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It's because research has discovered that people care about single, individual stories; especially those they can relate. So stories like this are how they capture people not already interested in the topics' interest. You see this everywhere. It's not "see this home get remodeled" it's "hear the story of this family and how remodeling their home changed their life", not "bake an awesome cupcake" but "while Betty bakes let's see her family at home and how her mum is doing". Most people just don't connect with big picture ideas or raw data.

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That's an explanation but not a justification. People like celebrity gossip too, but newspapers feel a duty (due to both external social pressure and an internal code) to not include updates on the opinion of the Kardashians as part of their war coverage. Although the upteenth description of a random postdoc's laboratory life (an example used elsewhere in this thread) seems less trashy than the Kardashians, I think they have similar news value.

It is a justification. If newspapers were a public good, they could afford to write pieces that didn't necessarily land well with the public, but had more substance around the science.

While newspapers don't include the Kardashians in the war coverage, they DO include the Kardashians. War is very different from Science - it is straightforward, exciting to read about, and has an immediate human interest. Science is none of those things.

You aren't disputing whether it's a justification, you're disputing my empirical claim that newspapers leave the Kardashians out of war coverage for principled reasons. But we can just pick some other news topic that is also dry like science yet newspaper feel duty-bound (or shame-avoidance-driven) to not enhance with celebrity gossip. (Otherwise you're claiming that duty/shame play no role whatsoever in news coverage, which I think is clearly false and am not interested in arguing about.)

Hopefully my tone didn't make it seem like I was spoiling for a fight - I don't know of a dry topic that's not enhanced with stories about the people involved in mainline journalism.

That's also not what I'm saying. I'm saying there are certain types of enhancements (Kardashians) which are considered unbecoming to discuss in certain serious topics (supreme court decisions). I think the list of eschewed enhancements for science should be expanded to include the type discussed in my top level comment.

There is probably a balance in how much unbecoming things can you leave out of your newspaper before its readership drops so low that it goes bankrupt.

>That's an explanation but not a justification. People like celebrity gossip too, but newspapers feel a duty (due to both external social pressure and an internal code) to not include updates on the opinion of the Kardashians as part of their war coverage.

Well, they don't include the opinion of the Kardashians in the science articles either. Just the stories and opinions of people involved.

And inversely, the media also write their war coverage in the form of human interest stories.

I'm suggesting that most of these human-interest angles on science should be considered just as un-newsworthy as the Kardashians. The breakfast cereal eaten by the scientist and Kim Kardashian are equally non-relevant, even if the former seems justifiable on first glance.

I am not 100% this is true. people want things narrowed down to as little text as possible, consider the fact that many people read headlines and stop there.

when talking to a writer i knew, he would always do this type of dress up with stories. to him, these were the important parts, not the big picture or raw data. it was part of 'the art form'.

I wonder what research that was. I hate that kind of stuff.

I’m noticing sci shows are also trying to insert way too much interpersonal drama for my tastes too. I had to stop watching travelers in season two even though I loved season one.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/

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