U.N. Report: Netflix Changes its DVD Rental Plan

When I logged onto the NPR website today, my eye was split between two stories when I first arrived on their homepage. The first was just a headline, “U.N. Report: Detainees Tortured in Afghanistan,” while the other, “Netflix Scuttles Its ‘Qwikster’ DVD Rental Plan,” attracted me because of a photograph. These two stories are quite different in about every way imaginable, and yet they seem to be equally featured on the homepage. I began to wonder why this is, and found myself asking questions about the differences between “hard” news and “soft” news.

First, I began by wondering how such a distinction arose in the first place, so I turned to Herbert J. Gans’ Deciding What’s News and his analysis of the different types of activities that appear in news stories. He notes that the three most prevalent activities featured in the news are (a) government disagreements and conflicts, (b) government decisions, proposals, and ceremonies, and (c) government personnel changes (16). I believe that this dominance of the government in the news helped feed the formation of hard news; we believe that stories about the government are important and necessary for shaping a politically-savvy country, and therefore make sure they are a frequent fixture in the news.

But if we can attribute the presence of hard news to the country’s desire to stay informed about politics, then how do we explain soft news? In trying to understand the reason for lighter news stories, such as “Netflix Scuttles Its ‘Qwikster’ DVD Rental Plan,” my thoughts turned to the fourth hour of The Today Show that I mentioned in my first post: is it possible that soft news is around simply to entertain and provide a reprieve from the heavier stories of the day?

This may be too simple an explanation, but I believe there is some truth to it. After all, unlike the policies set forth by the government, there is nothing about the latest Hollywood movie or a change in Netflix services that will greatly affect our daily lives or make us better citizens. But audiences still gobble these types of stories up, perhaps looking for a reprieve from the more intense news stories of the day.

There is undoubtedly a great deal that I don’t know about the evolution of the press in America and the development of hard and soft news. But I think that combining Gans’ analysis of activities in the news with my own experience as a consumer has helped me begin to understand the reasoning behind NPR’s homepage. While they’re trying to do their journalistic duty by providing readers with important stories about world affairs, they’re also aware that audiences enjoy to read lighter stories that may be more applicable to their daily lives.

Works Cited
Gans, Herbert J. Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time. 25th Anniversary Edition. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004.