Lesson 02 · 4 min · 6 things to do
New is not the same as important
A plane crash is on every front page. Road crashes killed far more people that same day, in the same country, and were on none of them.
All three of these are true of one city today. Which is most likely to be reported?
- Not quite.It is a death, and it is exactly as expected as last year's. Repetition is the enemy of newness, not of importance.
- Yes.It is sudden, it has a place and a moment, and yesterday it had not happened. Those three things together are most of what makes something news.
- Not quite.It affects far more people, and it was true yesterday too. A condition that does not change today has no day on which it is new.
For every one person killed by a volcano, how many must die in a drought before the story has the same chance of reaching a bulletin?
Commit to one. Nothing is scored — this is here so you have a number in your head before you see the real one.
Deaths needed — a volcano1Deaths needed — a drought40,000What it takes for each to have the same chance of being covered. About 40,000.Measured across thousands of disasters in US television news. Nobody decided this. A volcano happens on a Tuesday and a drought happens over four years, and only one of them has a day on which it is new.A newsroom is not measuring how bad something is. It is measuring how much changed since yesterday, and those two numbers are not related.
Which of these has a day on which it happens, and which never does?
An earthquake
A currency losing a third of its value in an afternoon
A coastline moving inland a few centimetres a year
Antibiotics gradually working less well
A factory announcing 900 job cuts
Farmland getting slowly saltier each season
Yes.The slow ones are not smaller. They are harder to point a camera at on any particular Tuesday, and a bulletin is built out of Tuesdays.A river rises by three metres. The chart covers fifty years whatever you choose — move the control to change how fast those three metres arrive.
In one dayAll three metres in a single day, then nothing for fifty years. Biggest change on one day: 3 metres.
Over one yearThe same three metres, spread over a year. Biggest change on any single day: about one centimetre.
Over fifty yearsThe same three metres again. Biggest change on any single day: under a fifth of a millimetre.
The river ends three metres higher in all three. So what makes the first one news and the last one not?
- Yes.The change is identical in size. What differs is whether it fits inside one day, and one day is the unit a bulletin is built from.
- Not quite.It is happening now, every day, at a rate too small to point at. Being far away in time is a different problem from being small.
- Not quite.It is the same three metres in all three. Speed is doing the work here, and size is doing none of it.
Move the control to see what changes.
About 1,600 people are killed on British roads each year. On an average day, how many is that?
people a dayYes.Between four and five, every single day. Four people killed at once would lead a bulletin; the same four spread across a day and a country lead nothing, because there is no one thing to report.A disease kills a steady number of people each year, and a medicine that prevents it exists but is not distributed. When does this reach the news?
- Not quite.Nothing in a newsroom's day is proportional to harm. The day is assembled out of things that were not true yesterday.
- Not quite.A sharp rise is an event and would be reported. The case here is a steady number, and steady is exactly what has no day.
- Yes.The disease itself has no day, so the story waits for something that does and rides in on it. This is why big slow problems reach you disguised as small fast events.
Lesson complete
News records what changed today, so what is true every day is never news.
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