How Stories Are Killed
Tonight, I have been watching a remarkable story unfold on Twitter. Here's the end of it in a retweet from Clay Shirky: Clay Shirky @ cshirky We did it! @ HomicideWatch crosses $40K in funding, will keep covering murders in DC. Thanks and congrats to everyone who pitched in! This is a deduction from afar, but the beginning of the story must have been a decision by the conventional media in Washington, DC, to stop covering every homicide in their community. Maybe there were just too many murders and there was an opportunity cost to covering them. Maybe there was research suggesting that readers stopped reading and viewers stopped viewing when they were asked to consume the facts and images of murder scenes. Maybe the chamber of commerce logic won the day, and editors were convinced of the argument that bad news was bad business. Maybe the advertisers couldn't sell as much happiness when the reality outside the door was so different and so sad. ...