Pajamas Media

We’re All in the Entertainment Industry Now. Journalists, Too

There's no business like show business, writes Steve Boriss - which, unfortunately for many journalists, is no business they really know. It was true with newspapers and TV but the Internet has really sealed the deal - news is entertainment.

December 18, 2007 - by Steve Boriss

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It is now fashionable for journalists to complain when news outlets cover the antics of celebrities like Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton. News of the rich, famous, and badly-behaved is beneath them, many claim. But the truth is that journalists have always been in exactly the same business as Hollywood — the entertainment industry. And if that is not clear now, it soon will be.

How could journalists be entertainers when they claim to perform somber duties critical to the functioning of American democracy? To understand this, it is necessary to understand what entertainment is and how it works. At its root, entertainment is about providing us with diversion from the stresses and ordinariness of our day-to-day lives. It gives our minds a respite from everyday personal thoughts, concerns, and worries — sometimes by displacing them with other’s thoughts, concerns, and worries, and sometimes by giving us more interesting, exciting, relaxing, or otherwise more pleasurable things to think about.

Now, look at the front page of your newspaper — is that really news that directly affects our day-to-day lives, or is it diverting us with news about the lives of others? The top stories in metro, national, and international news almost never impact our personal lives directly. News that does plays out at much, much lower levels — our neighborhoods, our schools, our jobs, our stores, and our roads. Top stories rarely include news about the people who affect our lives the most — our friends, family, and co-workers. These gaping news voids are now being filled by social computing products like Facebook.

Journalists and many Americans might disagree strongly with this assessment, insisting that politics and world events do directly affect our lives and it is irresponsible for citizens to ignore them. Yes, on very rare occasions these stories do affect us directly and we as citizens must take action on them. But, the fact that these occasions are so rare while their coverage is so frequent proves the point that most of news is entertainment. Why is it necessary to receive two years of Presidential election coverage when we can pick-up the necessary information quickly and efficiently immediately before our once-every-four-year state primaries and general elections? The real reason for this frequent coverage is that mainstream outlets are providing us with material that fulfills a variety of entertainment needs. For many, these include the satisfaction and comfort that come with feeling well-informed, the same benefits provided by alternative entertainment options like reading a book or visiting a museum. For others, there is entertainment value in the thrill of a Presidential horse race or a sense of belonging to a movement bigger than ourselves.

Once beyond the front page, it becomes undeniable that journalists are in the entertainment business. In the sports pages we feel the rush that comes with competition, live vicariously through the heroics of sports figures, and experience a range of emotions not available to us in our hum-drum day-to-day lives — victory, joy, mastery, and camaraderie.

In entertainment news, we momentarily trade our lives for more fabulous ones and live vicariously through the supposedly “glamorous” lives of those who are more beautiful, wealthy, or powerful than we are. Gossip pages that provide us with the troubles of the celebrated and successful help us even-up the score with those we envy, feeding our pride to make our own mediocre lives seem more acceptable. And, news of murders, sex crimes, and car accidents quench our all-too-human thirsts for lust and morbid curiosity.

When all forms of media ultimately converge onto the Internet, within 10 years according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, it will become obvious that mainstream news has been a form of entertainment all along. Yes, couch potatoes might every once in awhile have to get-up and become desk potatoes or mobile potatoes. They might also have to trade their remote control for a mouse.

But when they want entertainment, they will be selecting among online substitutes for what was formerly provided by newspapers, television, radio, magazines, and movies, all of them just one mouse-click away.

But the cruelest trick the Internet will play on Old Media is not outing them as entertainers, but forcing them to compete with the unexpected and unrespected — blogs, porn, video games, DVD’s, and even the ghosts of former selves — archives of older articles, older movies, and older programs never previously available. There’s no business like show business which, unfortunately for journalists, is no business they really know.

Steve Boriss blogs at The Future of News. He works for Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Associate Director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology (CAIT) and teaches a class called “The Future of News.”

2 Comments

Nigel Eccles:

I agree that news has always been a form of entertainment for most people. However, I think it is a bit unfair to single out journalists as not knowing how to compete in this new world. Print journalists are having to deal with an explosion of new platforms and new competition, while at the same time push out a quality print product. It is a tough balancing act that very few people really know how to get right.

Dec 18, 2007 - 5:25 am Curly Smith:

Newspapers publishers have always known that they’re in the entertainment business. Most journalists, however, are in the ego business.

The publishers know that the Sports, Comics, Want Ads, Entertainment, and Home & Garden sections sell the paper. They know that few people read more than the headlines on the front page and that far fewer still bother with any of the other national or international news. They would read local news but the journalists have determined that local news is not important enough to be included in the paper.

The biggest problem lies with the types of people who now become journalists. If you ask them why they choose the profession an exceedingly large percentage would reply “I want to make a difference”. Ponder for a moment how you make a difference by standing around watching other people and then telling those not present what happened. There are precious few instances each decade that qualify as life-altering; the rest are just mundane, run of the mill everyday events and there’s no “difference making” to be had. So everything is a crisis, a disaster waiting to happen, and doom is shortly followed by a forecast for gloom with Women and Minorities being the hardest hit. What the wannabe journalists are really saying is “I want people to listen to ME! I’m important!!”. If they really wanted to “make a difference” then they could be a greeter at Wal-Mart and brighten people’s day, they could be teachers, policemen, firemen, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, plumbers, or find employment in any other profession.

Instead we get the ego. Journalists tell us what news is important. They fill the front page, the international and national sections with the news that they think should be important (and if it happened in Europe then by golly it IS important!) and all local news that might be of interest to the reader is omitted. Nobody needs to know what happened in Podunkville because it’s just not important in the grand scheme of things. Unless, of course, you live in Podunkville, plan to live in Podunkville the rest of your life, and know that the vast majority of what happens outside of Podunkville just doesn’t impact your life.

The news media is the only “business” that consistently tells its consumers that they are stupid, idiotic morons who don’t have a clue about anything. They consistently refuse to provide the product that the consumer wants and, yet, are strangely mystified by their declining revenue streams. I bet they just need to yell “Global Warming” louder, that’s sure to get everybody’s attention. And, you know, I think that’s the answer… the decline in the circulation numbers for The New York Times was caused by Global Warming…

Dec 18, 2007 - 5:50 pm