Defining what was news and its hierarchical order in the page layout of a newspaper was, for many years, a task of the full editors.
As if it were a collegiate court that agrees on a verdict, the full editors decided on their own whether or not it was important to publish.
That has its explanation…
In those days, newspapers were in control of the news radar and their captive audiences.
Therefore, the selection of the contents was based on the maxim that postulates that news is “everything that interests the majority”.
Although this is still a valid principle, its application, its assessment and its hierarchy now differ greatly from the criteria of an “elite” of publishers who previously decided that classification.
Now, with the diversity of channels that transmit information through digital platforms, the news itself is a living product, which is modified, updated and recycled, and which is important based on the scope or reproductions that they have had in the audience.
In previous years, the proximity factor was very much taken into account to value “a priori” the importance or hierarchy of an event.
The local, or the regional, weighed heavily when deciding the news. Now, on the other hand, an apparently banal episode can arouse greater interest and readership than another real and authentically newsworthy event.
I give an example: the day that the failed attack against the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, occurred, the main news of Infobae, the most important Latin American digital media, was the photographic uncovering of the artist Wanda Nara, not the notorious criminal attack.
The new audiences are like that. You have to understand them and connect with their preferences, as long as the medium is interested in earning their loyalty and attention.
If you put the focus in the opposite direction, you will probably lose engagement and space in the competitive digital ecosystem, the spring from which the millions of readers and content consumers around the world drink.
Director's Thoughts 