{"id":1,"date":"2011-09-05T01:26:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T01:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/?p=1"},"modified":"2012-04-15T05:42:48","modified_gmt":"2012-04-15T05:42:48","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/?p=1","title":{"rendered":"Was The Media\u2019s Hype Of Hurricane Irene Necessary?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019m not going to sugarcoat or beat around the bush about this issue. Of course, the media hyped the coverage of the impending monstrous Hurricane Irene, but that isn\u2019t as bad as people make it out to be. As a former journalist, who turned to \u201cthe dark side\u201d of marketing and PR, here\u2019s five reasons why.<\/p>\n

1. It\u2019s newsworthy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the core principles of journalism is to objectively share the big stories of the day. There\u2019s no denying that hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters are big stories. They don\u2019t happen everyday- thankfully and the affected communities need to know about it to prepare effectively.<\/p>\n

2. It answers the \u201cwho cares?\u201d question.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had a professor at the Mizzou journalism school, who always asked, \u201cWho is going to care?\u201d after I pitched a story idea. Harsh, maybe? But, it\u2019s absolutely a core question and makes any story tenfold better. Simply put, if no one cares or is going to care about the story, then it simply isn\u2019t worth covering. For instance, covering a story about a hurricane that is going to impact every major city on the I-95 corridor from North Carolina to Maine is something many people will care about.<\/p>\n

3. It\u2019s a ratings gold mine.<\/strong>
\nAdmit it, you watched The Weather Channel at some point right before or during Hurricane Irene. There\u2019s something about watching Jim Cantore, or in this case,\u00a0ABC News Reporter Matt Gutman doing the \u201churricane shuffle\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that is both fascinating and entertaining. You are not alone. Millions of us tuned in. It\u2019s informative and entertaining. It\u2019s a prime example of infotainment.<\/p>\n

4. The media is a business just like anything else.<\/strong>
\nLike it or not, infotainment is a big reason why The Weather Channel and local TV stations stay in business. The media is a business just like mom and pop shops. They need to support themselves. And, infotainment stories, with cute reporters and metereologists doing the hurricane shuffle and\/or standing in thigh deep floodwater, surrounded by debris and most likely sewage, are a fantastic way to get people tuned in to their station.<\/p>\n

5. Can you imagine what would have happened if the media didn\u2019t cover this?<\/strong>
\nAs dramatic as this may seem, the media\u2019s overzealous approach to Hurricane Irene coverage saved lives. Unless you literally lived under a rock, you knew about it. You knew about the importance of being prepared and about evacuation zones. You even knew that the MTA was going to shut down the entire NYC subway system as a precaution. Now whether you decided to heed the media\u2019s advice was up to you and you alone (ahem, like the crazies who were surfing and kayaking during the hurricane) was your decision. But the ones who took the media\u2019s coverage to heart were infinitely more prepared to weather the storm because of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not going to sugarcoat or beat around the bush about this issue. Of course, the media hyped the coverage of the impending monstrous Hurricane Irene, but that isn\u2019t as bad as people make it out to be. As a former journalist, who turned to \u201cthe dark side\u201d of marketing and PR, here\u2019s five reasons […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":63,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-subscribe","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/testimage3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta.jessicamalnik.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}