Journalism made easy: News is what people want to read

On Twitter’s trending topics, the top subjects are the following: Iran, something, IranElections, something, Tehran, something, Neda. It seems like nothing else matters but Iran. Which is false. There are tons of subjects media should approach. But Iran elections seems to be “the subject” because of:

1. the “Twitter revolution” – everyone is excited how Twitter is generating the news.  Journalists are keeping their eyes on Twitter, hoping something new is going to appear.
2. the Iraq/Iran confusion – “that’s the same, right?” – a misunderstanding. Most Americans have no idea what’s the difference between Iran and Iraq. For most of them, it’s “that Arabian country with oil and where we send our soldiers”, so most probably everyone is thinking about war.
3. the battle for democracy – Iran is already a democratic country. It’s true, it’s a democracy built on religious bases, but it’s still a democratic state, otherwise there wouldn’t have been any elections. But the general perception is false and that’s mostly because you might think the American democracy model is the best and it should be implemented everywhere. Well, it didn’t work in Afghanistan, it didn’t really worked in Iraq.

Why Iran is news?

The Iranian matter makes the news because every revolution is news. Being a country with oil resources, Iran’s revolution is even bigger news. A revolution in Iran trying to change the democracy model is great news. Literally, great news for newspapers and televisions. Front page news if you want.

Why Iran news shouldn’t be that big news?

The Iranian revolution is an internal state matter. Yes, we are all interested in that, but not that interested. Iran is “good news” (I’ll use quotes from now on) for industrial entities and for politicians, because they don’t have to answer anymore to questions regarding the financial crisis, the crashes or bankrupticies. But it’s not good for the people. One rule of journalism says: “the closer the event, the bigger the news”. For Americans, Iran is in the opposite part of the world.

I live in Bucharest, Romania. That’s 1,462 miles (2,352 km) from Tehran. New York is 6,127 miles (9,860 km) away. That’s four times bigger. Wanna know what Romanians are interested in? Their jobs. Their salaries. Their mortgages. The real estate falling down. That’s what people are interested in. What would Americans be interested in? Most probably, the same thing. And Iran, of course. But why?

The “superior democracy complex”

One of the problems I see is that Americans tend to believe they are the heroes of the Universe. There’s nothing better, there’s no one better, everything is perfect. In the end, it’s just another form of propaganda. Yes, we all want to live in the US, we all want to have a big house and two cars in the garage, but if I’ll move tomorrow in the US (supposing I get a visa), it will take about 10 years to actually get a credit from a bank so I can buy a house.

The health system is down, the economy suffered a serious fall, people lost jobs, have no money to pay the bills, banks crashed, Wall Street is down, newspapers are closing or publish exclusively online. That’s what matters for the Americans, not Iran. Oh, sorry, Iran does matter because Americans still believe the US is strong enough to send troops and implement the perfect democracy model, right? Or is it wrong?

Most people don’t care

You want to know the truth? News about Iran is simple curiosity for the regular people. They’re interested in this topic because they expect the US will send troops and they don’t really want that. They’re interested because those who have some idea where Iran is located believe the US can get some more oil from there. They’re interested because there’s a place on Earth where it’s worse than home.

Otherwise, nobody cares about Iran. People care about what they’ll eat tomorrow, if they have the money to pay the bank, if they have money for gas. That’s what people care. Proximity! That’s where the news is. If a dog bytes a man, that’s not news. But if a man bytes a dog, that’s another story. Well, right now, men byte dogs: CEOs ruining corporations, politicians ruining the economy, etc. Where does that news stand?

And Jeff Jarvis doesn’t get it…

I respect Jeff Jarvis for what he does, for his career, for his opinions. But he doesn’t get one simple thing: when you have a monthly income of some few thousand dollars, you stop carrying about what regular people care. You don’t care about what you’re going to eat tomorrow, you’ll just find a restaurant nearby. You don’t care if you have money to fill up the gas tank, you think about changing your car. You don’t care about your child who didn’t buy a new t-shirt for a year now, you think his mom will take him to the mall this weekend and you already budgeted 400 dollars for his clothes.

I’m not in that situation of not having the money to buy a new t-shirt. I bought one yesterday from the mall. I can afford that. But what I realized a couple of years ago, after moving from being hungry to having a good salary is that the more you have, the more you spend. And, eventually, the more you care less about the ones that don’t have your financial status. Basically, you tend to forget where you’ve been before having your huge monthly salary. And that’s pure psychology, the simple psychology, actually: it’s not that you don’t want to go back the times you didn’t have food, you don’t even want to think about it.

Wanna know what people want?

Just find a recent study about people’s revenues, about firing, about people’s financial status and then you’ll see what news people buy. You, Jeff Jarvis, buy news about Iran. Because you don’t care about the hunger. But they do. And they don’t buy Iran. Sorry, they just won’t. Ever!

Back to the basics

Journalism is losing to online media because after years of experience, reporters tend to forget some of the basic rules of journalism. Some become too full of themselves, others become editors, some become columnists, others move to PR or become consultants. Times change, some don’t speed enough. But the basics remain the same. I don’t care Jeff Jarvis likes HuffingtonPost.com and he might consider it more relevant than a lot of newspapers. HPost.com will never be New York Times. I’ll never trust a website over a good newspaper. And that’s why newspapers won’t die.

Because it’s easier for a newspaper reporter to go back to the basics and serve people. But it’s not the same for a blog like HPost. Because NYT will send a reporter there, while HPost.com will take the news from Twitter. Because you measure HPost.com in terms of traffic, in terms of quantity, but journalism will always be measured in terms of quality. That’s the difference.

Do you want real news about Iran? Let the journalists do the job and stop crying out loud about the news on Twitter.