapers.
The Internet allows anyone to go directly to Chilean papers to get news about the mine rescue, or at least to an American national outlet with a reporter on the scene, like NBC or The New York Times. The Internet also opened up a whole new avenue for advertisers. The number of pages in a newspaper is in direct correlation with the number of ads sold for that day. Fewer ads means fewer pages.
Newspapers were faced with a choice. Cut local coverage or cut those wire stories from outside the area. It’s kind of a no-brainer, journalistically speaking. Many, many news organizations covered the Chilean mine rescue. Only a handful, and maybe just one, would even consider running information on how much the lowest-paid staffers at OU get per hour.
The hole is for those students who do still get the main part of their news from The Daily. Some days, there is enough advertising, and therefore enough room, to run in-depth coverage of world events. Some days, all The Daily can do is cover its area well and mention the effort briefly, as it did on the opinion page with a thumbs-up kudos.
Perfect? No. Realistic? Yes. Comprehensive? Absolutely not. But the burden has to be on the reader for that day, at least until we work out a new system that mends that hole.
— Sarah Cavanah, professional writing and journalism graduate
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mustafa 1 year, 6 months ago
Obama's buying up of our own debt, leading to the eventual devaluing and collapse of the dollar, is news relevant to this audience. How about addressing that.