In today's world, it is sometimes hard to strike a balance between infotainment and information. Some news organizations (cough cough Fox News cough) are very good at sensationalizing everything. This obviously works for them, since they are rated very highly among the American public. I prefer more serious journalism, and I think that CNN does a relatively good job of balancing entertainment and sensationalism with news.
As mentioned in the presentation, the public seems to want both. We have to give them that, or they won't watch us or read us. I loved the quote "When you're bored, you stop learning and communication fails." This is very true. Making a story interesting and engaging for your audience is an art. I have struggled with this with some of my broadcast pieces. There are some stories that are simply boring. In the newsroom, if they are incredibly dull stories, we are encouraged to condense them into something quick and painless, for our viewers' sake.
Relevance is also very important in journalism; if you're story is outdated or irrelevant, you lose credibility. That's why many networks and affiliates preach being the first on the scene. If you're the first or only station with coverage, you gain credibility with your viewers.
Infotainment can be just what it is meant to be, entertaining. The stories really don't matter. They are interesting and they feed the public's desire for celebrity gossip. But in the grand scheme of things, they aren't newsworthy. Now, if a story is big enough, it does merit attention from real news organizations.
The availability of mass infotainment and mass news has created a rift in the political knowledge contained by one person to another:
http://www.princeton.edu/~mprior/Prior2005.News%20v%20Entertainment.AJPS.pdf
Some argue that real news is "boring" and in the world of mass communications that we live, since choices of media are so replete, it is not surprising that many younger viewers/readers prefer entertainment and celebrity news.
Some media consumers are annoyed by those who call themselves "journalists" who mix sensationalism with real newsworthy items.
http://www.uvent.info/political-news-vs-infotainment
In short, there was a time when most everything was just news. The advent of the magazine and gossip columns changed all that. Now we live in a world where the two mass media worlds of infotainment and news have mixed.
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