Getting Media

Why should the dumbest of the dumb give a damn?

by Bruce Schimmel

I asked a friend if he could bear to read another newspaper story on the homeless. "What else is there to know?" he sighed. I had to agree.

Gerald Kolpan — my pal who works at Fox News 29 — and I recently faced a roomful of homelessness activists who thought otherwise. Strenuously, too. Sixty activists, visibly pissed over the media's indifference.

Project H.O.M.E.'s Jennine Miller had invited them to meet us for a short course in media relations. But these folks wanted to teach us a thing or two.

Even before we sat down, one activist sprang up out of his seat.

"You media people aren't doing your job. You don't care," declared the young man. The crowd growled in agreement, as he slipped into a familiar groove of media-bashing.

"Hold it right there!" yelled Gerald. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," I barked back at the crowd.

It was time for a little attitude adjustment. Time to declare an unpleasant truth about news organizations, to plead guilty as charged. Yes, the advocate was right: As an institution, the news media doesn't care.

The media doesn't care about the homeless. Or the sick, the lame, the disenfranchised, the meek or neglected. We don't care about the suffering poor or even the insufferably rich.

It's not the news media's job to care. Our job is to get the story, and follow it where it takes us.

At the end of the day, as a newspaper goes to press or TV lights crackle on, the job of the news media is to produce stories that are surprising, moving, informative and true.

That the homeless sleep on the street is sad, but pathos alone isn't newsworthy. The funny thing about the news is that it needs to be new.

To be sure, just because news institutions are indifferent does not mean that reporters, personally, don't care. Doing good is why many of us are in this business. But doing good is still just gravy.

So how do you get some ink and some airplay for an issue close to your heart?

Three steps.

First, target a print reporter, then find a human angle and finally, figure out why the dumbest of the dumb should give a damn.

Start with a print reporter, because unless you're staging a visual event, print is where many broadcast stories begin anyway. Use Google. Get what the reporter has written and review it carefully. As human beings, reporters are reputedly subject to vanity. Afterward send an e-mail that says, "I've enjoyed your pieces on blankety-blank, and have I got a story for you." I guarantee you'll turn the head of the hoariest scrivener.

Now, deliver the goods. That generally means finding subjects who'll share their stories. History may be happy with abstractions, but journalism needs breathing people.

So a story about the homeless needs a subject — an advocate or a homeless person — whose story typifies what's new.

Though, alas, with this homelessness outreach group, there was no such luck. Gerald and I probed the audience for an hour. We heard how homelessness activists have been signing up voters for the upcoming election. They have, since 1999 — which sounded to us like the same story, just a different year.

Which brings us to the final and toughest requirement for getting media: figuring out why someone should care. And I don't mean caring in the abstract sense, but caring as in, "This affects me, this moves me."

So I asked the advocates, how have homeless voters changed the political landscape? How'll they affect the upcoming election? As in, why you — my reader — should care.

Unfortunately, none of the advocates could talk about the impact of homeless voters. And, frankly, I'm flummoxed to figure a way to gauge it. (Though if you have an idea, please do e-mail me.)

So for now, no news, no story. At least not for Gerald or me.

As a postscript, it turns out that the homeless-voter story did surface briefly. An intern at the Inquirer did a story — essentially a remake of an older article. It contains nice sentiments about democracy for all — sentiments surely worth repeating. Though I still don't think it was news, having failed the give-a-damn test.

Or as my friend, glancing past that homeless story in the newspaper, might say, "What else is there to know?"

(bruce@schimmel.com)