Service Journalism…
Something we should constantly be thinking about!
Service journalism makes sense.
As said in the RJI article by Pete Pachal, service journalism “is a new term for an old idea: giving readers good, practical advice — what to buy, where to go, how to do a certain thing — to make their lives easier”
Service journalism is reader focused.
Pachal said it best again, the reporter’s lens moves from the subject to the reader.
This note was interesting because I’m so used to writing content based on the subject at hand. I’ve spent time reporting on different beats for The Brown & White. In most of them, I covered an event or profiled someone important in the Lehigh community. I’ve also done more in depth stories in the array of courses throughout my studies.
All of these stories, though, were primarily for entertainment… to give readers that “good read,” but accept that they will probably forget about it after they finished the story. Maybe they won’t forget about it, but what are readers actually supposed to do with that information now?
This reflection isn’t necessarily negative. It’s what we’ve been trained to do as journalists so far in our academic careers. My point is that I’m excited to expand into writing that shifts the focus from the subject to giving tools to readers for them to take action.
Megan Griffith-Greene, the service features editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, explains how her newsroom is organized to take service journalism into account. Her team of writers work with different desks in the newsroom to flag stories that have service-worthy aspects to them. At the same time, it’s not every man for himself in this newsroom. If a desk wants to incorporate service-journalism into their story, they could flag someone on the service features team to collaborate with.
In the end, you will garner your readers trust if you’re giving them good advice. This helps your following, especially because of “the rise of SEO” as Pachal mentions. I guarantee anyone reading my stories also knows how to use Google. Following SEO and SMO trends could be key to gaining most of our support if we are giving trustworthy and meaningful content.
This should be our thought process in developing ideas throughout the semester. Maybe we don’t need to include entire service packages in our newsletters, but we should constantly be thinking about what the reader is going to get out of them. After all, they’re not going to come back if it’s not worth coming back too!
