In Yesterday’s New London Day the first three pages were full of stories about a man who abducted his ex-wife. The next couple were about Michael Jackson’s funeral. You had to get to page 5 or 6 before you hit any real news. In today’s paper the front page is again all about the same abduction. It is an interesting fact that this event happened, certainly worthy of coverage somewhere in the paper, but two days of front page coverage? Who cares?
Other than the woman who was abducted, this story has precisely no impact on the ordinary lives of the people of Connecticut.
Buried on page 2, in a News in Brief article, is the fact that our benighted Governor vetoed a health care bill. Support it or not, that bill would have had a lasting impact on the people of this state. People should at least know about it. But according to the Day, it is far less important than a tawdry story about a mentally disturbed, publicity seeking criminal. But why complain? Had it been covered, the substance of the bill would have been ignored in favor of the political gamesmanship involved in its passage or defeat.
I suppose it may be true that people read sensationalistic articles, and tend to glaze over when real issues are covered, but the fact is that TV has it all over the print media when it covers these pseudo-events. After all, besides the breathless anchors, TV offers moving pictures and entirely thought free content, something print can’t do simply because it requires reading.
Print media is dying, in part due to the internet, but also in part because it has abandoned its reason for being. It no longer seeks to inform, preferring to compete with television, from a decided disadvantage, in the titillation derby. It may get some sort of short term advantage by ignoring stories of real importance, but over the long run it only encourages its readers to drift away
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