Chapter 20 unique interesting thing

There's a hopeless-sounding adage in journalism called "Give me a story and, for God's sake, make it interesting." As an analogy, you never hear what the cosmetics industry says "Give me a piece of toothpaste, for God's sake, make it smell better." No one bothers about this kind of thing, but all toothpaste smells good, and journalism has the gods blackmailing itself, More than half of the news is still unreadable.This may show that journalists are all fools-if you understand it that way, I can't object, because I have worked in journalism myself, and my IQ is really limited to deal with this magnificent era.But this is more proof that journalism is an industry that depends on individual talents, and it also shows how rare a good news organization is, and as a whole, a healthy journalism industry is more important and more precious than other industries.You can floss or salt without toothpaste, and without journalism, a small half of civilization on Earth would be nothing.

The real problem was that we found it too difficult to write an interesting story.Just like tea trees only grow on red soil, we only have one kind of story here, that is, a guy was imprisoned in the detention center, and he happily played games with his companions, throwing handkerchiefs, throwing handkerchiefs, gently Put it behind the kid, don't tell him!Then he died.If our news is true, it always looks like this, like a great river of absurdity rushing to the top of the mountain.If we talk about a single child, this kind of story is of course wonderful, but every story around us is like this, so it is not attractive at all.

In the history of journalism, I had a very small but significant experience.One day a few years ago, a friend said to me, stop reporting on mine disasters, it’s all rubbish news.You know what's the most surprising thing about this sentence?In that it is absolutely right.The public's sympathy has a threshold, and it is easy to get bored. Over time, no matter how serious the tragedy is, it will be ignored. The problem always stood there like a rock: we found a lot of interesting stories, but couldn't write a really interesting one. What is a really interesting story?One of the most easily cited examples is of course Watergate.When I was one year old, two reporters from the Washington Post got rid of "Deep Throat", the former number two of the CIA, Mark Felt, thus proving that President Nixon had indeed used bugs on his political opponents.You can see in it the essentials of a really interesting story: a plot that exceeds the reader's expectations, and an almost lofty belief in turning history in the direction of the public interest.

But this kind of story is delicate.Great news is always so easy to die, so dangerous to tell, you don't even have to throw your handkerchief.It's like the Creator created an iris flower. As long as the world changes a little bit, such as the ocean current is deflected by five degrees, or the butterflies all go on vacation, the iris flower will die.If the change is a little bit bigger, such as removing one of the smallest planets in the solar system, then it is very likely that with a "boom", Europe will fall into your toilet.Generally speaking, this is called a system.Funny news stories always depend on the good civilization system, boring news stories depend on the anti-civilization one.

In other words, the anti-civilization system kills almost all interesting stories precisely because it leaves the only interesting one. There is an old story in the former Soviet Union that Caesar, Alexander the Great and Napoleon were invited to participate in the Red Square military parade. Caesar said, if I have Soviet tanks, I can conquer Europe; Alexander said, if I have Soviet planes, I can conquer Europe. Conquer the world; it's Napoleon's turn, he said, if I had Pravda, nobody would know Waterloo by now.This story is very interesting, but the bottom line is sad. After it blooms, all flowers will die. With it, all other stories will be killed.But now people know not only Waterloo, but also all kinds of past events in the Soviet Union. I think this proves that the only interesting story is not as powerful as people think.There is a layer of badness to this ending, that is, the Soviet Union collapsed, the oil oligarchy was born, Chelsea became stronger, and the reign of the Arsenal team I supported was over.But it couldn't be better: funny stories come back to life.