How does this help me?

CJR's David Cay Johnston is bang on point with his article, Attitude Adjustment. As a media outlet - you can cover the big events, but if you ignore the concerns of your readers when you do - you'll lose readers.

Consider the coverage of proposed airline mergers, such as the pending deal between Northwest and Delta, the nation’s third- and fourth-largest airlines by revenue. Reports typically focused on the problems of the airlines, whose owners want to raise fares by reducing competition. Yet most readers are passengers, and they care about ticket prices, which tend to rise when competition lessens. Consumers also care about legroom, frequency of flights, whether getting home requires a change of planes, rapidly escalating charges to change tickets (up sixfold from $25 a decade ago to $150 at most airlines today), and new charges for such services as checking a suitcase or getting a drink of water. But such consumer interests too often tend to be relegated to the middle or end of reports of proposed airline mergers, if they are mentioned at all.

Think back on how many merger stories you've read/seen in the past year. The number of times you've heard about an executive stepping down or getting tapped. If you're like me, you greet these stories with a glazed over indifference. If there's a thought in there at all it sounds a lot like:

Who gives a sh!t?

This is not to say these stories don't affect me - but there's little in these stories to inform me as to why I should care. More to the point - there is nothing in these stories to tell me why these stories are more important than my other daily concerns.

Here's a great bit:

One of the most powerful and enduring raps on mainstream media is that it identifies too much with the people and institutions it covers and too little with the readers who pay good money for subscriptions. Readers (and listeners and viewers) expect and deserve information that serves their interests, information that ever larger legions of publicity agents are paid to direct reporters away from, and toward what the business or government agency prefers.

It's too simple to say that big media outlets are simply house organs for big corporations - but it is clear they are not targeting coverage to consumer needs.

You don't care about me? Then you're telling me not to care about you.