Silver Platter Journalism
- Alyssa Curtis
- Sep 15, 2018
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 27, 2018
In this new age of social media journalism, the audience can often benefit from the journalist being so accessible. It also goes the other way. Journalists can know exactly what the audience is thinking within seconds. It’s a mutual relationship but it can also turn into a revolving door. Journalists can begin to follow the audience’s lead and use that as a way to find topics to write about, while the audience can begin to follow journalists’ lead on what to think about.
Journalists must be careful though to not to always give the audience what they want on a silver platter. As the fourth estate, journalists have the power to set an agenda, which is extremely powerful. What agenda do we want to be setting?
How to not play a game of chase:
1. Investigate :
Find the stories that no one is talking about. Social media can be mindless at times, we shouldn’t always be using it to find story ideas. If we did, we’d be stuck talking about dogs.
2. "Aha" moment
Give the audience what they don’t particularly know they want. Give them an “aha” moment. There’s always things that should be at the forefront of news that the audience doesn’t really know about, put that on the agenda.
3. The why
It can be hard to convince the reader that they need something other than what they really want. Don’t just give them the information, but tell them why that particular topic is important.
Although you don’t always want to be following the audience’s lead, sometimes it can be beneficial. Readers, especially when on social media, tend to only get surface level information. They think they are informed but are they actually? What stories are trending on social media? Read the comments. Do the readers actually seem informed about those topics? Just because they are talking doesn’t mean they know what they’re talking about.
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