For most industries, it’s about looking forward. But for newspapers, it’s all about looking back (must be part of their winning business strategy).
Newspapers aren’t content with delivering just the day’s bad news. No, no, no. Newspapers and journalists are determined to remind readers of bad news year after year.
Much like Hollywood’s penchant for sticking to sequels, editors and publishers think readers want to revisit the same story year after year. Just as people and communities try to move beyond these horrible incidents, newspapers think it’s journalists’ jobs to rehash painful memories. Anniversaries are like scabs journalists can’t help but pick at.
Most journalists will have the opportunity to cover one, maybe two historic events early in their careers. They would like to cover more such events but they spend the rest of their careers covering every anniversary.
Lucky enough to cover the worst bus accident in your small town? How about that workplace shooting spree? 9/11? Then your portfolio will be filled with anniversary stories of that event. Lucky you. Journalists and readers will get to relive the horror each year (most forget that journalists also witness these events). Sure, for the first couple of anniversaries journalists might actually care about updating readers on victims and people involved. How has the community moved forward? How have victims recovered? What have we learned? But by the third of fourth anniversary, journalists go into a jaded autopilot state of mind, calling the same sources, asking the same questions and even considering dusting off last year’s story and giving it a little updated polish.
And for some arbitary reason, anniversaries that end in 0 or 5 are seemingly more important to readers and newspaper editors. So every five years after some horrible event, journalists have to exploit the situation more than usual, complete with a special section, new interviews with victim’s families and an extra shot of whiskey alongside their usual order of a double shot (anniversaries should be considered a workplace hazard for journalists). Occasionally, anniversary stories can be cathartic for both readers and journalists but any positive side effects are washed away when publishers attempt to take advantage of the public’s mourning and try to hawk a “limited” anniversary special edition.
Journalists like anniversaries, well, because they remind journalists that not only do they write the first draft of history, they are expected to write the updated editions as well.
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100 anniversaries
This is so awesome. Makes me excited about my potential return to journalism. Have you done a blog here about journalists who like returning to journalism? That would be awesome too.