News Critique: Newsworthy or Money Grabbing?

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The New York Times posted this article about Russia's professional athletes use of performance-enhancing drugs during competitions. While it is an interesting story, why is this on the New York Times front page?

The answer: it's popular! Clicks are the main goal for this article since the content of it does not affect a large number of people for a long time. This means that this article violates an element of journalism, Newsworthiness. 

 The article just explains how the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) will have to vote on whether to clear Russia of their violation of using drugs during a performance. Cool, what does that mean for me? This article may do better in countries that have a large fanbase of Russian teams, but since this article is targeted towards English-speaking people, there may only be a small number of people that this article will affect.

However, since sports are extremely popular in any form, this article will do well anyway. Though it won't affect too many people, many will still read. New York Times will still make their money.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 9, 2018 at 12:48 PM

    This is relevant and newsworthy because of the Olympics, which includes teams from every nation in the world, including the U.S.

    Although it could be argued that sports stories are less newsworthy than, say, political stories, it is still the case that the Olympics have a big impact on individual nations and the world even outside of a pure sports context.

    Therefore articles about Russian cheating in the Olympics are newsworthy even to a non-Russian audience.

    ReplyDelete

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