ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 18, 1997 TAG: 9703180014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: reporter's notebook
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
Actually, I've come to think it may be a bum rap.
I refer to the claim, which Mark Clothier talked about in this space last week, that - with so much good stuff happening every day - reporters focus on the bad.
Mark got the question of why that happens from a teacher in an elementary school class where he was speaking. As he said, it's not an uncommon question. I can remember a minister raising it in his sermon one Sunday while I was in the congregation.
Everybody believes it.
But is it true?
Jack Fuller, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, defines news as "a report of what a news organization has recently learned about matters of some significance or interest to the specific community that news organization serves."
The key words seem to be "significance" and "interest." His examples are that strategic arms limitation talks are newsworthy because they may affect the future of the planet, even if not all readers find them riveting, while Michael Jordan's minor-league baseball performance is of intense popular interest even if it will not influence history as we know it.
There were two front-page stories in the same Current which carried Mark's column. One was on the effect on downtown Radford of Carilion Radford Hospital's relocation to a site off Interstate 81 in 1998. On the surface, that seems like bad news - but the article also talked about how the city was preparing to deal with it, what individual business owners were planning, how new businesses might build toward the new hospital corridor, how the long-range effects on Radford might be positive. This is hardly focusing on just the bad.
The other front-page story was how students in one of the first high school classes of its kind in the state had students learning about international business by studying the economic and social aspects of other countries. What's bad about that?
Or take the five front page stories in today's Roanoke Times (today being Wednesday of last week; we write these columns in advance):
A bond hearing for an alleged crime family in Roanoke was postponed because of a possible danger to the witnesses involved. Is that good, bad or neutral?
Five Army women who filed rape charges now say they were coerced into doing so. The Pentagon will look into it. We may not know if it's good or bad until we see how it turns out.
Virginia Military Institute is getting ready for coeducation. Whether that's good or bad may depend on how you feel about women attending VMI.
Virginia has published a fact-based guide to what children should know about history, and when they should know it. There are two schools of thought on the effectiveness of this approach, but is the news itself good or bad?
A national poll indicates that U.S. workers are gripped by malaise once more about their job situations. (OK, maybe that one is bad news.)
There was also a pretty picture of Comet Hale-Bopp, which is brightening our morning skies - bad news only if you're superstitious about comets.
On the front of the Current that day? Rumors of vultures, cougars, rattlesnakes and wolves being imported to the New River Valley are false (Good news, right?), Radford plans to upgrade its business district (also good), and a photo of artwork on the Radford University campus. Maybe Fuller's right about it being "significance" and "interest," not "good" and "bad."
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB