Short Attention Spans

I'm majoring in broadcast news, and many of my assignments for classes have been news packages. Basically, we use the same format as any other TV news source, whether it's Channel 7 in Denver, or MSNBC. This means we have to try to tell a succinct, compelling story in as little as one minute. This is definitely easier said than done and probably one of the reasons I don't think I'll be pursuing a career in broadcast news. When I tell a story, I like there to be depth and detail, and substance, which is all very hard to fit into a one to two minute package.

I think the media, specifically television and Internet news, have conditioned their audiences to accept and except such brevity in stories. My professors have hammered in the idea that unless you hook your viewers in within the first 10 seconds or so, they're probably going to be changing the channel. When we learned to turn our broadcast stories into web stories, the same thing was true; an eye-catching headline and intriguing lead sentence means you might just be able to keep your readers interested enough to finish reading the story.

Audiences might be able to take in more news with the brief methods of TV and Internet news. However, I feel like trying to tell a complicated story in such a short space just leads to confusion and a longing for more information and details (if it's newsworthy, or even just an enteraining story). An article that appeared in the Daily Camera illustrates this perfectly. The story had an attention-grabbing headline, and then was nothing more than a 275 word article that many readers complained was too simplified, watered-down, and generally lacking in facts.

Journalism needs to go in a direction where it is something of substance again, and not merely a fleeting bit of fluff that will only satisfy those with short attention spans.