Pumpkin Center Charlie’s Girl: Current media trends trouble this journalist

By Kay Wilson

I so yearn to sit through some of my mentor-teacher classes again. What Mrs. Eckert, Mrs. Alcott or Mrs. McCord would say about today’s news outlets would amaze me, I’m sure.

For decades, the readers of newspapers have demanded dirt on the front, above the fold. Publishers of metro newspapers have satisfied the reading public’s insatiable appetite for gore and unseemly accounts of our society’s underbelly. It has been all about the bottom line, and if the market wants it, most of the big boys deliver just that.

I take great pride in stating that the Nodaway News Leader has never been an ambulance chaser for our news. Sirens equal someone is having one of the worst days of their life. A news reporter on the scene is truly unnecessary in my eyes. In fact, reporters with cameras have been known to get in the way of the first responders who are working to save lives.

The national media today, whether you read a newspaper, watch cable news or listen to radio programs, give us the hype of every move in Washington, DC. It is making most of us shout, “Enough!” Overload is an understatement. While I’m not sure I would label it fake news, because it may be legit, I would call it truly unnecessary.

Before January 1, I would only get my national news from PBS and NPR, but now I think the writers of their news have also drunk the poison. The slant of the verbage, especially the adverbs and adjectives that describe the nouns, should force a hard news story to be labeled as an opinion piece. It is a sad state of affairs.

Speaking of affairs, I realize the challenge of filling a page or a news slot in broadcast. But, to drone on and on about someone’s carousing with their latest fling, or better yet an encounter which dates back a decade, is not newsworthy. These negative events involving our presidents date back to our country’s beginnings.

The other news bite of today that makes my hair catch on fire is about Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It seems a big surprise to some that all the stuff that we put on Facebook is fodder for some data company to use, skew and sell to the highest bidder. Big Brother knows more about us than we can imagine in our wildest dreams.

My final note is about business, the NNL business. I want to address how you can make your next promotion or legal advertisement, an item your constituency needs to know about, reach the most mailboxes of readers who pay a subscription to learn what’s going on. Nodaway News Leader subscribers consume every page, picture and, I would suggest, word of each edition. Before you place your next legal or promotional message, ask for the number of mailboxes it will reach.