By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

NOTE: This is from Stacey Woelfel’s Substack column, The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel.

Stacey Woelfel spent 35 years on the faculty of the Missouri School of Journalism.

And for 24 years, he was the news director for KOMU, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri.

News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com

Guthrie Case Has Everything TV News Wants—And Nothing It Needs

Tailor-made for TV news, this story is draining resources from more important coverage.

I just happened to be in Arizona visiting my mother (she’s 95 and going strong!) when the Nancy Guthrie story broke. I was in Phoenix and saw the local stations jump into action, sending crews to Tucson and making Guthrie’s disappearance the lead story on every newscast. The networks soon followed and it was leading national news on a daily basis.

I awoke this morning to the compelling video released by the FBI of an individual, identity hidden, approaching the Guthrie home. It’s the biggest morsel so far in a story that’s had mouths watering in newsrooms across the country. At a time when the most important news is complicated and divisive, this story comes along to give journalists and viewers something simple over which they can obsess.

The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Guthrie story has three things that make it irresistible for TV news: a celebrity, a true crime mystery and—most importantly—a complete lack of need for any effort to cover it.

Let me start with that last part first. Journalists can be a lazy lot. We tend to go back to the same sources over and over. We tend to milk stories with unnecessary follow-ups because we’ve already done most of the work. And we love a story where we just sit around and wait for authorities to tell us what to report. That’s definitely happening in Tucson. Nearly every “break” in the story I have seen has come from an official police or other government source. Sure, some newsrooms are finding retired FBI agents and the like to talk about how the investigation will work, but in terms of hitting the pavement to uncover facts, that’s just not happening. This is a story that allows reporters to sit outside the police station and wait for handouts. Or worse—get the information they report from each other. We’ve seen this lazy reporting many times before, perhaps most notoriously with the Natalee Holloway disappearance in Aruba back in 2005. The world’s reporters descended on the small Caribbean island and literally sat around waiting to be handed facts, reporting mostly just what they were telling each other.

Don’t get me wrong, there is one very interesting bit of news value in the story. Stranger abductions are incredibly rare in this country. Almost all abductions involve parties who already know each other—drug deals gone bad, parents taking children, etc. But almost never does a stranger come into a home and take someone. Statistics show that about one percent of child abductions are by strangers. The federal government doesn’t keep statistics on adult abductions, but there’s little reason to believe it would much more. That’s the most interesting part of this story.

But the rarity of the type of abduction isn’t what we’re covering.

We’re focused on the fact that this is the mother of a celebrity. What’s more, that celebrity is one of us—a familiar, cheery face on TV news bright and early every morning. If the missing woman had been a run-of-the-mill, 84-year-old Tucson-area resident, the story would have gotten a good deal of coverage locally and in Phoenix, but just a smattering of coverage beyond Arizona. But since she has a famous daughter, the story matters more to news managers across the country and at the network level.

Beyond that, it feeds the seemingly endless hunger for true crime that has gripped this country for the past couple of decades. True crime has always been a staple of TV news, from the nightly reports of local shootings and stabbings to the TV news magazine staples like CBS’ 48 Hours, ABC’s 20/20 and NBC’s Dateline NBC. Those last two once had lives as legitimate investigative reporting news programs, but now devote themselves to chasing decades-old crime stories. America seems to have no end to its appetite for true crime. Throw in a celebrity and you’ve hit a jackpot—the nonstop coverage of the tragic murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner being only the most recent example.

Why should we care if newsrooms want to focus on this story?

The reason is because the Guthrie story using news resources and air time that would better go to other stories. For instance, there’s a story just down the road from Tucson breaking today after authorities shut down the El Paso airport over concerns about passenger safety due to a new anti-drone technology in use by the U.S. Defense Department. The initial airport shutdown was to be for ten days (ten days!), though it has now been lifted. What little I already know about this story tells me it could mean big trouble for the air industry, anything from minor inconveniences to all-out disasters for the flying public. Sure, it’ll get some coverage on the news for a day or so. But reporters will move on from that big story far sooner than they will from the Guthrie story. More money than is necessary will continue to pump into covering the story in Tucson. A source tells me CNN flew Jake Tapper on a private jet from DC to Arizona to cover the Guthrie story (I hope he drops by El Paso while he’s in the neighborhood). That’s a huge waste of money just on the cost of flying private over a comfy business class seat. The person power and dollars spent on this true crime magnet of a story could be staffing and funding more important reporting elsewhere—all of which would mean more to viewers and their lives.

This all boils down to the old question of balancing what viewers versus what they need.

Do viewers want this? Yes, of course they do. It’s been the talk of any gathering of people (driven partly by news coverage, of course) and will continue to gather interest until it comes to an end one way or another. Do viewers need this? No, of course they do not. It has no effect on their lives or how they live them. The key from my perspective is that word “balance.” It is possible to have a little bit of Guthrie news in every newscast without committing a great deal of individual newsroom resources to get it. Local stations will—and should—continue covering this story in a big way. They’re a source for the rest of us to get the latest footage and info for us to share with our audiences. The networks should pull back and use those same resources.

I can’t place all the blame on news managers deciding to chase this story to the exclusion of other, more important stories. Viewers are to blame, too, choosing the junk food version of news that satisfies their cravings and turning their noses up at the news that’s good for them. Until we can change America’s news consumption diet, the same unhealthy dishes will remain on the menu.

The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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