Comprehensive and Proportional

Engaging the audience is one of the biggest challenges faced by news providers. There is an obligation to report the facts, but the facts might bore your audience into disappearing. If viewers are disinterested by the news they are receiving they will switch where they are receiving it. Look at the difference between  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4lB1Y4ZwfU and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B0QPcoTZg8. Which one would you rather watch? Jon Stewart is definitely more engaging to watch than CNN. 

The problem with Jon Stewart being more engaging on the Daily Show than CNN, is that his show is a comedy news broadcast. It is not meant to be a fact based news station. His entertaining style is mixed in with news creating what we refer to as infotainment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infotainment. Of course Stewart uses facts while he is doing his entertaining show, but he is mostly entertaining. CNN loses viewers to the Daily Show because of the entertainment they receive. 

Infotainment threatens pure journalism by replacing it with a sort of stand-up comedian act. When audiences want infotainment that is what they get because news stations have to be able to compete, or they risk going out of business. In class the battle between infotainment and pure journalism was compared to broccoli and ice cream. As a child if your mother were to offer you a bowl of broccoli and a bowl of ice cream you would certainly choose the ice cream. You eat as much ice cream as your stomach can handle, and eventually you get so sick of ice cream that you will choose to eat a bowl of broccoli.

Audiences will eventually outgrow the sugar high they receive from infotainment, but news stations cannot afford to lose money while infotainment steals their customers.

As a journalist you must learn to both entertain and inform here are some ideas to help:

• Ask open-ended questions
• Conduct in-depth interviews
•  Don't give options
• Write articles like a story
• Ask yourself, "Who is the audience, and what do they need to know."
• Use metaphors

One of the most important things to remember while attempting to both entertain and inform is that techniques should never alter facts.