The News Just Isn't What It Used To Be

The news isn’t what it used to be….

We have all heard are parents or grandparents say this throughout our lives. We are all sitting around the TV listening to the six O’clock news and then a headline pops us about Brad and Angelina. With a look of disgust, someone says it- the news isn’t what it used to be.

But is it true; I would say that with full confidence that no, it is nowhere close to what it used to be. First to further this discussion on old vs. new news, it is imperative to define what the media actually is. I would define it as group of individuals and organizations that deliver communicative content. Communicative Content are the main words here. The communicative content that the media delivers is what makes the difference in the media of old vs. the media of new.
News can be broken up into two separate divisions: hard news and soft news. Hard

News is the news that our parents and grandparents are used to. It can be categorized as serious content that is useful to public policy . It is timely and gives us responsible coverage of important current events. Most of us reading this might be a little taken aback. News isn’t news without the flashy headlines and the intriguing stories right; wrong. This is exactly what news is supposed to be in the first place. The news we are used to today is soft news. This is the type of news that contains less serious subject matter. It is personality-based and filled with human interest stories. Lifestyle documentaries and celebrities fill much of the stories that are conveyed to us.

Why has the news changed so much over the years? One of the biggest reasons that I can think of is the idea of a market economy. The news is a business after all, the news marketplace is more diversified not with a plethora of new channels available. With all of the competition out there, the news stations need to focus on a target demographic. This has its drawbacks, one of which being excessive business control and consolidation. This causes less diversity, and few viewpoints in the news being delivered .Profit pressures “news” as a commercial product rather than a public service” is now on the rise, and worst of all internal corporate censorship.
In the end, your parents were right. The news just isn’t what it used to be. With the economy becoming a bigger issue by the day, it looks like the old news isn’t coming back for a long time.