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CNN Sending Eight Times More Staff to Royal Wedding Than to Japan
- JoshKalkbrenner 16y agoDoes Traffic = Ad revenue?
- hsmyers 16y agoViewing = (indirectly post ratings review) = Ad revenue
- ScottBurson 16y agoCan only upvote. I'm speechless.
- incomethax 16y agoIf you were a CNN reporter, would you rather go to a fancy wedding or a disaster region? I can't help but think this factors a bit into where the reporters are going. It also saddens me that we as a society are willing drive our attention (and ad dollars) to weddings over disasters and wars.
- colanderman 16y agoDo the reporters really have that much say where they go? (Or at least enough to alter their overall distribution?)
- CallMeV 16y agoPanem et circenses. It's keeping the public's attention diverted from our clown governments comprising the deplorable, the despotic, the despised and the damned.
- zdw 16y agoSensationalist bottom feeder People magazine crap gets a lot of attention. I wish that we as a culture were more concerned about things that really mattered. Unfortunately, we have people obsessed with how they look and what's going on in "famous people's lives", 90% of which is tabloid distortion or outright fabrication. I blame marketing for this. People are convinced they need stuff they don't really need, and the best way to do it is to say "person you admire uses X". The reason CNN is sending all these people is they know it will make result in great ad revenue. sigh
- jerf 16y ago"I blame marketing for this." OK, but why does the marketing work? I'd submit the marketing is more effect than cause. We have significant support in the human brain for tracking social status and the leaders of the (perceived) hierarchy. We don't have very much support for "important long-term risks and issues". It may be unfortunate, it may yet kill us all, but it's not surprising.
- zdw 16y agoMarketing fundamentally is about matching up a solution with a need, and convincing that the solution being provided is better than others. The problem is that often there are solutions with no need, thus the need is manufactured (becomes a want). My wager is that celebrity coverage, and the products that advertise on that time are nearly all in the category of wants, and often frivolous/stupid ones at that.
- jerf 16y agoI don't think anyone had to create a need to observe the ranking of the perceived-by-the-brain-as-local social hierarchy. Gossip has been with us for as long as recorded history goes back. This is nothing more than the gossiping impulses translated into modern connected society.
- wtn 16y agoCNN, NYT, MTV et al will continue to trend tabloid as the number of alternative sources of information grows, bleeding away their "serious" audiences. While it is sad to see this crap get more concentrated over time, it's not really helpful to stress over it. Is the breadth and depth of content apart from television and outside the mainstream getting better? Probably yes. Cable TV subscriber counts began declining in 2009.
- zdw 16y agoThe sad thing about the internet is that you can insulate yourself from any opinion that you might disagree with. For an obvious political example, I know people who only read sites like The Drudge Report or Huffington Post. They self align with those viewpoints, and anyone who disagrees becomes the enemy. It's a tribalist resurgence, and I don't see a solution to this - there are no even handed debates anymore. Why is this? Marketing wants hits, so you get link bait headlines, and anything that will get hits even if it lacks merit gets pushed out the door for ad revenue.
- forgotAgain 16y agoThe PBS News Hour is the only real news program left.
- jacobolus 16y agoThat’s been the case for 20 years. There has never been enough quality reporting to fill a 24-hour news channel, and so the time is naturally filled with easy garbage like popular scandals and blathering pundits many with undeclared agendas.
- johnny22 16y agoand most people don't watch it all day in any case. The stories must be repeated during the times you have various surges in viewers (6am-9am), (3-6pm), etc..
- colanderman 16y agoMy local NPR station does a good job filling up 24 hours. There are some repeats of course but very little of it is the crap you'd find on CNN.
- jacobolus 16y agoNPR doesn’t need footage, their programming is more than half something-other-than-news, they repeat programs a few times, and most importantly they’re funded by subscription and grants, rather than by advertising dollars driven by ratings. They do substantially better work than CNN, but they’re not really analogous.
- estel 16y agoI wonder if the networks' bureau size has any play in this. As large as Japan is, it wouldn't necessarily surprise me if a large part of the 400 staff were based out of London regularly and that the London office were a few times larger than the Tokyo one. Not that I'm defending this absurd proportioning of reporting, just looking for other factors.
- fourspace 16y agoAt the end of the day, we get what we celebrate. They're only doing this because it's likely that they'll receive 8x the ratings for the royal wedding than for Japan coverage. Sad, but true.
- muhfuhkuh 16y agoSo, the new informal credo for journalism should be "if it blings it leads" instead of "if it bleeds it leads"? Doesn't rhyme, though :(
- anigbrowl 16y agoIt makes sense in a strange way. For a disaster or war, you put as few people in harm's way as possible, and overdub the reports in other languages for non-English markets in the studio. Viewers need facts and often the images speak for themselves, and the nature of the situation justifies endless replay of the same bits of footage. For showbiz/celebratory type stories, almost all the reporting (in multiple languages) is talking to camera because viewers who care about that stuff want the experience of being there, so they enjoy it vicariously via the reporter. Also, there needs to be a much larger flow of material because people who want to be entertained get bored more easily. There's a huge audience for this sort of thing. I was reading an economics paper a few months ago observing that the wedding of Charles and Diana generated the equivalent of 8 or 9 billion dollars in today's money, over the course of 20 years. This upcoming one is expected to add something like a billion to the UK economy just this year.
- stonemetal 16y agoTo add to your line of reasoning, the wedding is of short duration but there will be thousands of (famous people that your average viewer will recognize) people to interview. The japan incident doesn't have that. It is a much slower event, it is all aftermath and ongoing work on the reactor. While the number of people effected is greater the number of officials, pundits, and famous(to their audience) people to interview on location is much smaller.
- imr 16y agoGood point, not to mention the fact that sending people to Japan or other disaster would require additional logistics planning or add strain to a damaged local food supply chain.
- iuygthyjuk 16y agoHave you tried public transport in London ? Or the local food.
- imr 16y agoAs a matter of fact, yes and I found them to be both adequate. The university I attended (USA based) sends freshman overseas during spring break for a ridiculously small amount of money. I chose to go on the London trip.
- georgieporgie 16y agoWhat's the point of sending English speaking journalists to Japan, where they typically do intro pieces from the streets of Tokyo, then segue into footage provided by Japanese news organizations? At last in England they'll understand what's going on around them...
- estel 16y agoBrilliant point. News organisations can really annoy me when they send reporters to the scene of an event just to do the same piece to camera that they could easily have back in the studio, and this is further compounded if they don't speak the languages necessary to do proper reporting. Also, in a country that's struggling to recover from a disaster, every news organisation sending hundreds of reporters to the region might be a huge drain on resources.
- CallMeV 16y agoThere's a reason why they still send out reporters to get their boots on the ground and try and figure out what's actually happening. Research. Any lazy journalist can just sit back, crib a whole bunch of feed and stills and press releases floating off he internet and boilerplate it into the column inches without bothering to make even the most cursory check for facts, but there's a word for such slack jawed lacklustre button pushing: churnalism. People used to complain about news helicopters flying over scenes of disasters such as flooding, saying things like "Why don't they pick up some of the stragglers and ship them to safety?" The answer is: Because that is not their job. Reporting on what is going on is. And that means going in there, asking questions, getting the agency to rope in a native speaker to translate where needed, and actually bearing witness to the sort of things that end up on your screen, or in print. They have to go in there and report, because nobody else is going to - and if nobody else reports, nobody will know how bad things are until that ignorance comes back and bites us. Journalists - at least the ones truly earning their crust - do what they do because they have a compelling need to show the world what they do not know, and need to know. They are the ones whose job it is to bear witness.
- 16y ago
- jsdalton 16y agoI was having a conversation with an editor I work with about CNN the other day, when the following occurred to me: I feel like the root of CNN's problem is that they have more or less abandoned the pursuit of "quality" reporting in favor of "popular" stories. In any publication, there is always this tension between quality and popularity. Consider how much has been going on in the world this past week, in particular with regards to the earthquake in Japan and the uprisings in the Middle East. I've been following those stories closely on the NY Times, which in my opinion has done some excellent reporting on both topics. Now consider the "most popular articles" on the Times right now: 1. The Times Announces Digital Subscription Plan 2. The Quad: Grant Hill’s Response to Jalen Rose 3. Paul Krugman: The Forgotten Millions 4. Pogue's Posts: ‘Chimping’ and Other Photo-Taking Tips 5. David Brooks: Social Science Palooza II 6. Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them 7. William D. Cohan: Degrees of Influence? 8. Timothy Egan: Frankenfish Phobia 9. Letter: A Letter to Our Readers About Digital Subscriptions 10. SAT’s Reality TV Essay Stumps Some You know, I probably end up reading half the articles that appear on the Times's most popular list, and I enjoy them greatly. But if the Times just gave up on doing "real" reporting and focused instead on these kinds of "popular" topics -- well, I'm sure I'd pretty quickly lose interest in the publication and go find another source of news and interesting tidbits. Which brings me back to CNN. I just have this feeling that this is what their business team was seduced by. Somebody looked at their numbers and said, "Hey, we don't get nearly as many viewers when we run an in-depth expose on the state of women's education in Afganistan as we do when we broadcast Lindsay Lohan's court proceedings live. So let's just ditch that newsy stuff and focus on what our viewers really want." This strategy of following what's most popular probably works in the short run. But in the long run, it can be devastating to your brand if it comes at the expense of quality.
- knweiss 16y ago"Earthquake terror figures rise Princess Di is wearing a new dress" -- "New Dress" / Depeche Mode (1986)
- Tichy 16y agoI don't think the disaster victims care much for more reporters. Total non-issue.
- mc32 16y agoDoes Japan need any more foreign reporters who don't know Japanese to report on the tragedy? They encumber Japan less by sending fewer reporters. I see this as a win-win. They can send more, in-depth, reporters when things have settled so they can do their investigative stuff and give some insight. Sending people right now would be more or less taking advantage of a fresh disaster story and riding it till it had no more to give. I don't see how it's a bad thing that they're not sending more reporters to Japan. Keeps the sensationalism down, puts less strain on a strained infrastructure, etc.
- thingie 16y agoHow would the figures have differed if the earthquake was properly announced six months in advance?
- edge17 16y agocnn is in the business of viewership, not news... you know, kinda like mtv
- metageek 16y agoIt's kinda sad; they used to be good, 20 years ago. They really made their mark covering Gulf War I. Although I suppose I'm not sure whether they were good, or just better than other TV coverage of the time.
- brazzy 16y agoPet peeve: the first Gulf War began over 30 years ago. It did not involve the USA directly, though they were providing military aid to Iraq.
- philwelch 16y agoWhile some people refer to the 1980's Iran-Iraq was as the "First Persian Gulf War" and the 1991 was as the "Second Persian Gulf War", most of the usage I've seen is to call them the "Iran-Iraq War" and "Persian Gulf War", respectively. If it makes you feel any better, there were a half dozen world wars before World War I and World War II.
- kmfrk 16y agoThat's a horrible, but astute observation. I can't believe I still want to believe that they are doing what they do for journalistic reasons.
- edge17 16y agoi was done with cnn when I saw a segment titled 'who would jesus vote for?' during the last primary, and their anchors were sitting around a table having a debate.
- eof 16y agoI think this makes perfect sense. That wedding has been being planned for a long time; CNN knew it would be the media event of the season.. so they are probably setting up a lot of infrastructure.. sending managers.. etc as this whole to do. The staff going to Japan would necessarily be much leaner. I wonder how many "journalists" as opposed to "staff" went to Japan vs the wedding.
- evo_9 16y agoProbably for the best, this disaster-porn obsession is pretty sickening.
- VladRussian 16y agoJohn, do you wanna go to London, report on the wedding, live in the nice hotel, eat at the nice restaurant, all expenses paid? Or there is also another job available - Japan, increased radiation levels, hot water and electricity may be available at the hotel,...
- Vivtek 16y agoI'd pick disaster-Japan in a heartbeat. I'm probably not alone here in that attitude, which is why there's such outrage about this.
- VladRussian 16y agowould you need 8 morons to accompany you on the trip, or better them being distracted somewhere else?
- Vivtek 16y agoHa! Point taken!
- motters 16y agoThe aristocracy represents the worst aspects of Britain - the cronyism, unthinking deference, inflexible adherence to tradition and gigantic social class divisions. As far as is possible I intend to avoid watching or reading anything about the royal wedding when it occurs.
- LostInTheWoods2 16y agoI've long ago given up on CNN and other cable news networks. All the cable news channels are dumbed down to the point of annoyance. The only exception is CNBC, which of course is financial news. CNBC, perhaps because of its focus on the economic perspective seems to keep closer to the facts, and also gives more interesting analysis. One thing for sure, CNBC, wont be covering the royal wedding. They may at most, show a clip of it, followed by how much it cost the British taxpayer.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- zephjc 16y agoExcept it appears that, according to an update, CNN is sending 'only 50 "reporters, cameramen and crew"' to the wedding. The WSJ (who first reported this about CNN) is refusing to retract it because, well, that's just the kind of quality reporting you get from the modern WSJ.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThe traditional media has not been about journalism. It has been about portraying the appearance of journalism, which has always generated just as much revenue at a fraction of the cost. This is why I'll be happy when the old guard finally goes bankrupt.
- jsz0 16y agoIt's worth considering that the people who watch cable news may very well want huge coverage of a royal wedding. Why not? It's a made-for-TV event. Very entertaining to some folks. Increasingly the people who want better/faster coverage are going elsewhere. Throughout the disasters in Japan one of the best sources of news I found was an individual doing live translations from JP news sources on U-Stream. From there NHK-TV doing live coverage of press conferences. I don't see any good reason to wait around for the western media to spoon feed me information in-between commercials for erection drugs.
- j_baker 16y agoLet's be fair. Knowing CNN, the analysis will probably be more than 8 times as deep as their analysis of Japan. Don't underestimate CNN when it comes to overanalyzing the most trivial of issues.