"I need to keep my story count high. I'm trying to get as many stories in my hour as is humanly possible. We're telling more stories in our hour than any national newscast has in the history of this business, I think"
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Speed becomes a proxy for seriousness in Shepard Smith's brag-complaint about keeping his "story count high". On its face, he's describing a production goal: cram more segments into an hour, keep the rundown moving, beat competitors on volume. The telling phrase is "as is humanly possible" - not "as is responsibly possible". That slippage reveals the real contest isn't just journalism versus events, but journalism versus time itself, with the audience as the prize to be held by sheer velocity.
Smith is also speaking from inside cable news's attention economy, where the metric that matters is less civic clarity than minute-by-minute retention. "Story count" is a management-friendly number: legible, comparable, easily celebrated. It gives the newsroom a scoreboard, even when the stories themselves are messy, unresolved, or morally complicated. When he claims they're doing "more stories... than any national newscast", the flex is historical and corporate at once. It's a bid for institutional identity: we're not just covering the news; we're outworking the genre.
The subtext is uneasy. Packing an hour with maximal stories can sound like ambition, but it also hints at an anxiety that any single story might bore, polarize, or require patience. The boast carries an accidental critique of modern news consumption: if you have to flood the hour, you're admitting the audience has been trained to treat the world as a swipeable feed. In that light, Smith's line reads as both craftsmanship and confession - a professional trying to meet a standard that may be eroding the very depth journalism is supposed to provide.
Smith is also speaking from inside cable news's attention economy, where the metric that matters is less civic clarity than minute-by-minute retention. "Story count" is a management-friendly number: legible, comparable, easily celebrated. It gives the newsroom a scoreboard, even when the stories themselves are messy, unresolved, or morally complicated. When he claims they're doing "more stories... than any national newscast", the flex is historical and corporate at once. It's a bid for institutional identity: we're not just covering the news; we're outworking the genre.
The subtext is uneasy. Packing an hour with maximal stories can sound like ambition, but it also hints at an anxiety that any single story might bore, polarize, or require patience. The boast carries an accidental critique of modern news consumption: if you have to flood the hour, you're admitting the audience has been trained to treat the world as a swipeable feed. In that light, Smith's line reads as both craftsmanship and confession - a professional trying to meet a standard that may be eroding the very depth journalism is supposed to provide.
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| Topic | Work Ethic |
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