Comprehensive and Proportional
I think the most important thing about this section was the targeted demographics. It’s an easy trap to fall into because it’s so similar to marketing. I fit into a couple targeted demographics. Woman, Mormon (or religious) and very decided on one side of the political spectrum. It’s easy for me to just go to the sources that will support what I already believe in but that’s not what journalism is, to be balanced and proportional.Targeted demographics are a cheap way to draw large audiences but those audiences are limited in their viewpoints.
I recently wrote a paper about the differences between Deseret News and The New York Times after September 11th. While the New York Times published articles headlined “A War Without Illusions” which warned about knowing all the difficulties before rashly going into a war. While the Deseret News chose to focus on Bush and how he attended a prayer service, even though the actual article had about 2 lines describing the prayer service (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/863755/Bush-calling-up-Reserves-heading-to-New-York-after-prayer-service.html)
I follow a lot of blogs that only post the types of things that I want to see. For example, I used to work at Disney World so I follow a blog called www.dreamydisney.tumblr.com
and it posts pictures from Disney World. Since this is a specialty blog though, it doesn’t count as journalism. They could be making this blog purely for themselves, they’re not looking for a demographic to target, just Disney lovers.
