Every morning a newsroom has about two hundred stories it could run. It runs about twelve. This course has been about the other hundred and eighty-eight. This last lesson takes tomorrow's front page apart, and names why each missing story is missing.
Things that happened10,000 stories
Someone was there900 stories
It changed today300 stories
Near or familiar80 stories
Someone answered the phone in time40 stories
Won a slot12 stories
Headline travelled6 stories
How many of a day's stories pass each gate. Illustrative.
Six things stand between a story and you. Call each one a gate. Someone was there. It changed today. It was near, or familiar. Someone answered the phone before the deadline. It won a slot against the rest of the day. Its headline travelled through the feed. Most stories fall at the first gate.
Reported12 stories · 6%
Not reported188 stories · 94%
A story is missing from tomorrow's paper. What is the most likely reason?
It did not happen.
Not yet. About 188 of every 200 things that happen are not reported. Being missing from the news is the normal state of an event.
It fell at one of the six gates, most likely the first.
Right. Nobody there. No day. Too far. Nobody who would answer the phone. Lost to a bigger day. A headline the feed passed over. Six ordinary reasons come before any dark one.
Someone is hiding it.
Not yet. Sometimes. But the gates hide far more than anyone does, and they hide it without meaning to.
Put the gates in the order a story meets them.
Tap them in the order they happen, first to last. Each tap gets a number.
Someone there→Changed today→Reached in time→Won a slot→Headline travelled
Right. A story meets them in this order, and most fall at the first, which nobody sees. Near or familiar is left out of this chain because it is not a step a story takes. It is true or false from the start.
A coastline losing a metre a yearnever had a day
vsvs
A mine collapse, no reporters nearno witness
vsvs
A ward whose patients will not be quotednobody to phone
Three silences that look the same from outside.
From outside, every missing story looks the same: it is not there. The causes differ. A coastline losing a metre a year never had a day. A mine collapse in a region with no reporters had a day and no witness. A hospital ward whose patients will not be quoted had both, and nobody to answer the phone.
Name the gate that stopped each story.
One card at a time. Tap the pile it belongs to.
Card 1 of 6
A river getting a little dirtier every year
A prison riot in a country that lets no reporters in
A school where the staff signed a promise not to speak
A factory in a town whose paper closed
Antibiotics working a little less each year
A closure the workers are too afraid to talk about
A river getting a little dirtier every year → Never had a day
Not yet. This never had a day. The river got worse a little at a time, so no morning was the morning it happened.
A prison riot in a country that lets no reporters in → Nobody was there
Not yet. Nobody was there. The riot had a day, but no reporter could see it or send pictures out.
A school where the staff signed a promise not to speak → Nobody would talk
Not yet. Nobody would talk. The story had a day and a witness, but every witness is barred from the phone.
A factory in a town whose paper closed → Nobody was there
Not yet. Nobody was there. When the local paper shut, the town lost the only reporter who would have noticed.
Antibiotics working a little less each year → Never had a day
Not yet. This never had a day. The drugs weaken a little each year, and the news is made one day at a time.
A closure the workers are too afraid to talk about → Nobody would talk
Not yet. Nobody would talk. The workers know everything and fear for their jobs, so the phone rings and nobody answers.
Nobody was there
++
Never had a day
++
Nobody would talk
Three gates, three different silences.Right. Three different silences that look the same from outside. Naming which one stopped a story is the difference between saying 'they never cover this' and knowing why.
A plane crash, 200 dead12 days
An earthquake far away, 5,000 dead3 days
A famine, 40,000 dead1 day
Air pollution, 40,000 dead a year0 days
Days of coverage. Illustrative.
Now put the number of dead next to the days of coverage. A plane crash, 200 dead: twelve days. A famine, 40,000 dead: one day, the day a report about it came out. Air pollution, 40,000 dead a year: no days at all. The count of the dead does not set the coverage. The gates do.
The numbers are made up. Set how sudden a story is, and how near.
Days of coverage10
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Instant · How near: Here
Instant, here: about 10 days of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage4
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Instant · How near: Far away
Instant, far away: about 4 days of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage1
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Instant · How near: Far and unfamiliar
Instant, far and unfamiliar: about 1 day of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage2
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over months · How near: Here
Over months, here: about 2 days of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage0.8
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over months · How near: Far away
Over months, far away: about 19.2 hours of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage0.2
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over months · How near: Far and unfamiliar
Over months, far and unfamiliar: about 4.8 hours of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage0.2
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over decades · How near: Here
Over decades, here: about 4.8 hours of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage0.08
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over decades · How near: Far away
Over decades, far away: about 1.9 hours of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Days of coverage0.02
How much harm, on the same scale5
Illustrative.
How sudden: Over decades · How near: Far and unfamiliar
Over decades, far and unfamiliar: about 0.5 hours of coverage, for a harm scored 5 in every frame.
Which story gets nothing, whatever its size?
The slow one here.
Not yet. Slow and here gets a fifth of a day: a report, a paragraph. Not nothing, and being near is the reason.
The slow one far away.
Right. About half an hour of coverage. The harm bar sat at five in every frame, and the coverage bar never followed it. How much harm was done never changed the coverage.
The sudden one far away.
Not yet. Four days. Sudden buys a lot, even far away. It is the slow stories that distance finishes off.
Move both controls.
6 of 6
gates passed by the story that led this morning
Look at the six gates once more. Every one of them is about the shape of a story. When it happened. Where. Who will talk about it. What else happened that day. Whether the headline travels. None of them is about how much the story matters, and none is about whether it is true.
A story, and how many of the six gates it has passed. Move through them.
1 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 1
One gate: someone was there. It is slow, far away, and nobody will talk about it. A reporter saw it, and that is all.
2 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 2
Two: it also changed today. Now it is an event. Still far away.
3 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 3
Three: near or familiar too. A newsroom could reach it with a phone.
4 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 4
Four: someone answered the phone before the deadline. It can be written by six.
5 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 5
Five: it beat the rest of the day and won a slot. It is in the paper.
6 of 6
gates passed
Gates passed: 6
Six: its headline travelled through the feed. This is what you saw this morning.
Which of these is NOT one of the gates?
Whether it won a slot against the rest of the day.
Not yet. That is the fifth gate. The same story wins on a quiet Sunday and loses on election night.
Whether someone answered the phone in time.
Not yet. That is the fourth gate. A story with nobody willing to be quoted before the deadline stops there, however big it is.
How much the story matters.
Right. Importance is not a gate. A story passes on its shape: a day, a place, a witness, someone to phone. An important thing with none of those passes no gate. That is why the biggest harms are so often the quietest stories.
Move the control.
People affected: a minister resigns0 people
People affected: a stadium fire200 people
People affected: rents rise 3% again2,000,000 people
Tomorrow's front page. All three of these will be true tomorrow. Which will you NOT see, and why?
The minister resigning.
Not yet. A day, a place, a face, a press office, and a headline the feed likes. It will lead.
Rents rising 3% again: no day, no picture, nobody to phone, and it happened last year too.
Right. Two million people and not one gate it can pass. The other two pass all six, and one of them affected nobody.
The stadium fire.
Not yet. Sudden, filmable, with a press conference by evening. It passes every gate.
Lesson complete
When a story is missing from the news, one of six gates stopped it, and you can name which.