Telling a story implies an audience. Defining news-which is the content of the journalist\u2019s story involves determining the relationship between events and the interests of your public. Thus the concepts of story and news are inseparable from an awareness of audience or reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may dream of writing the Big Story that will be read by everyone in the world, but it\u2019s only a dream. Even the most important international stories reach only a fraction of the world\u2019s population. And usually reporters write for a far more limited audience: the readers, listeners, or viewers in a precisely defined geographical area. The newspaper or broadcast station\u2019s first goal is to serve its own trade area. Most stories, therefore, are primarily of local or regional interest. The community-its economy, geography, history, traditions, and ethnic composition-plays a large role in determining what constitutes news. For example, a story from Cuba presumably is more important to people in nearby Miami than it would be to Kansans. And a story from Oslo or Stockholm will attract more readers in Minneapolis, with that city\u2019s large population of Scandinavian descent, than it would in Houston, New Orleans, or Santa Fe. Similarly, a change in the price of gold automatically is top priority news in Lead, South Dakota, whose only industry is the Home stake Gold Mine. And the price of corn means more in Iowa than in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No community, of course, is an entirely homogeneous group of people. Instead, it consists of many small publics within the general public. Each of these special groups is united by a common bond of interest, And to build and hold mass circulation, newspapers must recognize the particular interests of each group-blue-collar workers\u201d farmers, businessmen, the aged, ethnic minorities, the poor, sports fans, youth, house- wives, parents of school children, the family and friends of the bride. Reporters soon learn to write for numerous publics with interests they may not share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interests Shared by All<\/strong>: Regardless of their different interests, all our readers and listeners are human beings, and they are alike in all ways that one human being is like another. No study of the reporter\u2019s audience is complete, therefore, without some examination of what writers call \u201cthe human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawrence Durrell wrote four novels known collectively as The Alexandria Quartet, in which he attempted to demonstrate that in the final analysis all things will be shown true of all people. Perhaps Durrell\u2019s is an overstatement, hut psychologists agree that all humans are much alike, that they are both rational and emotional, that they live in a constant state of conflict between self and society, that they are always struggling to reduce the tension of this conflict. Humans are basically selfish, yearning for freedom yet realizing that without social order no individual can be free. They know they are mortal, that someday they must die, a truth against which they constantly rebel. Since they can\u2019t attain physical immortality, their alternative goal is to live as long and as well as they can.. Most people want love and affection, recognition for their achievements, and status among their peers. All want to be healthy, and most want to prosper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To summarize, all humans want a longer, healthier, and happier life both for themselves and their children, who may be their only ticket to immortality. And, perhaps unconsciously, they expect the media to supply information that will help them attain these goals. Primarily, people want stories that will:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Telling a story implies an audience. Defining news-which is the content of the journalist\u2019s story involves determining the relationship between events and the interests of your public. Thus the concepts of story and news are inseparable from an awareness of audience or reader. You may dream of writing the Big Story that will be read…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111654","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n