What Readers Want vs. What They Need
Miami Herald, May 11, 2009
By Edward Wasserman
Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggests that journalists should just find out what people want and give it to them. But for journalists, that news, if done honestly, is routinely unwelcome. More to the point, news isn't just another consumer product, it's a kind of civic good. If all you do is give the public what it thinks it wants, you aren't doing your job.
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