"Well, news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience"
About this Quote
Loder’s definition of “news” sounds commonsensical until you notice how aggressively it dodges the supposed objectivity of the term. “Anything that’s interesting” quietly swaps civic necessity for attention, and “would be of interest to your audience” admits the real editor in the room: the market. This is the pragmatist’s creed of journalism, shaped by a career that straddled straight reporting and pop-cultural translation, where relevance isn’t a philosophical standard but a daily programming decision.
The intent is disarmingly functional. Loder isn’t trying to elevate news; he’s trying to make it legible to the people actually consuming it. By tying news to “what’s happening in the world” and “areas of the culture,” he collapses the old hierarchy that treated politics and war as serious and music, television, and youth culture as fluff. That move maps neatly onto the MTV-era shift he helped define: a media landscape where cultural events don’t merely reflect society, they organize it, set language, and mobilize identities.
The subtext is more complicated: news becomes relational, not absolute. It depends on audience, platform, and the editor’s theory of who “your audience” is. That sounds democratic, but it also legitimizes filter bubbles and the incentive to chase novelty. Loder’s phrasing captures the permanent tension at the heart of modern journalism: inform the public, yes, but first earn the click, the view, the moment of interest that grants you permission to inform at all.
The intent is disarmingly functional. Loder isn’t trying to elevate news; he’s trying to make it legible to the people actually consuming it. By tying news to “what’s happening in the world” and “areas of the culture,” he collapses the old hierarchy that treated politics and war as serious and music, television, and youth culture as fluff. That move maps neatly onto the MTV-era shift he helped define: a media landscape where cultural events don’t merely reflect society, they organize it, set language, and mobilize identities.
The subtext is more complicated: news becomes relational, not absolute. It depends on audience, platform, and the editor’s theory of who “your audience” is. That sounds democratic, but it also legitimizes filter bubbles and the incentive to chase novelty. Loder’s phrasing captures the permanent tension at the heart of modern journalism: inform the public, yes, but first earn the click, the view, the moment of interest that grants you permission to inform at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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