We started something new on TV6 news in the last couple of weeks–we call it the Facebook Story of the Day.
I’ll admit right up front that I’m not entirely comfortable with the concept, but then again, I’m an old man who has gathered and presented news in the conventional, old fashioned way for more than three decades.
I’m the old dog and this thing, Facebook, is a new trick that I’m just now starting to learn.
The rationale behind the Facebook Story of the Day is this: Conventional newscasts are steadily losing their audience, so by asking the Facebook crowd what stories they want us to cover, we might be able to pull this lost audience back to our newscasts, or at least to our website.
On its face, the idea makes sense.
Most in the Facebook crowd do not watch nightly newscasts. Hell, most Americans these days don’t watch nightly newscasts.
And beyond that obvious motivation of trying to attract viewers and website visitors to our TV station and website, there’s also this: sometimes, we, the “news gods,” are out of touch with what people really care about. Sometimes we need a reality check. Sometimes we need to ask people–those who aren’t in the business–what’s truly important to them.
That’s what we get on Facebook.
The problem with that approach is that, much too often, people care more about the latest Charlie Sheen misadventure than they do about the profound change that is sweeping over the Middle East, so we end up covering Charlie Sheen and ignoring the Middle East.
I’m not comfortable with that, and most journalists worth a damn aren’t comfortable with it.
So how do we reconcile this need to be relevant and popular and in tune with the times, with our determination to follow our journalistic compass?
I’m not sure. I’m not sure anybody knows. We’re all learning on the run, and it’s tough to keep up in a world where the technology and means of communication are constantly changing.
What the heck ever happened to My Space, anyway?