THE SUN-SENTINEL IN South Florida has eliminated its national and international desks.They will now focus on local news, all of the time, because people can get international and national news from various places online.
Is this a wise business decision - eliminating a part of the paper no one read, and one that wasn't staffed by Sun-Sentinel staff anyway?
Or is this going to create an audience with no appreciation for national or world events?
Doesn't this directly connect to what we've been talking about in class?
5 comments:
I don't believe it will create an audience with no appreciate for national and world events, I mean, as you said there are various other sources where they can get their world wide news and it's unlikely that they depended on the paper as their only source. I feel the switch to local could possibly draw a new crowd; you'd be amazed at how many people don't know what's going on right in their own backyard. (sometimes literally)
I still think that they should include at least, briefs. Just a little column.
I think it's important to keep international/nation sections in newspapers because even with the advent of the internet, you can't alienate readers who do care about international politics but still prefer local newspapers.
I rather resent my local newspaper from home because they did away with the two pages covering national and international events for more local news (mostly dealing with my own school's fighting reputation).
I think it's obviously an intelligent business transaction but I don't think it's an ethical one.
If your obligation is to the truth, it's the whole truth. Not just one area's perspective of truth. The world is becoming increasingly a "global village," and so what is happening in Japan, Russia, France, and the Czech Republic affects us and we should be educated about it.
Although internet does that, I don't think newspapers should do away with it entirely because people are more likely to accept what is in a newspaper as fact than what is online, and sometimes these messages are urgent.
Like for example, the Burma protests. When non-violent monks are being charged by tanks, I want to know by a quick and reliable source, not hearsay via an internet blog.
I think its an incredibly smart decision. I think that, contrary to what Miss Reese said, if your obligation is to the truth, its better to cover a smaller area to better present the facts. Thats why specialists are used on panels, for research and anything else invovled with data evaluation and presentation. I'm not sayin we should ignore world events, however, papers or sources that deal with specific niches arent bad. That's why magazines do so well. I think a trend of papers to cover more specific areas, even if it be national papers just staying on a purely national level, would not be a bad thing at all.
To be honest, you can lead a horse to water but u cant make it drink. Having world events doesnt mean people will read them. And if the horse is thirsty, I'm sure it will look somewhere else.
I was reading the Courier Post (a South Jersey community newspaper) and I was thinking the same thing about local papers only concentrating on local news and not including global news.
Colleen bringing up the Burmese monks was a great example. In the Courier Post, I only found tiny blurbs on the side of the one page "World" section. In the New York Times, there was a great article with testimonials from a few Burmese people.
It's great that the Sun Sentinel is saving money and all (since JOURNALISM IS A BUSINESS), but it's our duty as human beings to make sure we are not ignorant about what's going on in our country and world. If our newspapers can't provide that for us, what will?
I think it would have been wise to keep a small portion of International/ National news in the paper. Maybe just a small, simple summary of each story. However, business is business and if this was the best choice money-wise, then by all means, go for it. I don't think this will cause people to be less interested in other parts of the world. People already go online to get that information anyway.
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