Robert G. Kaiser told a humbling story in the Washington Post Sunday: The Post nearly ignored Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and his historic “I have a dream …” theme in its coverage of the march on Washington 50 years ago.
It’s not the first big story a newspaper (or most of the news media) has missed. Collectively most of the media blew the coverage of intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as well as the developments that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. The Lexington Herald Leader ran a front-page correction in 2004 for its failure to adequately cover the civil rights movement.
Here’s my question: What are today’s historic stories that we will look back on and say that we missed the real story or the importance of the story?
Update: Linda Deutsch writes about covering the march.
Twitter reactions
cc @stevebuttry MT @motherjones Women won right to vote 93 yrs ago today. Story wasn’t the top NYT headline that day http://t.co/44i5OZKOO2
— Elaine Clisham (@eclisham) August 27, 2013
@stevebuttry Some candidates have to include meth epidemic (covered but not well), expanding digital divide, shortcomings in higher ed
— Chris Winston (@CWinstonSC) August 26, 2013
@CWinstonSC @stevebuttry I submit these are IMPORTANT stories (and have a couple more to add), but is that different from “historic?”
— Elaine Clisham (@eclisham) August 26, 2013
@CWinstonSC @stevebuttry Additional important stories: looming global water shortage; looming crisis in elder care.
— Elaine Clisham (@eclisham) August 26, 2013
@eclisham @stevebuttry agree there is a distinction. We knew in ’63 that racial equality was a globally important story. Now?
— Chris Winston (@CWinstonSC) August 26, 2013
@stevebuttry Interesting. I just wrote our anniversary story, and @vjotimesherald didn’t cover the speech either. March was on Page 9.
— Lanz Christian Bañes (@LanzCBanes) August 26, 2013
@stevebuttry The Dream Speech wasn’t as important in 1963 as it’s become today.
— Afi Scruggs (@aoscruggs) August 26, 2013
@stevebuttry And I wish more folks would read the entire speech, instead of reducing it to “I Have A Dream” and “Content of Character”
— Afi Scruggs (@aoscruggs) August 26, 2013
.@stevebuttry But Steve, how can one guage historical importance when we’re standing in the present?
— Afi Scruggs (@aoscruggs) August 26, 2013
.@stevebuttry and the MSM didn’t/doesn’t cover people of color well at all. That’s the bigger problem; not gauging historical importance
— Afi Scruggs (@aoscruggs) August 26, 2013
Update: Sally Duros says the historic story we’re missing is the “death of the public schools.”
Update: Thanks to Steve Fagan for a thoughtful response to this post, wondering if newsroom staff cutbacks won’t prompt some newsrooms to provide shallow coverage of some historic events in their communities.
Without question, cutbacks are causing us to miss important stories and raise the importance of good news judgment in how to use resources (which have always been limited). But I should point out that Kaiser’s piece makes clear that the Post heavily staffed the march, but barely noticed the most important part of the story. So staffing isn’t always the reason for failures by newsrooms.
Also, I doubt that newsroom staffs have been cut as severely since 1963 as Steve speculates. The annual American Society of News Editors newsroom census has counted nationwide staffing in newspaper newsrooms since 1978 (or at least figures are available online going back to 1978. I don’t know what the trend was from 1963 to 1978, but I suspect it was growth. Newsroom employment totaled 43,000 in 1978 and grew to a peak of 56,900 in 1990. It was stable for most of the next two decades, never dropping below 53,000 until 2008. In the past six years we’ve lost 17,000 employees, with 38,000 counted this year. That’s a severe loss, but I suspect it’s about the same as in 1963, not half or one-third less as Steve speculated. Update: Steve updated his post to reflect these numbers.
That said, Steve’s point remains valid. The cuts in recent years have been staggering and we need to beware of missing or minimizing important stories. Steve also had the great idea of linking to the I Have a Dream speech’s text. So I copied that move and added a video:
[…] his blog today, Steve Buttry […]
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It would be hard to top this for missing a historic story: The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer was unable to do a complete history of the Civil War from its pages, even though it was founded in 1842.
That’s because the Copperhead appointed to oversee the newspaper made it so unpopular and ran into such financial difficulties that the paper suspended publication in March 1965 and didn’t resume for seven weeks, missing both the Confederate surrender and Lincoln’s assassination.
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[…] What historic stories are we missing today? […]
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[…] What historic stories are we missing today? […]
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