Traditional media will never highlight or even feature the work of the nonprofit sector with two exceptions—the obligatory piece near Thanksgiving about volunteers helping out a food bank, and as different non-profit scandals emerge.
My hometown paper is the Washington Post and a few weeks ago there was a telling report by the Ombudsman, Deborah Howell. The spefic issue was that readers had written complaining about the lack of coverage on the National Mall of the event that celebrated Israel’s 60th Anniversary, and indeed the paper agreed that it should have covered this story better. Most people missed this nuance however, the reporter on the scene Jacquie Salmon, who was identified as the “religion reporter”, she used to be the “non-profit reporter” so I’m not sure if the Post even has a non-profit beat reporter any longer, but that’s not the main point. The main point is that the specific directions to her from her editior was “don’t cover anything unless there’s conflict.” Many many important events in the non-profit sector are not the ones that have conflict, and yet in the view of the media, conflict is the only thing that sells.
COMMENTS
BY Bill Huddleston, CFC Expert
ON July 3, 2008 02:51 PM
Traditional media will never highlight or even feature the work of the nonprofit sector with two exceptions—the obligatory piece near Thanksgiving about volunteers helping out a food bank, and as different non-profit scandals emerge.
My hometown paper is the Washington Post and a few weeks ago there was a telling report by the Ombudsman, Deborah Howell. The spefic issue was that readers had written complaining about the lack of coverage on the National Mall of the event that celebrated Israel’s 60th Anniversary, and indeed the paper agreed that it should have covered this story better. Most people missed this nuance however, the reporter on the scene Jacquie Salmon, who was identified as the “religion reporter”, she used to be the “non-profit reporter” so I’m not sure if the Post even has a non-profit beat reporter any longer, but that’s not the main point. The main point is that the specific directions to her from her editior was “don’t cover anything unless there’s conflict.” Many many important events in the non-profit sector are not the ones that have conflict, and yet in the view of the media, conflict is the only thing that sells.
Bill Huddleston, CFC Expert
Fairfax, Virginia