I can remember watching a program on the history channel or PBS about a traditional news journalist on the last days in the newspaper business in the late 20th century.
He tells about how he got in the business and what stories his done that he remembers. I remember one bit of advice he learned in journalism.
If you have a news event you really want to capture people’s attention you can’t just give people stone cold facts. You have to work a narrative story element around the news otherwise people won’t care to pay notice of it because it doesn’t connect with them on a personal level. You have to capture the readers emotion.
It was shocking for the time I saw it in but not now. The last part of the documentary was crazy.
The journalist took a group of young students in to the Congo to do a report on a “general” and his young teenage army of child soldiers. The young boys have part of their stories about killing for the first and forcing women to have sex with them. The visit with the general comes to close with him forcing the journalist and his student journalist to have a nice stakes dinner with him under a tent.
The journalist commented on how good the stake was. It was crazy how they got out alive. But, then again the general did invite the journalist to his compound to interview them and write a story about him. I wonder why? Ego? Pride?
I honestly don’t know even after ten plus sense I watched the documentary.
If you have a story you want people to buy well then any seller will tell you that you have to get the sucker customer emotionally involved to the product so that they’ll buy the product. There is no such thing as a honest reporter without an motive behind why he writes or narratives a story on CNN or commentar on The View.
L. M. Parker