Learning by listening
Whenever we're out with friends, I make mental notes on what everyone is talking about. It's beyond being sociable, although it annoys my wife to no end. It's professional. (And I'm pretty sure that half the journalists out there do the same thing.)
Last night, at a dinner party with nine other people, the conversations were, aside from family gossip, about the smoke outside, the heat, gas prices, how far a dollar doesn't go, the alligator in Lake Hamilton and, among the men at least, a bit about Tiger and the Celtics.
Nothing about the "big news" that's traditionally on the front page of newspapers: Nothing on the Iowa floods, the death of Tim Russert or the presidential campaign.
We had a number of those stories on our front pages this week, both the ones we talked about and the ones we didn't. The interest of last night's group was clearly and predominantly local. I didn't try to direct it by mentioning Obama's baby mama or the lake that is Cedar Rapids' downtown. These folks are intelligent and informed; they would talk about what interested them.
One group's conversation isn't the sole arbiter of news judgment. But it is one way to test the winds. (Another is watching the traffic numbers on individual stories on the Web site.) Unless we reflect what people are interested in talking about on our pages, we'll never be considered relevant, much less indispensable.
Comments (1)
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Terrific post, John. It reminds me very much of the great editor Frank McCulloch, who made the L.A. Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner better papers when he ran them. Frank told me about a conversation he had with a young reporter who had just moved into a new condo complex, didn't know anybody there, but was going to a party on the weekend to meet some of her neighbors. "Really?" Frank told her. "Bring a notebook, write down everything they talk about and bring it back to me Monday morning." Voila: Fresh story ideas!
Posted on June 14, 2008 6:18 PM