News - Important and Interesting

“Brand Managers are . . . congenitally incapable of understanding the nature and purpose of journalism” writes Vinod Mehta, one of my favourite journalists in a heartfelt guest article in Agencyfaqs. He says Brand Managers can never understand that content is more, much more, than what readers want. A similar thought was echoed a couple of years back by a senior BBC journalist who compared journalism that only reflects what a majority of people want to read, to a politician who spouts inflammatory rhetoric in front of an angry mob of rioters under the pretext that’s what people want to hear.

Coincidentally, Michael Hirschorn has an even more nuanced perspective on the subject in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. He recommends newspapers to “stop being important and start being interesting”, saying “news” in the classical sense of the word is a commodity today. What is more relevant to people are “non-commodifiable virtues” like deep reporting, distinctive point of view and sharp analysis. All of which actually often get reflected in the “most popular / e-mailed” boxes on the websites of newspapers. And “the most–e-mailed lists suggest that readers will consume meaningful, interesting (and maybe even “important”) journalism if they feel compelled, beguiled, seduced”.

What is interesting to me is how the solution to Vinod Mehta’s plea to give readers more than what they want, give them the unexpected can lie in the online space. And he’ll surely find it gratifying that online lists suggest that people don’t always want to read about Britney Spears. Friedman and Maureen Dowd routinely turn up on the NYT’s most popular lists. There’s hope still.