Someone has to be there
- 40Flood A: reporters within an hour0Flood B: reporters within an hour
Two floods of the same size. Two floods happen on the same day. They are about the same size. Near flood A there are forty reporters. Near flood B there are none. One flood leads the evening news. The other is never mentioned.
- Something happensA reporter sees itPictures by six o'clockIt is on the news
News is made by people. A reporter has to see the flood, film it, and send the pictures in before the evening news. If nobody is near, there are no pictures. No pictures, no story. So the first question is not how big it was. It is whether anyone was there.
Tap the flood that leads the evening news.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
40Flood A: reporters within an hour0Flood B: reporters within an hourTwo floods of the same size. Flood A
Right. Nobody ranked the two floods. One had people whose job is to be there, and pictures by the afternoon. The other had a phone call.Flood B
Not yet. Same size, and nobody near it. Few people know this place, so no reporter is based there. And because no reporter is there, few people ever hear of it. A reader would rank floods by size. A newsroom ranks them by what it can film by six.- The capital0.5 hoursThe second city2 hoursA port town6 hoursA mountain region30 hoursA foreign capital with a newsroom1 hour
How long it takes to get a crew there. It is not only about being there. It is about how fast a crew can get there. The evening news goes out at six. A place two hours away can have pictures by evening. A place thirty hours away cannot. For the news, a foreign city with a newsroom is nearer than a mountain region at home.
An earthquake of the same size hits each of these places. Tap the one LEAST likely to be on tonight's news.
Tap the part of the picture that answers it.
Think about what the evening news can show by tonight.
The capital0.5 hoursThe second city2 hoursA port town6 hoursA mountain region30 hoursA foreign capital with a newsroom1 hourHow long it takes to get a crew there. A mountain region
Right. Thirty hours away, so tonight's news has nothing to show, and by the time a crew arrives the day has moved on. It is reported only if it is enormous.The capital
Not yet. Half an hour. A crew is filming before the dust settles. This is the place whose earthquakes you always hear about.The second city
Not yet. Two hours: pictures by evening. Well inside the day, so it is reported at nearly the capital's rate.A port town
Not yet. Six hours is tight, but the pictures can make the evening news. It gets less than the cities, and far more than the mountains.A foreign capital with a newsroom
Not yet. One hour, because a newsroom is already there. A foreign city with a newsroom is nearer than a home region without one.- A big cityhundredsA small townone or twoA villagenone
Reporters based there. Reporters are based where the readers are. A big city has hundreds. A small town has one or two. A village has none. So a village's floods, frauds and factory closures happen in front of nobody.
Move the control to change the size of the place, and watch how many reporters are based there.
Reporters based here0 reportersReporters based in the capital400 reportersIllustrative. The place: A village of 5,000
0 reporters based here. Whatever happens here is reported from somewhere else, if at all.
Reporters based here2 reportersReporters based in the capital400 reportersIllustrative. The place: A town of 50,000
2 reporters based here. Two people, covering everything. A big story gets one of them; a slow one gets neither.
Reporters based here40 reportersReporters based in the capital400 reportersIllustrative. The place: A city of 500,000
40 reporters based here. A full local newsroom. Most things that happen here have a witness with a notebook.
Reporters based here400 reportersReporters based in the capital400 reportersIllustrative. The place: A capital of 5 million
400 reporters based here. The big national newsrooms, their local offices, and reporters who work for themselves. A dropped teacup can make the news.
What does the number of reporters follow?
How much news the place produces.
Not yet. A village produces floods, fraud and factory closures like anywhere. It produces them in front of nobody.How important the place is.
Not yet. A place looks important because reporters wrote about it. The reporters came first. The feeling that the place matters came after.How many readers live there, not how much happens there.
Right. Newsrooms are placed where the readers are, and where the companies that pay for adverts are. A village does not have fewer things happen. It has fewer people there to see them.Move the control.
Since 2005, roughly how many local newspapers have closed in the United States?
Pick one. Nothing is scored.
US newspaper newsroom jobs, 200871,000US newspaper newsroom jobs, 202031,000About 2,500.More than a quarter of the country's papers, leaving whole counties with nobody whose job is to be there. Newsroom jobs at US papers fell from about 71,000 in 2008 to about 31,000 in 2020.- A newsroom closesIts witnesses leaveThe place goes on, unseen
So before anyone decides what matters, something simpler has already decided what gets seen: where the reporters already were. When a newsroom closes, the place does not go quiet. Its witnesses leave.
- 2 millionPeople living in the region0Reporters based there
A newspaper closes its last office in a region of two million people. What happens to the news from there?
Nothing. Readers there still send in stories.
Not yet. Readers send in what they notice, which is not a council meeting on a Tuesday afternoon. Most local news was somebody's job.It shrinks to what a newsroom far away can confirm by phone: mostly the biggest events and the official statements.
Right. The region did not go quiet. Its witnesses left. What survives is whatever reaches a newsroom two hundred miles away. That is official statements and disasters.It moves to social media, which covers it just as well.
Not yet. Social media carries what someone chose to post. Nobody there sits through the council meeting that decides what gets built. That meeting is where the region's money goes.
Lesson complete
News comes from where the reporters already are, not from where things happen.