The End of Curated Appointment Journalism, or Farewell to the Six O'Clock News

Is the end of curated, appointment journalism coming to an end?

Some are saying yes—and the data backs them up.

But first: What is curated journalism?

That’s another way to describe what you get in your daily newspaper or TV or radio newscast—stories selected for you by others (editors or news directors).

As for appointment journalism, that’s what happens when the news is delivered to you on someone else’s schedule—the 6 o’clock news on TV or radio, the morning newspaper.

For a long time curated appointment journalism was all we had available to us as news consumers.

We got our news when it when the media delivered it to us—and only what they determined was newsworthy.

But those days are coming to an end.

Keith Olbermann of ESPN was quoted in Slate in June on this topic as it pertains to the falling ratings of the network’s signature show, SportsCenter.

“All the attempts to modify it [SportsCenter] are predicated on the idea that it can be what it was two years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago, and it can’t,” Olbermann said.

“There is no motivation except for old-time guys, who are our ages or even older, who want that sort of leisurely, well-done, paced kind of stroll through all the sports news. But we’re dying off.”

The same is happening to other radio and TV news shows, such as NPR: The audience for those shows is aging and declining.

“Tell a bunch of 19-year-olds that it should 

be up to the professionals to determine 

what news is most important, and they’ll 

laugh until their earbuds fall out.”

As Steve Lickteig put it in that Slate article: “News of all kinds is available at a pace that was unthinkable even 10 years ago. And as Olbermann pointed out, the desire for the ‘leisurely, well-done’ show is very much on the wane.”

Older people, he went on to say, are fine with this; they don’t mind consuming news as it’s served.

“Tell a bunch of 19-year-olds that it should be up to the professionals to determine what news is most important, and they’ll laugh until their earbuds fall out.”

Lickteig likes curated appointment journalism like NPR (as do I).

But, he says, “I believe that 15 years from now, those stories won’t be delivered by appointment and in that magazine format.”

A 2016 report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism confirms Lickteig’s forecast.

The report found there are significant declines in traditional television viewing, replaced by online video and social media.  

TV viewing in countries like the UK and the U.S. has declined by 3% to 4% per year on average since 2012, the Institute reports.

At the same time, “the average audience of many television news programs is by now older than the average audience of many print newspapers,” the report says.

As for the future, “there are no reasons to believe that a generation that has grown up with and enjoys digital, on-demand, social, and mobile video viewing across a range of connected devices will come to prefer live, linear, scheduled programming tied to a single device just because they grow older.”

Adds the report: “If television news providers do not react to the decline in traditional television viewing and the rise of online video—in particular on-demand, distributed, and mobile viewing—they risk irrelevance. “

Legacy media—newspapers, radio and TV—are experimenting with new ways to attract younger consumers.

But, the report notes, “no one has found the right recipe for doing online video news in this rapidly changing environment.”

Lickteig has an idea for radio, at least.

“Here’s what I think the future sounds like,” he says.

“You will get in your car and say, ‘Play my news briefing, plus all of last night’s baseball scores, including highlights from the Yankees game. Oh, and give me last week’s Vows column from the New York Times.’”

Then, like magic, “your audio system will assemble this playlist. That news briefing you asked for? It will come from sources you pre-selected, places like NPR and news organizations yet to be created. 

"If you don’t know what you feel like hearing, you’ll ask your system to surprise you. If you don’t like what you hear, you’ll tell it to skip to something else.”

You are the curator, in other words. And you decide when you will get the information you want.

“In the audio future, you’ll never have to hear a story you don’t care about again,” he states.

Apparently, this is technologically possible—Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo both offer basic versions of this functionality.

But what about discovery? One of the brilliant things about curated journalism is that smart and informed people find news that I might not be looking for—and didn’t know was important.

I think it’s important but, and so does Lickteig.

But, he points out, “millions of people younger than me do not.”

It’s not that they’re stupid or don’t care, he says.

It’s just that current content delivery systems “don’t satisfy” their interests and passions.

So is that future—in radio, and maybe on TV and the web, too?

People are already doing it now, creating their own news feeds online. And Facebook and Google, using its knowledge of users, is sending us information tailored to our tastes.

So it sounds like it’s farewell the 6 o’clock news.

It was nice while it lasted.