Newspapers are going nuts these days trying to find a formula for keeping readers. That may not be in their power; as this society continues to atomize, why keep abreast of the community?
Having said that, I suggest you look at an AP story in today’s Albuquerque Journal (Govs Shift Medicaid Focus to Congress, p. 9). I have read it twice, all 14 paragraphs. And despite my long-standing interest in Medicaid and Medicare, I have only a tenuous grip on what it is about.
Frankly. I don’t see how anybody else would get even that much out of it. In fact, I don’t see why anybody else would plow through the whole story.
The story represents traditional journalism. That is to say, first, that it uses a special language. And, secondly, that it's constructed with the "background information" at the very bottom.
No wonder, then, that nobody - except students of health care, of politics or of journalism - will grasp what the reporter is saying.
I have just looked at the story again. It’s about the gap between what President Bush proposes and what most state governors want to fund Medicaid and reform it. It is also about how the Congress views that dispute. It touches on the differences between Senate and House, too.
Complicated, huh? Sure is. Which is why the reporter needed to start his story by explaining Medicaid’s crisis, noting that funding is a big problem for the states and becoming one for Washington. Then he should have told us how the President addressed the problems in his budget, followed by reactions from the governors. That would have led logically to Congressional attitudes.
And all this should have been translated from governmental gobbledygook to American English.
There is no theory of journalism, as there are theories underlying medicine or psychology. If, however, such a news philosophy existed, surely it would contain the idea of usefulness to readers. To be useful, news must be readable.
To more folks than the aides at the White House and Capitol Hill, I mean.
Newspapers can do better.
And that is my sermon for the day.
PS I have just reread the headline and the first paragraph, where headline writers most often find the lead. That paragraph is so muddy I would have lost my footing. Hat’s off to the headline writer for coming up with something plausible.