Readers say they want more good news. Their clicks, shares and comments may tell a different story.
Earlier this week, I ran across a local Facebook post criticizing “certain news outlets” for focusing on “negativity, division, and stories that can mislead or create unnecessary drama.”
I have no idea whether the writer was referring to the DMC, but considering Fisher County isn’t exactly overrun with competing newsrooms fighting for elbow room along Sammy Baugh Avenue, I would be lying if I said I didn’t take notice.
The criticism itself didn't bother me much. While I won't deny the size of my ego, I will dispute its fragility. I can take it.
In fact, criticism often fuels my curiosity. Why is our work viewed this way? What motivates the claimant? And most important: Does the critique have merit?
Here is an interesting observation of people in the wild that I have no idea what to do with.
People frequently tell me they want good news. They want stories about neighbors helping neighbors, kids succeeding, communities coming together and people doing something positive for the places they call home. The social media post itself called for creating a “positive ripple.”
And then those same people, quite often, skip right over those stories.
Fark.com founder Drew Curtis once said, “Most people treat the news media like the exercise bike they have in their basement. They’re glad it’s there but they never use it.”
There's probably a treadmill-turned clothes rack beside it labeled “good news.”
A 2023 Vox analysis examined something researchers call negativity bias — the tendency for bad information to grab our attention more strongly than good information. Among the studies discussed was research showing that people sometimes say they prefer positive news even when their actual behavior suggests otherwise. Negative stories, on average, drew stronger attention than positive or neutral ones.
Here is the part that should make anyone criticizing the news media squirm a little.
Researchers analyzing more than 100,000 variations of online headlines found that, for an average-length headline, adding one negative word increased the click-through rate by about 2.3%. Adding a positive word decreased it by about 1%.
Same stories. Different headlines. Readers were simply more likely to click when the language leaned negative.
In other words, people say they want broccoli and then reach for a brownie.
Journalists are certainly not innocent in this arrangement. The old newsroom saying “if it bleeds, it leads” did not materialize out of thin air. News organizations know controversy draws attention, and the modern digital economy has turned attention into currency.
But Vox’s point is more interesting than simply blaming reporters.
There is a supply side and a demand side. We may complain that the news is too negative while simultaneously demonstrating, click by click, share by share and comment by comment, exactly what captures our attention.
A championship will sell papers for sure, but a car crash will sell every copy. That's not because of what is written. It's what readers choose to read.
Which brings me back home. There is another investigative article on the front page of this week’s DMC. It is Part 5 of our continuing investigation involving the Fisher County Sheriff’s Office and the second installment examining the workers’ compensation records.
Five. Five investigative articles asking uncomfortable questions about one public office.
Apparently the five have tremendous gravitational pull.
Because surrounding those five articles have been stories about a company awarding nearly $95,000 to 11 Fisher County organizations and later expanding its community grant program to $250,000 annually.
We wrote about Rotan students qualifying for state competition with robots they designed and built.
When a storm ripped open the Stonewall Senior Citizens Center, we did not simply write about a damaged roof. We wrote about the people of Aspermont showing up. Students called friends. Volunteers brought trucks, boxes and muscle. In a matter of hours, a community emptied a building so restoration could begin.
We wrote about the Fisher County Fair and Rodeo returning for its 82nd year, with children, families, local traditions and people working to make the event better than the year before.
Then we came back afterward and reported how nearly 150 volunteers removed roughly 300 cubic yards of debris from the neighborhoods in a few hours and how the community was already talking about doing it again.
We have written about downtown improvements, local artwork, charitable giving, storm relief and people helping people when there was no paycheck, campaign photo ops or government order requiring them to do so.
Those stories did not accidentally fall onto the page. We reported them. After all, you say you want them.
Yet five investigative installments seem capable of eclipsing them all.
That interests me. We don't scour the countryside searching for every weed while ignoring the daisies. It's just a simple fact that sometimes the news is unpleasant because what happened was unpleasant.
Our job is not to paint a smiley face on it. There is also a difference between negative journalism and journalism about something negative.
A storm damaging a senior center is negative. Fifty neighbors showing up to save what is inside is the opposite.
Questions involving public money, government records or the actions of elected officials may be uncomfortable. Reporting those questions accurately does not make the newspaper negative any more than reporting a structure fire makes us anti-building.
There are plenty of quotes criticizing newspapers, reporters and the media. I could probably fill this column with them and save myself the trouble of having an original idea.
Instead, here's a thought of my own anyway: “A terrible truth about our society is that wicked deeds are shared faster and more often than goodwill.”
The research suggests blame is not merely on the journalists. It’s on the readers too. So before accusing the newspaper of focusing only on the negative, look back through a few editions.
Ask yourself which stories you remembered. Which ones you shared. Which ones you talked about. And which ones you skipped because nobody was angry, nobody was accused of anything and there was nothing in the headline inviting you to grab a pitchfork.
Maybe, in reality, the DMC is not focused on the negative.
Maybe you are.