Relevance in Public Journalism

This last post goes with my previous post, Journalism: Comprehensive and Proportional. What should be included in reporting and what should be left out? Sometimes it is a battle--engaging versus relevant. What the authors of Elements of Journalism found is people want both. People read the sports pages and the business pages. They will read a book review, but also the cartoons. I believe engaging and relevant need not be mutually exclusive. I feel that storytelling is a great example of how to bridge the gap between engaging and relevant. I believe storytelling allows the information to come to life for the reader. For instance, reporting information about how a well-known local teenager is coping with losing his arm may classify as important information. The news may tug at the heart strings by itself. However, the reader may not fully understand and be engaged until the journalist describes the teenager's difficulty getting dressed in the morning. A task that once took 5 minutes now takes 25 minutes or more. News shared in this way helps journalism take on a new meaning. Journalism can become storytelling with a purpose. "That purpose is to provide people with information they need to understand the world."