One dog barking

By John Dineen

What is the news for?

I’ve spent the better part of a career in newsrooms, making countless decisions on what is and is not news on any particular day.

Despite that experience — maybe because of that experience — I’m now driven to ask the question: What is the news for?

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When I was an editor of policy news, I would meet with reporters to discuss their “story arcs,” the overarching direction of each of their main areas of coverage (yes, I stole the term from entertainment television). We would discuss where we thought each issue would be a year down the road and the best ways to convey that to readers.

We weren’t attempting to craft endless, ponderous articles on “where the world is headed.” Rather, each story arc provided a pole star for that issue — a guide, in our daily decisions, to what was actually important and worth reporting.

We viewed that as our jobs: to help readers understand where a particular issue was going, to help them separate the meaningful from the noise.

That’s what we thought the news was for.

I share that bit of mechanics because — as obvious an approach as it may seem — I never met another editor who used it. And I surely see no signs of it in policy and political coverage today.

I’m returning to that approach now. Here’s my story arc: With the seismic changes in technology, business models and politics, I don’t think we know what the news is for anymore.

Consider:

In early November, Brian Stelter of CNN tweeted that White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway would be a guest on his weekly program, Reliable Sources. Stelter asked his followers, any questions for her?

A primary question for some was, given Conway’s arms-length relationship with the truth, why have her on at all?

Stelter tweeted in part, “She is a W.H. aide, not a hard call to make.”

And again, “How is ignoring an admin official better than asking the official Q’s and letting the audience judge the responses?”

For Stelter, the forum was the point. For Conway, the forum was an opportunity to disparage CNN, to cast the network as the enemy. Among her comments:

“I think that's a usual hyperbolic opening to one of CNN's segments. … CNN used to be a place where people can tune in and get the news all day long. Now they get spin and people's opinions. … Stop being jealous of Fox News, Brian, and their ratings. I think that would help if you drop the jealousy a little bit about Fox News.”

Around the same time (Nov. 1), The New York Times reported that Donald Trump called them up and told them everything was going smoothly, that — contrary to reports — he wasn’t mad at anybody and he was enjoying the job.

You know, when I say it like that, it doesn’t sound like news at all.

Last week, the Columbia Journalism Review published an analysis of the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. It found, as other analyses already had, that the news was dominated by Hillary Clinton’s and Clinton campaign emails.

It also made this point about The New York Times, ostensibly the pinnacle of American journalism:

“If voters had wanted to educate themselves on issues such as healthcare, immigration, taxes, and economic policy — or how these issues would likely be affected by the election of either candidate as president — they would not have learned much from reading the Times.”

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At our story arc meetings, I would ask the reporter, “A year from now, what will you be glad that you communicated to our readers about this issue over the past year?”

Do you suppose reporters covering the presidential campaign would have said, “Ultimately, I’ll be glad we downplayed policies. We needed to get across the importance of Clinton’s emails. That’s what this election was about.”

So, what is the news for?

In the coming weeks and months, let’s keep asking that question.

(One dog barking is an occasional column. John is a former senior congressional staffer and media executive. He also is my husband.)