As the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton approaches, both national and local media continue to report on the minute details of the nuptials of the century – who’s been invited, what souvenirs will be awkward, what kind of flowers will be displayed at Westminster Abbey. On the E! website, people can even create their own royal names through the “Royal Name Generator.”
Since the couple announced their engagement in November, the media has continued to capitalize on the world’s enthrallment. Full-length articles, sidebars, magazine covers, broadcasts and photos have been dedicated to Will and Kate, many of which attempt to draw comparisons between the 1983 wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. But the production and consumption of these news stories is indicative of the news business’ growing reliance on fluff and entertainment articles, which is detrimental to both reporters and readers.
It’s no secret that journalism is in economic decline. Search engine optimization and other covert methods of attracting readers, especially online, are now utilized in order to garner hits. Unsurprisingly, the easiest way to make a story popular is to write it about celebrities or events involving celebrities. A royal wedding, specifically one between the future king and queen of England, is the ultimate jackpot. The wedding of Charles and Diana had more than 750 million television viewers and news networks are now racing to ensure they deliver the best coverage. It’s distressing that the news industry has come to value quantity over quality: getting thousands of hits has become more important than informing the public with useful information.
Gail Collins, a columnist for The New York Times, attempted to explain royal wedding media hysteria in an article Wednesday. She wrote, “Is it because the rest of the news has been so awful lately? I can understand the desperate desire for diversion. My household is really, really engaged in the basketball playoffs this year, and I cannot help feeling this is partly because the alternative is gas prices, tornadoes and Mitt Romney.”
Even if excitement over the royal wedding is due to the financial and personal woes of people who need distraction in some form, reporters shouldn’t take advantage of such a spectacle.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
