Wednesday, December 3, 2008

NPR beating print

I figure I would have my last post be about how print is getting its but kicked by radio

Over the past couple months, I have gotten hooked on podcasts from NPR. The one that sticks out the most is "Planet Money." It is more or less a blog and podcast breaking down the financial crisis issues down, so ordinary citizens can understand what is going on.

For my money, I have not seen any print news journalism come even close to how good they are. Print has not been good at defining terms (simply laying them out there, leaving the reader scratch their head) or talking about the issues.

Print journalism needs to step it up. If a reporter is talking about the Dow Jones falling, the reader needs to know what that is, and why it is important. The reader needs to know why inflation is going to cause trouble for middle-class Americans. The readers need to know why Zimbabwe is going through hyperinflation, and why it is important to them. They need to know it in the simplest terms possible.

It is not explained very well, and it can be. Print journalism usually takes the lead for being through and very investigative, but in this case, they are falling behind. I advise reporters everywhere to step it up, because competition is getting harsh.

That is all I have to say about that.

2 comments:

Meghan said...

One difficulty newspapers has that radio doesn't is space restrictions. Sure, the online medium can help with unlimited space, but with radio, it can be easier at times to verbally explain something rather than try to do it via the written word.

Katie O'Connell said...

I completely agree with your Heisig. While it may be hard for print mediums to explain things because of space restrictions, they do have the ability to tell stories graphically. From the coverage I've seen of the recession, many news outlets have not taken advantage of this ability. Instead they are still relying on the traditional written word.

NPR has taken great strides to explain the current economic crisis. Kudos to you for listening.