Yes, someone, back in the golden age of newspapers came up with that gem. Thought about it while smoking a cigar and fingering a tumbler full of good scotch.
And as the amber liquid burned its way down into his stomach, he thought deeply about how to attract readers. How to get eyes on his newsprint and keep them there, one article after another. Long enough for the Ads to be seen and read and the revenue driven in so all the bills could be paid and then some.
If it bleeds it leads.
Death coming in at all hours.
Horses trampling workers coming home from the bars late at night.
Fires consumed old apartments where grandmothers were taking care of children so parents could work two shifts.
Homeless dying on cold nights next to opera houses where La Traviata played and the mayor shook hands with his constituents.
***
Even in the long-ago, when words were in full bloom and Shakespeare dipped his quill into a pot of ink and pondered, “To be, or not to be: that is the question,” if it bled it led was in vogue as well and filled the broadsheets.
Man has been fascinated by disasters and trainwrecks since the first train ambled down the tracks and looked to the sky to see what might fall out of it since Orville and Wilbur Wright made their first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
An arrow shot from Cupid’s bow makes for a good Valentine’s Day story but an arrow piercing the heart of a man fleeing from a burglary makes for a good headline that sold papers.
Today newspapers are on their way out. From thousands down to hundreds, the Fourth Estate keeps moving forward in a valiant effort to remain relevant while tens of thousands of new “reporters” pop up on YouTube every year giving their version of what America needs to hear.
We are a generation of content creators.
Using Apps to generate images and words that articulate the same basic concepts over and over again, as the readers, two hundred million of us, receive these bits and bytes like precision jabs from a journeyman boxer.
Here a death, there a theft, in between a hit & run as photographs showing cars driven through café windows upsetting everyone’s lattes and their evening review of BuzzFeed.
And if it didn’t happen, we make it up. We are more prone to believing Fake News than the real thing. How did that happen?
And we keep coming back for more.
***
We swipe our phones first thing in the morning while our first cup of coffee drips into a to-go cup and a new day dawns on podcasts, drivetime radio and the ubiquitous updates as the war in (fill in the blank) rages on.
What makes bad news more desirable than good news?
In the world of cinema, we call them feel-good movies. Ones we watch with our children and hot cups of coco and a handy box of tissues.
Their counterparts on television are called Reality TV. Love After Lockup, Naked and Afraid, Best Funeral Ever, and BridalPlasty, where would-be brides battle for the latest surgical procedures.
Shows are so steeped in reality that the distinction between what’s on television and what’s happening down on the corner gets blurred.
But we tune in and watch. We’re assured it’s okay. The ratings prove it. The Likes guarantee more of it as algorithms push similar content our way and our brains get rewired as we sleep, awakening with a well-practiced reach for the phone before our feet touch the floor.
And yet we struggle for control over our devices.
iPhone 15s becomes desirable before 14s are broken in. We hold them close, perhaps too close as we order coffee, take out, and weekly transfers from checking to savings.
With FOMO stalking us as incoming texts agitate neurotransmitters and pulse rates rise the closer, we get to quitting time.
We know this because an App is monitoring all our vital functions and warns us that driving to an In N’ Out is a bad choice, better to jog.
But we are far more connected today than ever before, delivering messages in the hundreds each day, maybe the thousands for those lucky influencers on the rise.
We know where our friends are — within a few feet.
Who misses us. Who loves us, without ever saying a word or having to string together complex sentences as we navigate a far more complicated and time-consuming world.
And yet we’re unhappy. Statistically, we’re worried more than we used to be. Who wouldn’t be when wearing masks ruled the day and viruses moved from the digital world to the real one with disastrous consequences?
You would think that with BPs on the rise we would hug more trees. Take more Nature walks and focus on meditation and positivity.
And yet, bad news is still all around us.
Look at Fox News, CNN, MSN, and the BBC. Pussy cats and happy endings find their way in now and then, but the world events, and the stories that are carried, retweeted, and rebroadcast are about Reality.
The rising rate of inflation. The rising cost of housing and healthcare. The rise in mass shootings, hate speech, on and on.
Church attendance is declining. We believe in a God but in our own way.
We look for signs that one exists, but the bad news, good news ratio tends to turn us off and we dive back into the daily routine for comfort instead.
Logging more work hours as over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. But we continue to spend — on credit in many cases.
And to further distract us we watch more sports. With 82 of the top 100 shows in the last year or so, being NFL games and the rest made up of other sports like the NBA and the occasional broadcast of the President’s State of the Union speech.
We gamble more on sports, the lottery, it doesn’t matter.
Reality shows are binged; millions watch shows about past lottery winners and the homes they buy. Past lottery winners and the millions they lost.
Forever hopeful that the big payout will take care of our worries and set us up for our last few years.
As a nation we eat to assuage our fears, hiding behind Uber Eats and DoorDash.
We drink to forget them.
Or take drugs to regulate their highs and lows, prescriptions or those bought from Freddie on the corner.
And for all of this is it just that bad news is addictive. That we can’t stop, not without help.
Is it a dopamine fix or simply a way of distracting us so our struggles seem a little less daunting?
If we stopped tuning in, put down our phones, and left the emails for a few days, what would happen?
Would we experience withdrawal pains or peace of mind?
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Local News
