Pffffft! This is not news. And really, neither is Meryl Streep slagging Trump. And the only reason Trump is news is that he has actually been elected as the President of the United States of America. However, the ratio of coverage he received before the election while he was campaigning for the Republican nomination and afterwards was ridiculous. Most of what came out of his face was not news. Post 20 January 2017, well that is different.
Journalists really need to actually treat their jobs as a craft. If they are truly passionate about informing people, at least they can present useful information. Not fluff. Of course there is a desire for that too. Probably greater than I would like to admit, but there are sections within the newspaper, both in print and online, for such less paramount tidbits.
I have to admit I have been known to enjoy the "also in the news" or the "stranger than fiction" type articles, but I do not need to be alerted when someone marries a dolphin. Nor do I fret if I do not come across these articles either.
Something that is just as bad, is when you read, or hear, or see, a news story in its infancy and then nothing after that. These are usually local stories, but why report on it initially and then drop it and not even pay any lip service to it by stating no further information is available. I remember a story about a woman in Ottawa who was found near the highway about 100 metres from her car frozen to death. She was older and her car appeared to not have any trouble and she had left the engine running and the driver door was wide open. A coworker and I were interested in the story. We wanted to know what would compel this person to act in this way. Was it dementia? Was it suicide? Was she meeting someone and had an accident or suffered from foul-play?
Why would no one follow up on this odd, yet compelling occurrence. It would be easy for a journalist to get the police report. I am sure an autopsy was conducted that could have shed light on what happened with this person. Nothing, nada, niks, zip, zilch, zero.
Journalism appears to be growing more fleeting (sorry for the oxymoron). Newspapers blame their demise on the internet. Bite me. They were collapsing long before the interweb. They did not want to change, adapt, enter the new online universe. Newspapers and journalists have always been somewhat selective and snobbish. If it is not going to lead to a Pulitzer or the like, then it may not be worth pursuing. Of course they need circulation. Circulation comes from popularity. Circulation means they are actually selling papers, which means they can raise their advertising rates.
Also, newspapers, like television, are funny ducks. They feel you need to pay for the privilege to read/watch their stuff. Advertising revenue is not enough. Free works for regular radio though. It also works for community newspapers, which can be a person's best source for what is happening in their own backyard; often quite literally.
But wait. They are other ways to make money. Factory work, a sausage cart, landscaping. There are plenty of "jobs" out there. Journalism is in a different category, there needs to be a certain type of integrity. There are plenty of free newspapers, in print and online, that do fairly well and include reporting on what can be considered alternate news; the less glamorous, but no less important information people seek. Many of the journalists with these online and local (community) papers are citizen journalists. These free sources can do just as good a job as the Oscar alert sources. Sometimes they do an even better job.
People may complain that CNN is fake news. Well, not really. It at times is poor news or emphasises "not really news". So do most mainstream news providers, as well as the "free" guys and the local guys, both online and in print. Really, at the end of the day, these guys will rise and fall by popular demand, sometimes unfortunately. But please, please, please, do not push a notification about the Oscars as breaking news. It is not news, just some trivial information. blbbl
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