As I go through my daily internet routine, I always find something interesting on yahoo before checking my email. More often than not, it is a story on sports, specifically football. Today I was surprised to find myself reading an article on a sport I never follow, tennis. What I was even more surprised to find is that the article wasn’t even about the 2010 Australian Open; it was about the on-court fashion worn by the participants.
As I was scrolling through the article, I realized that my issue with this article goes back to something we talked about in a very early class discussion. We had to respond to the questions: “what is news,” and “what makes news important?” To me, the more important story is the outcome of the matches and what the players wear is really not a story at all. The author obviously thought the same thing, seeing how his comments limited to a short sentence at most on each picture.
The most important thing about this story to me, is that it was the first story to pop up on yahoo; the first thing you see. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a newspaper’s front page headline. On top of all that, It was three slots before the most useful and important article titled, “Must-Know 2010 Tax Changes.”
Maybe “The Best and Worst Fashions at the 2010 Australian Open” is just a product of staff writers desperate to make a headline, or maybe its a product of consumer interest. Either way, it seems to me that this is another example of the media focusing on useless and unimportant tales.
http://sports.yahoo.com/ten/blog/busted_racquet/post/The-best-and-worst-fashions-at-the-2010-Australi?urn=ten,214831
