Michael Braun's Blog

Today marked the final meeting of my class on deliberative democracy and framing. One of the essential themes of the writing in these areas (especially deliberative democracy) is that the more people can get together and talk about issues, the better decisions they will make. There are other benefits posited as well, mostly having to do with the benefits of an informed and engaged populace and its positive effect on democracy.

One of the ways to encourage more deliberation, some scholars have proposed, is to improve the quality of journalism. When people are more informed (and more properly informed) about issues of the day, then they will feel motivated to discuss them. While this is obviously a testable hypothesis, it’s worthwhile to think about the problems of our society from another angle. Namely, do people actually read and engage with the journalism we already have? Or are they more likely to read a headline than dig into the story? If people do engage with journalism today, then improving journalism should improve the populace. But if people don’t engage, then improvements to journalism are less likely to change how much people read the news.

But what kind of news-reading expectations is it reasonable to have for an average person? How much time is ideal, and more importantly, how much time is feasible or realistic? Let’s think about an ideal average week day.

24 hours =
8 hours sleep: this is what doctors recommend and say that most of us need. Plus, spending this time in bed is just plain good for relaxing and having important downtime.
+ 8 hours working: needed to put in a 40 hour work week. Having this level of employment means the person is more likely to be financially stable and thus to have the time to read the news.
+ 2 hours eating and preparing food: eating is a very important part of a day and preparing food means the person is more likely to eat healthy. This is an ideal allocation, after all.
+ 2 hours with family: it’s important to take time to spend with the people who are important to you. This category can include friends, I suppose, if the person lives alone.
+ 2 hours relaxing: this can include reading, watching television, hobbies, whatever.
+ 1 hour general home care: routine cleaning, organizing, bills, et cetera.
= 23 hours. That leaves a maximum of 1 hour for reading the news. And obviously, I’ve left off a wide variety of activities. Some are vital, like taking care of yourself – cleaning, grooming, dressing, exercise, et cetera. Others are less vital, like time spent with a pet.

In a non-ideal day, then, the individual will likely have to highly prioritize news engagement in order to make it part of her day. Think about the time spent commuting, the longer than 8 hours work day, the time required to care for children, and a wide variety of other activities. Surely, news engagement could be thrown in during some other activities, but more in depth journalistic coverage if present in a medium like radio (maximally convenient when cooking dinner, for example) will result in less news covered rather than more. If the individual doesn’t prioritize keeping up with the news, then that individual is likely to have no time left for it on the average day.

In short, it’s vital to think about how to make people engage with existing journalism before overhauling how journalism works. Having more content online, more in depth stories, and a greater variety of perspectives may improve journalism, but if no one actually engages with the content, then it’s likely all for naught.