I remember in our Journalism class about how relevant matters are important. News organizations have been known to do half and half a good and a bad job with hooking consumers. Their headlines are gripping sometimes, but some don't do as much a good job as you think. I was scrolling through the news app on my phone when I stumbled upon an article about a manslaughter by a white cop in Texas, who mistakingly shot her neighbor. Of course, my immediate reaction was "I don't care about this, this isn't relevant to me at all." But that's not true.
Fox News' headline for this story was, "Female Dallas cop who killed man in his home charged with manslaughter." I get that sometimes you can't always come up with a shorter and better headline, but at least make it gripping, which brought me back to relevance. The article was actually talking about a Grand Jury topic that I didn't care to hear about.
It just confuses me why exactly I would need to hear about this. There've been over a thousand police shootings in the U.S. and there are even more today. News relevance should only matter to national topics, like Fox News or CNN, etc. Where we leave the more local stuff to the local stations in the local cities.
There's really no reason why Fox News needs to cover a fatal police shooting in Dallas, Texas. It was tragic, yes. But was it relevant for the country? No. In class, we learned that News relevancy is only relevant when it starts affecting lives. A Dallas, Texas police shooting does not affect a Deli Worker in New York. (Don't even think about looping it around.) We can all agree that these two things never have a thing in common. Ever.
This is called Newsworthiness. And it means "Does it affect a lot of people for a long time."
You can tell me. Does this article have that much of an impact on people's lives for a long time?
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