In the old days, when readers were ‘them’ and journalists were ‘us’, the first question many people would put to an editor was ‘how do you decide what’s news?’
It always struck me as odd that such folk genuinely didn’t know the answer, given they were both the source and consumers of local newspaper content.
But it does say something about the traditional relationship between public and journalists. Journalism was about people. ‘News’ was what came out of the end of the sausage machine. It might not be to your taste, but there was precious little you could do about it.
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