This is wrong. Outlets like the New York Times plan narratives spanning multiple articles well in advance and are not randomly reporting on whatever happens a given day. The same goes for the German Bild Zeitung.

The problem with printing "Preventable disease kills thousand daily" every day is not that it has a relationship to previous days but that it doesn't progress the narrative. In the old days before clicks were everything, a good newspaper article gets the reader to want to buy the newspaper in the future because they want to know how the narrative progresses.

If you read "Preventable disease kills thousand daily" five days in a row, why do I buy the newspaper on the 6th day?

A working narrative "Preventable disease Z kills thousand daily" "Then a stranger comes to town, researcher XY made a discovery that might cure disease Z" "It turns out XY was a fraud".

As far as the headline go printing the first headline in your post everyday would be highly misleading. You can argue that Flint's water is not clean but that doesn't change the fact that it's massively more clean then it was two decades ago. A newspaper who just reports "it's not clean" in the same way every year would do a massive disservice to it's readers.

[-]damiensnyder4y10

If you read "Preventable disease kills thousand daily" five days in a row, why do I buy the newspaper on the 6th day?

You don't :) I write:

The problem with such a newspaper is that they would go out of business. After all, if the headline has been the same for the last month, even if it is the most important action item in the world, people will stop learning anything from it.

However, by bringing up that extreme example, I approach the question of whether it makes sense to move on from news stories just because they are no longer novel—after all, the problem has not gone away by the time you stop printing about it. It's not clear that repeating important information would create more political action on it, but such a strategy is worth pondering (in my opinion).

As far as the headline go printing the first headline in your post everyday would be highly misleading. You can argue that Flint's water is not clean but that doesn't change the fact that it's massively more clean then it was two decades ago. A newspaper who just reports "it's not clean" in the same way every year would do a massive disservice to it's readers.

When I found that article, I also found several newer articles about how Flint's water is clean now. The headline I chose was from 2019. I just chose Flint because it was the only event I could think of where I remembered seeing headlines like that.

[-]ChristianKl4y10

However, by bringing up that extreme example, I approach the question of whether it makes sense to move on from news stories just because they are no longer novel

I see no reason why you wouldn't add new information if you want to do another story on the same topic the way it's done currently.

At the New York Times you have a bunch of editors sitting together and deciding about what the narrative should be. Then they send out reporters over months to search for stories to fit into the narrative. If the New York Times editors want something to stay the narrative they send out reporters to seek more stories that fit into the narrative.

There's no need to repeat the same story twice.

I just chose Flint because it was the only event I could think of where I remembered seeing headlines like that.

And they are one of the worst pieces of journalism because they treat clean/nonclean as a binary when it isn't.

Pretending that it's a binary instead of reporting on the changes in grey does a massive disservice to the readers.

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The news attention span

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A Completely Noncontroversial Take

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