Detachment

Detachment:

Now we begin to move away from publishing and marketing decisions towards editorial decisions.

The writing style of newspapers, is often a “just the facts” type interpretation of the news. The inverted pyramid style, while useful in many respects, places a premium on factual information and less of a premium on what those facts mean in the broader context.

More generally, though, it dehumanizes the paper. Reading a list of facts makes the news robotic. I would not say boring: reading “Hijackers fly two planes into WTC buildings; thousands killed” is factual. But it’s almost machine parse-able. Some days it sounds like journalists at most newspapers couldn’t even pass a Turing test. This emotional disengagement has traditionally been in the news. Only recently, however, has it been a major problem with news delivery.

A large section of the populace, especially the young, believes not only that there is no need to keep up with the news in order to govern a daily life, but that even if one did, the newsmakers were so insulated from public opinion there would be nothing that could be done about it.

This was not caused by the facts-only writing styles of newspapers, but the “facts-only” style of writing can help enforce that trend. In short, it seems as if newspaper reporters write the news without believing themselves that it matters. (This may actually be true.)

Note that journalists do not need to sensationalize, dumb-down, or switch from hard-to-soft leads in writing. All a journalist has to do in order to humanize the paper is to explain what will happen if no change occurs, how to change it, and to include more personal details in the story. If the story is on Social Security for example, and the proposed changes would affect a middle-class family of four, then find a middle class family of four to talk to.

More importantly, the tone of writing should be less of a lecture style of writing, and take on more conversational tones. It should feel like a human is writing it.