Media Critique

Just Another Post About WDRB's Irrelevance

A Media Critique by Mikayla Hinton

Almost every single news website has a section on the home page that is solely dedicated to displaying the most popular stories from that day, week or even month. With this being said, popular stories, a.k.a the stories that are being talked about the most, should be those that fit well with the standards of the Nine Core Principles and the Seven Basic Yardsticks of Journalism.

Well, WDRB has a different idea when it comes to this concept.

On WDRB's website under a heading that says "Most Popular Stories" is a link that leads to a story that does not technically deserve to be listed under this title. The story is called "Miss America 2015 hammered on social media for playing a red cup". 

Miss America 2015 Winner performing her talent.

The whole idea of this story being referred to as 'popular' seems improper for the following reasons:

1. The story violates the principle "Make the important interesting". An important story is a story that talks about or explains something that could potentially or immediately affect a group of people in a short amount of time or long period of time, etc. This story is basically the complete opposite; it's purpose is to try to entertain with interesting aspects more than to inform its audience. This story is like the "backwards version" of this principle; it is trying to "make the interesting important". It might seem fun, entertaining or interesting to some people to read about a bunch of criticism that the new Miss America is receiving from her chosen talent, but it isn't important at all; a bunch of people's lives aren't going to possibly change over the course of time in any way just from reading and knowing about this story. And although this story may engage it's audience, it does not provide any enlightenment; when people read this magazine they aren't reassured by anything.

2.    This story violates the yardstick "Newsworthiness". For a story to be considered newsworthy it should have a core story topic, and have a lasting and widespread effect on diverse and mass audiences (just like with the above principle). This story is not considered to be newsworthy because the story topic is not core and it will not last in the media for a long time. By next week this story more than likely will have been completely forgotten; no one will remember it because it doesn't leave an excellent impact on it's audience and because now that the race for the next Miss America is over, the media production of stories about the Miss America ordeal will come to an end. This ultimately means that the audience of this story will decline, which further proves how this story will not be around much longer.

3. This story violates the yardstick "Local relevance". Local relevance means that most of the stories being produced are taking place in the area that the journalism team, news media team, etc., works in and how the stories directly concern that area. This story is about a national event, the Miss America Pageant, and although it is a national ordeal, it doesn't directly affect the region in which WDRB works in in any way. The pageant didn't take place in, help or benefit, or have anything to do with the region in which WDRB reports on, which therefore shows how this story is an example of local irrelevance. 

All in all, this story from WDRB is not a good example of a journalistic story, but something could be done to help it meet at least one of the standards that it violated. There isn't a big option range in which one can change this story to help it comply with the principle of making the important interesting or the yardstick of newsworthiness, because it's being portrayed as a more entertaining story, but  the standard of local relevance could be met with a little revising. For example, instead of just focusing on the winner and how people are critiquing her choice of talent, WDRB could extend the story by interviewing or writing stories about the representatives in the pageant for Kentucky and Indiana and their experience in the competition. This would at least add a little local relevancy, for those two women are actually from the areas that WDRB covers.

Picture from: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/miss-america-2015-miss-new-york-kira-kazantsev-2014149