One of the signs of our times is increasingly lazy reporting. As a journalist myself, I know how hard it is to dig up a story, do research, get quality references to interview, ask important and useful questions that yield information to frame an event or incident, then have the time to write the piece cogently and compellingly. It’s easier to cut corners.
And many reporters do. I’d argue it’s part of our human nature. We often look for the easier path. For a journalist, that’s the story handed to you. It falls in your lap, and you take a press release and write a story from that, ignoring any follow-up or calling other sources to get additional perspective to flesh a story out.
We’ve all got the laziness gene, some of us to a greater extent than others. When reporters cut corners to do their jobs, we suffer as readers or viewers of the content. We really don’t know we’ve been shortchanged.
You see lazy reporting playing out often on the pro golf tour. The easy story is Tiger Woods. He’s the great fall back – because he’s so well-known, if there isn’t some other angle to a story (which there always is, BTW), you can write something about Tiger. It’s easy.
You can contemplate his comeback. You can write about his injuries. You can speculate on what’s going to happen next year if he gets better or plays the game at “full strength.”
Those stories don’t require much work. You can easily speculate off the top of your head (something the TV prognosticators and predictors do all the time) and give your opinion as a talking head about something in Tiger’s personal or professional life. You just talk. Or you just write. You don’t call anyone or take notes and go back and read through documents to figure something out. Instead, you can blurt out your perspective. Whooopeeee.
A little over a month ago, as the 2018 pro golf season wound down in the U.S., Woods was starting to become bigger news. But in one of the tournaments, he had disappeared from the leader’s board. Did that make him a non-story? Of course not.
Ignored that week was a major comeback by Jordan Spieth (though he too flamed out on the final day and became a full non-story). Also ignored were two not-so-big golfing names – Kevin Kisner and Xander Schauffele. Even if you follow golf, you need to be down in the weeds a bit to know these guys. But they deserved the headlines. They deserved to have the video clips shown of the phenomenal shots they hit.
But they weren’t. They were side notes.
Lazy reporting insults us. It also manipulates us. We are left few options. Those of us who are industrious and who follow a sport or issue closely, will find ways to get the bigger picture. That’s certainly a huge advantage of having Google handy.
“Top golfers this weekend not named Tiger Woods,” you command to your Google app. You can get the deluge of golfers whose names you don’t know from that simple step.
You might think reporters should do that. But instead they follow the pack. What’s the hot button item of the day? Watch them dance to that tune. It’s too bad because there are so many other more interesting stories out there waiting to be written or broadcast.
And many reporters do. I’d argue it’s part of our human nature. We often look for the easier path. For a journalist, that’s the story handed to you. It falls in your lap, and you take a press release and write a story from that, ignoring any follow-up or calling other sources to get additional perspective to flesh a story out.
We’ve all got the laziness gene, some of us to a greater extent than others. When reporters cut corners to do their jobs, we suffer as readers or viewers of the content. We really don’t know we’ve been shortchanged.
You see lazy reporting playing out often on the pro golf tour. The easy story is Tiger Woods. He’s the great fall back – because he’s so well-known, if there isn’t some other angle to a story (which there always is, BTW), you can write something about Tiger. It’s easy.
You can contemplate his comeback. You can write about his injuries. You can speculate on what’s going to happen next year if he gets better or plays the game at “full strength.”
Those stories don’t require much work. You can easily speculate off the top of your head (something the TV prognosticators and predictors do all the time) and give your opinion as a talking head about something in Tiger’s personal or professional life. You just talk. Or you just write. You don’t call anyone or take notes and go back and read through documents to figure something out. Instead, you can blurt out your perspective. Whooopeeee.
A little over a month ago, as the 2018 pro golf season wound down in the U.S., Woods was starting to become bigger news. But in one of the tournaments, he had disappeared from the leader’s board. Did that make him a non-story? Of course not.
Ignored that week was a major comeback by Jordan Spieth (though he too flamed out on the final day and became a full non-story). Also ignored were two not-so-big golfing names – Kevin Kisner and Xander Schauffele. Even if you follow golf, you need to be down in the weeds a bit to know these guys. But they deserved the headlines. They deserved to have the video clips shown of the phenomenal shots they hit.
But they weren’t. They were side notes.
Lazy reporting insults us. It also manipulates us. We are left few options. Those of us who are industrious and who follow a sport or issue closely, will find ways to get the bigger picture. That’s certainly a huge advantage of having Google handy.
“Top golfers this weekend not named Tiger Woods,” you command to your Google app. You can get the deluge of golfers whose names you don’t know from that simple step.
You might think reporters should do that. But instead they follow the pack. What’s the hot button item of the day? Watch them dance to that tune. It’s too bad because there are so many other more interesting stories out there waiting to be written or broadcast.