Postulated: There are too many news outlets chasing too little news.

[JohnT]

DRose, in another thread, posted the following:

N.D. City Council Cancels Male Dance Show

By Associated Press

October 29, 2005, 12:58 AM EDT

JAMESTOWN, N.D. -- An official with Australia's "Thunder from Down Under" male revue called cancellation of a scheduled North Dakota performance...

from Newsday

Why would anybody care? What in the world would possess Newsday (a paper that publishes in the New York City area (Long Island, to be exact)) to run a piece about a group of inbred preachers in a town of 14,000 (in a state which itself ranks 47th out of 50 in population) who don't want some stupid travelling show in their town?

I mean - who cares? They don't want the revue in their town, they don't want the revue in their town. The quesion is Why is this national news???

Simple: There are too many news outlets chasing too few stories. That's why these people, making a decision that affects, maybe, 100 people, are all of a sudden national news. That's why that stupid bint who ran away from her husband this last summer was national news. Small towns and stupid bints have been making dumb decisions for thousands of years - but it's only recently that hundreds of millions of otherwise properly non-caring citizens are forced to endure their stories, even if they assiduously try not to.

And I don't know what the freak-all to do about it except ignore it the best I can.

[GePap]

Thank god not form the NY Post... Newsday is OK.

As for the question: the "news" business is just that, a competative business. Sometimes newspapers need to fill in time, and they use filler that attracts viewers.

There are tons of news out there that the news industry does not actually cover, like municipal issues, better investigative reporting (which is expensive), and actual news form around the world. BUt the people who run the news business figures the public actually doesn't want to know those things, and thus to survive, sticks to filler, gossip, silly pieces from the AP, whatever.

The problem is not "too many sources, not enough material". The problem is that the News Business figures its there to tell people what they want to know, not what they need to know.

[Last Conformist]

I think the world would be a better place if we got rid of all the tabloids. Damn freedom of the press.

[Colonâ„¢]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141140

See, people do find it important.

[Darkstar]

It's a feel good story. As in "Make our readers feel good they are so much better than ..."

Most news outlets do that. They through in the "You are Better then all Others" stories into the mix, so that their audience can get a warm and fuzzy.