How Can Journalists Make the Significant Interesting, Without Making it Sensational?

Oh, how I enjoy reading and digesting incredibly sensational news. I understand the novelty, inaccuracy and sometimes tackiness found therein. However, I would be a self-proclaimed liar if I were to say that I don’t thoroughly enjoy partaking in such a type of news (if it even can be considered news).

When we as journalists, however, take into account and truly try to understand what the public needs as to what the public wants, we can appease both their desire for their news to be factual and informative as well as interesting and captivating. The public, like a magnet to steel, is powerfully attracted to quick, memorable and especially extraordinary information. Although, most of the time the type of information the public needs to hear or read isn’t particularly extraordinary. Yet, this news stories do need to be heard and read. Journalists sometimes fall into a rut where in efforts to sell more papers or get more viewers, they seek out the scandalous and sensational stories. This can be dangerous as evidenced in this article: http://www.dailysource.org/about/problems#.UJLqf8XA_K0

So what are journalists to do? How can a journalist make the important news stories interesting without going overboard and dramatizing or trivializing the situation?

I don’t have all of the answers, but I have come up with a few suggestions that I believe when instituted in modern journalism will capture a much larger and interested audience. One thing a journalist could do is to provide more numbers and physical evidence as to why certain situations are becoming the way that they are. For example, if Idaho’s water table is being affected by a new pesticide, then it would be in the journalist’s best interest to involve how much geographically of Idaho’s water will be undrinkable or unusable, as well as the number of people affected by the poisoned water. Which cities have been hit the strongest by this unsafe water? The answers to these questions are the type of information that would make an informative story interesting as well.

            Secondly, using stronger and more effective dialogue in news stories makes the story bound to be interesting. Let the public hear from the public themselves. Don’t get quotes for the sole purpose of just getting quotes. Make them worthwhile.

            Lastly, journalists should constantly remind themselves of the reader’s situation. The journalist should always put himself or herself in the reader’s shoes and thus delineate how the information is being conveyed.

            These few suggestions should help a journalist make the significant interesting, without making it sensational.