From “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” and “Street Smarts” to failblog.org and the infamous “Darwin Awards,” the media demonstrates an uncanny ability to capitalize on stupidity.
When the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveals that gossipy magazines such as People, Seventeen, and Glamour sell more copies than Newsweek, unawareness hardly seems a commodity. Yet the public continues to eat gossip up, and the educated continue to complain.
In a column for The Sydney Morning Herald, former People editor Bruce Guthrie calls today’s population “an increasingly fawning audience that drools over every detail of celebrity life.”
The media does a brilliant job of both showcasing common stupidity and protesting against it.
But when it comes to reversing the stupidity, mass media is at a loss.
During a recent discussion, my classmates criticized our country’s youths’ habit of knowing more about last night’s episode of “Jersey Shore” than about global affairs.
But as a journalism student that would rather solve problems than whine about them, I can’t just blame youth.
The press must be doing something to make celebrities interesting. Guthrie points out, “When you get close to [celebrities], they're actually quite dull.” But often, packaging counts for more than content.
Studies from University College London monitored research site behavior and found most readers bounce from source to source, reading only a few pages.
The web offers instantaneous movement between topics, and social media sites deliver information in brief tidbits.
With online gaming just a click away, learning environments without distractions no longer exist. The Internet, as a major entertainment and learning source, conditions youth to utilize staccato, non-traditional thought patterns.
Perhaps no industry has banked on this trend like entertainment media. Celebrity magazines dispense tiny morsels of information and handfuls of enticing images.
Gossip shows like “TMZ” not only feature celebrity news but they also showcase the production process itself, building an authentically human aura.
However, newspapers, factual magazines and textbooks — sources from which young people are expected to learn — carry overwhelming blocks of text and place images reluctantly. These sources lose potential appeal and become intimidating.
“There’s this stigma around textbooks,” said Jake Snyder, a sophomore engineering student. “If you had to rent movies every week, class would be more appealing.”
While select classes integrate occasional movies, film-based learning remains largely unexplored.
Fiction can also provide creative learning avenues. “Some TV shows integrate their story with what’s going on in the world,” said senior justice studies student Wynter Fenn about programs such as “Law and Order.”
“If people have to learn that way, so be it. You can’t force someone to care,” Fenn added.
To maintain appeal, sources need not become less informative. Rather than reduce information, simply breaking down visuals increases reader responsiveness. Some textbooks have already started doing this.
In the journalism textbook “Inside Reporting: A Practical Guide to the Craft of Journalism,” author Tim Harrower refers to a study in which people preferentially read bulleted points and not preceding text blocks.
“Today, we process information differently. We want speed. We want visual stimulation,” Harrower writes. “Nobody likes long, lifeless lectures anymore.”
His book resembles a magazine, featuring illustrated timelines, lively writing, and bulleted boxes that make textbook learning accessible again.
The unparalleled patterns of thought adopted by a new, tech-savvy generation can yield unprecedented opportunities for creative solutions to global issues, but only if Macaulay Culkin’s new girlfriend doesn’t eclipse global events. Before a generation can solve a problem, they must know about it.
Reach Alex at algrego1@asu.edu
