Yes, the news is less entertaining than Friends, so we need other reasons to watch. But those reasons — including voter participation, party affiliation, and educational expectations about following the news — have weakened in the past three decades. We need to turn the tide. But what can we do?
Plenty. First, we must raise our expectations for high-school students. To offer a model of how this might be done, consider the fact that while political participation and news consumption have declined, volunteerism is on the rise. When I posed that anomaly to Brandeis students, one offered what is probably the most plausible explanation: Volunteerism is a requirement for the National Honor Society and an expectation at many colleges. Why not make civic knowledge a requirement for college admissions?
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Students who don’t pay attention to politics cede their political power to their elders and their more-involved peers. And without political power they are screwed. An e-mail message about that would be a scary one indeed. —David T. Z. Mindich —Dude, Where’s Your Newspaper? (Mindich|Chronicle)
With the summer break starting to wane, I’m pondering the task I face when I teach “Newswriting” this fall.
If you think of journalism as a noble civic vocation, one of the chief virtues of a good journalist is the ability to make the important seem interesting. A trained chimpanzee could make a TV news story out of hidden-camera footage of car wash attendants stealing change or nannies smacking their children, but campaign finance reform?
Post was last modified on 19 Jul 2022 10:42 pm
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Lou, why do people need to accept that news is boring? Of course, not everyone is interested in the same things, but journalists need to hone their skills on the school board meetings and county planning meetings, so that when the huge stories break, they are ready for the coverage that people use to determine what cities they want to live in, whether they feel a war is justified, etc.