Categories: OLD Media Moves

Getting biz reporters to care about a boring topic

Allen Wastler, the managing editor of CNBC.com, writes about getting his staff members to care about writing about boring topics such as net neutrality.

Wastler writes, “This is a particular problem for news managers (that’d be, cough, me). We know that a certain story is really important. But our editors and reporters tend to drag their feet on it; not out of maliciousness or ignorance, mind you. Just because it is B…O…R…I…N…G in terms of writing and reporting.

“We have one of the these types of stories today. But I finally managed to get my staff to pay attention to it at our morning news meeting.

“‘Folks,’ I said (okay, I’m cleaning this up a bit for publication). ‘What if we couldn’t put up all our news stories and videos because the Internet pipes were too clogged? Would we stay in business long?’

“I got a few stunned looks.

“‘Or what if someone said to us: ‘Hey, you do too much broadband-hogging stuff. We’re going to limit how much you can do in a day.’ Would we like that?'”