erin mccann |Verified account

People have a lot of ideas about how news orgs indicate that something is a big deal. Number of tweets. A small A1 blurb vs a full page inside. Why isn't it leading the homepage. Why didn't it get a push alert.

These are all things news orgs are dealing with too, as audiences fracture across delivery systems. But "this didn't lead the print front page" is simply not an indication in 2018 that it wasn't an important story, or that a news or didn't put weight behind telling it.

Someone complained that it wasn't tweeted enough. Twitter is a lot of things for news orgs, but it is not actually a big driver of traffic. "If you'd tweeted it more, more people would have seen it" is one of those things that sounds true but, frustratingly, is not.

A bunch of people -- so many people -- seemed especially angry that the strike wasn't getting more air on CNN. Which, ok, let's break that down a little:

studies have pretty consistently found that people who rely on TV (local news or cable) as their main source of news are the least informed. It's a passive experience, and it's limited by time constraints. That's not a judgment on TV viewers, it's just one piece of a puzzle.

And 2 on that point, which is a little bit of a judgement yes, what about the CNN viewing experience in the last few years leads you to believe that they're interested in informing you of the important news of the day?

(Which leads to my favorite of yesterday's comments, which is that I am elitist scum for suggesting that people are responsible in even small ways for seeking out the news and making themselves informed.)

(As long as I am responding specifically to some of the nastier tweets from yesterday, no, other lady who also called me elitist scum, it is not my job to sit around personally sending you links all day just to prove my point, because at the end you still wouldn't believe me.)

But to get back on track for a minute, yes THIS, which is an extrapolation of what I was saying about twitter and the news yesterday: https://twitter.com/twallack/status/970321838575321088?s=21 …

By their behavior, the audience is *incredibly* fractured now. We really don't have a way right now, outside historic and huge events, to all have the same experience of the news. To all be consuming the same information.

Some of the complaints (why did X get 20 stories and Y got 5?) are a result of this fracture. Sites putting up multiple files trying to grab readers in different places so they'll get a taste and then click around and maybe at the end walk away informed about Story.

(Which is why the numbers argument is never going to be a winning one with me.)

Wrapping up, or getting close to it, this idea of "why isn't the media covering something" when in fact the media IS covering something extensively, is not going to go away. We had this argument about West Virginia this weekend. It'll be something else next month.

Some news orgs are moving toward personalization. Some put all their eggs in the FB basket (oops). CNN has a massive website that covers all sorts of things you don't see on air there. That means there is no one shared news experience.

By their behavior and consumption choices, readers and viewers already know this. But it's taking a lot of our brains a while to catch up to this particular reality. That's true about news, specifically, and it's also about a lot of other things about life in 2018!