With so much news being bad news, I am aware the news gets feedback like “why don’t you run any good news stories?” As such, you may have noticed an uptick in the news trying to run at least one “warm fuzzy” story usually at the end of each broadcast. But, where do they get these offbeat stories? Like last night, a woman (age 102) was shown dancing with her 3 year old great grandchild. Even if the stories are shared “on the wire” by sources like AP, who gets them these “small time”, feel good stories in the first place?
They pull many from YouTube, Facebook and Tik-Tok based upon views, likes and trending status. During the height of the pandemic when there were no sporting events our local sports guy served up sports related things he found on social media. Got pretty cheesy.
While not ‘offbeat’ I know they have people trolling facebook constantly. If my tiny mom and pop store with a few thousand followers posts a grainy picture of a alleged shoplifter, within 24 hours we’ll get contacted by at least 2 or 3 news stations that want a few random details and permission to broadcast the picture. Depending on the news day, they’ll often run a 30 second spot on it.
What I’ve always been curious about is stories like ‘man finds purse that woman lost 25 years ago and she lives less then 100 feet away’ or ‘college student finds 50 year old picture of a couple on a date taped to the bottom of her desk, drives 500 miles to return if to the now married couple’.
How do those stories make it onto the air. That means someone felt it was news worthy, called the news station and gave them the story. I mean, did the person that found the purse or the picture or the postcard call and say ‘I’m about to do something really awesome, y’all should do a story on me’?
A good local reported listens to gossip. People involved like to talk about what happened, and by finding ways to talk with the general public, reporters can find out about human interest stories.
And often a press release is sent out that the reporter decides is worth a followup.
Yep. They did it, or, just as likely, one of their friends did. I assume all television stations have a news tips line that people can call up or email or facebook anything.
One any one station runs it, they’ll make it available to everyone on their network. So if a story runs on an ABC station in Atlanta, any of its other 243 stations might see it and also run it.
The Associated Press is even more far-reaching. It’s a cooperative non-profit organization that reaches more than 1300 newspapers and broadcasters. It has its own staff, but also has “stringers” - reporters who work for the actual newspaper or tv station but write local stories to put on the AP network, print, radio, or tv. They pick up everything from everywhere, down to high school sports and the local dog show, and produce their own features.
There are other syndicators as well, independent outfits that make short feature pieces that stations can purchase.
Everybody wants to be on camera, it seems, and everybody in the business wants one of their stories to be chosen to be put on air. Huge numbers of people vie to be the chosen ones. What you see in the news is the tip of the iceberg.
Comedian Dave Gorman explains how he did it: The Fabric Conditioner Jesus
It’s very funny as well as interesting, but TLDW: Gorman pranked London paper Metro with a supposedly accidental image of Jesus made by dropping Comfort fabric conditioner on a T-shirt. The story went viral, picked up by many other news outlets, morphing as it was recycled.
BTW Gorman is a repeat offender with this sort of thing.
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ETA - when Gorman is at his best, it’s like watching someone peel the surface off reality and let you look underneath.
I think there’s also a sort of filtering upwards of news stories, where they go from the local news & papers, to the regional ones, and from there to national and international ones.
For example, that woman in Galveston who was arrested for not following the bank’s mask rules actually was arrested on Thursday, and it made the Galveston/Houston news that day. It was in Friday’s Dallas news, and on CNN yesterday. That’s a pretty quick progression- sometimes it’s on the local news on a Monday, regional papers by Wednesday, and national news by Friday if it’s a humorous or off-beat story.
So my guess is that the local news reporters are basically keeping their ear to the ground for this sort of thing, and then once they report it, it filters upward in many cases. Of course, stuff on social media/youtube/tik-tok may follow a different trajectory.