WLKY is a local Louisville weather channel known for big stories and weather applying to Louisville and other parts of Kentucky. Though ,while looking at the Politics column, there happened to be a very small story. The title was the first thing that seemed off, Palin family at party where fight broke out. This is not the title of a political story, this is the title of a celebrity profile. Another thing that was odd was the fact that this was not a well known event. This article violated many things including making the important interesting ,from the nine principles of journalism, as well as newsworthiness, explanation, context from the seven yardsticks.
This author violated making the important interesting by flipping it and trying to make the interesting important. There is a difference between being a watchdog and just posting celebrity updates. This story held no information about the Palin family's past in the government, nor their future. The title itself, Palin family at party where fight broke out, was like looking at the cover of some kind of celebrity gossip magazine. This author clearly tried to make the interesting important, but failed to realize that the people may think that it's an interesting story, but this is not a political story. Yes, it may have some past politicians involved, but this is all about their personal life.
Newsworthiness is based on to types of topics, core and peripheral. They mean two completely different things. Core are main topics, ones that are highly important and peripheral topics are ones that maybe interesting, but not as important. This article is a peripheral topic under the category human interests and Celebrities. It is understandable that they would put this under the Politics section, but really it is just a celebrity update and the celebrity family happens to have a past in the government. This does not make it newsworthy though. This is not a story that will last past the week it came out, nor will it have a large effect on 312 million people in this country.
Big picture reporting really gives itself away in the fact that it is reporting about big issues in society and it's effects rather then a small event. This "issue" was not a big explosion that effected a massive audience. It was a small fight that was outside of the party between Sarah Palin's son and his sister's ex boyfriend. There was no need to have this as a big political story on WLKY. They could have tried and looked at how this event changed the neighborhood. That would have slightly made up for the episodic reporting that they did, as well as putting it in a smaller column would have really changed how people saw this article. This is episodic reporting and it has no place in the political section of a well known station.
Sources happen to be a big part of journalism that can make or break your story. This story did have sources, exactly two that pertained to the story. One was a vague response from police and a random Alaskan blogger. There was also a quote from Sarah's Facebook that WLKY thought was an excuse that she had "plenty of time to fly home and attend Saturday night's shindig". The sources in this article are very shady and leave the reader slightly in the dark about the legitimacy of this event. To make up for the lack of sources they should have gotten a better statement from the police, or some statements from the surrounding neighbors about what they saw. Articles should have multiple, solid sources and this one didn't which really disappointed me.
This article was off on many things like making the interesting important, newsworthiness, explanation and context. It really disappointed me that a big channel like WLKY would have such a small issue in a large category as well as the lack of sources in it. They could have made a lot of things better in this article and with a few tweaks this could be a interesting celebrity update in a more social category or somewhere that is not so big.
WLKY's article
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