I couldn't help but laugh the other day when viewing the top stories on Yahoo.com the other day. Yahoo! has a slideshow feature on their front page that shows four top stories at a time, and users can cycle through the stories four at a time. Of the four main stories on their homepage, two were about sports and the other two were about celebrities. Not until the 7th or 8th series of top stories were relevant issues like politics or the economy discussed. I found it amusing that "Celebrities' hair makeovers" was considered more of a top story to Yahoo! than "Iran restricts studies."
This got me thinking about the section in chapter four about how editors must decide which stories to feature on the front page. According to the text, "The front page identifies the editors' selection of the of the most important events of the day, influences which stories will be the most visible, and provides a key measure of success for reports . . ." Using this logic, if I wanted to be a successful reporter, I could simply journal the hair styling of Miley Cyrus and be on the front page everyday. Editors continue to load websites and newspapers with junk, which only influences other writers and journalists to produce more junk.
There is a huge influence that these articles have on the public. By seeing these pop-culture related articles on the front page everyday, people are influenced to take an interest in pop-culture. This in turn leads people to discussion on pop-culture, and away from discussion on issues that actually matter. I title my post "Playing Us Like Puppets" because I believe this is exactly what editors want. Editors do not want readers to be reminded of poverty and murder when they read their content, so they choose to include other content with little meaning. This is also beneficial to advertisers who pay to advertise with the content producers, as their advertisements are not being displayed on the same pages as crime scenes. The more we see pop-culture in the media, the more we are lead to believe that these "celebrities" are relevant. If editors chose to display the current events of Congress on front pages, than discussions amongst the public would be more informed and of greater intellect.
Kevin, speaking of celebrity culture, check out this!
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I thought that this was a pretty interesting blog. I also go to yahoo and look over the "top stories" on their front page but I never really stop to think about how their main stories have nothing to do with news at all, they are just entertainment. It is interesting to see what some companies will do to grab someones attention and what information they will ignore.
ReplyDeleteI think that this blog is very interesting, and it is also very true. The way that many different forms of media follow celebrities and make them seem like they are the top news is ridiculous. Over the summer with all of the Lindsay Lohan "breaking news", I really came to realize how much unnecessary coverage these stars are getting. When there is so many other incidents happening everyday that affect our lives much more than what celebrity most recently got arrested, it makes you wonder why these editors are choosing to run the articles they do. I think that as long as an audience remains interested then the content will not change, and right now in our societty many people do enjoy reading about pop culture so I don't see the change happening any time soon.
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