In praise of journalists
Reporters are suckers for praise, no matter how aloof they act. Reporters at wire services, such as The Canadian Press, are especially susceptible to praise because they so seldom get it. Other news outlets promote their own reporters with top billing in newscasts, webpages and newspaper bylines. Staff at a wire service accept anonymity as their special burden.
When I started at The Canadian Press in 1983, I learned about “fronts notes.” These brief wire items told editors what stories were on the front page of every big-city newspaper across Canada that day. Fronts notes specified whether items were above or below the fold. Broadsheet newspapers, such as the Toronto Star, are folded in half for distribution, with only the top half visible at newsstands. That visible zone is tarted up to sell copies. (Tabloids, being smaller, were not folded. They used pictures and shock-and-awe headlines to grab attention.)
CP indulged in a little flag-waving in these fronts notes. The item would highlight what CP stories had landed on front pages, as well as on the inside pages. We wire reporters would get chuffed if our own story and byline had run the gauntlet into print. If it was above the fold? Even sweeter.
Fronts notes fell out of favour as newspapers cratered and the metric became anachronistic. Websites and newscasts mattered much more than dead-tree formats. Besides, reporters now had Google Alerts to signal when our bylines landed somewhere on the ‘net. Still, the endorphin rush wasn’t the same. Fronts notes were a public declaration of success. Google Alerts were just another email.
In 2014, I joined CBC’s Parliamentary bureau to write online stories. My editors subscribed to Chartbeat.com, which counted every mouse-click on the Mothercorp’s website. Occasionally, an editor would pat me on the back for the click-fests one of my stories triggered. The CBC website also registered the number of reader comments, another rough gauge of whether I’d hit a nerve.
One morning in the newsroom, I noticed a big TV screen gushing with numbers and charts. It was a direct feed of Chartbeat.com, showing second-by-second how many readers were clicking on our stories, how long they stayed with each story, and ranking the items from most to least popular. The novelty wore off after an hour, replaced by mild anxiety. Why wasn’t my story at the top? Why were readers bailing on me after a minute? Should I have put more sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in the lead?
I stopped looking at the screen after a few days. Yes, reporters crave praise, but this blizzard of digital feedback was intimidating and distracting. I told myself that eyeballs are not a reliable measure of success. Some of the greatest reporting triumphs – the My Lai story or Watergate – had trouble finding audiences at the start. Instead, I would continue to rely on instinct, and the advice of smart editors and sources, to find stories that mattered. Though a part of me still missed those fronts notes.
Jan. 24, 2022
