Do people really want their news in bits?

I follow the media. Not just the news itself, but I follow the news about the media that report the news. As a media adviser and journalism teacher, I sort of feel like I should be up on the many issues that are currently hot in the media now. These include readership, credibility and ownership.

Readership is a big issue in newspapers because, well, there are fewer readers than there used to be, which means newspapers are working just as hard to put out a product that fewer people are buying. In fact, many people just expect it to be available for free on the Web. Readership studies also involve what kind of news should be in the paper and in what form the news should be presented. These are the things brought to focus groups. Then designers do their thing and editors wring their hands and publishers decide and, hopefully, more people buy and read the paper. I know because I follow such things and because I led a focus group a couple years ago.

But do readers really give a rip? I mean, I say in my classes that if a story is good people will read it. Of course, you have to get them into the story in the first place. There has been a trend to include more "soft" news in papers -- stories about family, religion, food, gardening and such. Features that tell the background and human interest will grab the readers' attention, they say. Little pieces of news are easier for people on the go.

So it was finally a sane voice I read the other day. Hank Stuever, a writer for the Style section of The Washington Post, wrote a pretty potent critique of The Post in an internal critique of the paper that rotates among staff members daily. In his memo, he criticizes all the efforts to change the paper into something that is so personalized that major news gets overlooked and readers are so patronized. Frankly, his voice calling "BS" on the redesigns that smash news into bits is so refreshing that it should serve as a clarion call to others who are myopically looking just at change based on a focus group.

For generations we have relied on the gut instincts and smart judgment of editors and reporters to help us as readers understand this world. If the editors at The Post say something is important, it must be important. So it is troubling when even The Post considers making smaller "neighborhood news" into a big deal when it is not.

Watching a special on ABC Wednesday night honoring Peter Jennings, I realized he did a lot to keep the knucklehead news off the air at World News Tonight, and that he had especially hated the O.J. Simpson trial. There is a place for such news for those who want it, and now that we have the Internet and many cable channels, niche news can find a home. We should leave the big news where it has always been.

At the same time, CNN has completely redesigned its late afternoon/evening schedule (airs from noon to 3 p.m. here) with the Situation Room. They say it is raw and unedited. I just think it is lazy. I want the news channel to filter the garbage from an interview or press conference and give me the real news. I don;t want someone to instantly analyze it or to tell me why this is a major news event. Just tell me what I need to know. I'll assume if they bring it to me it must be important.

And a side note to the news channels: Drop the "crawl." Only the rare news story dominates the news so that other news items should be relegated to the ticker at the screen bottom. I can wait for a few minutes to know the latest update from sports and entertainment.

OK, riff over. Let's see what happens now in the news. We have to demand more from our media outlets. When we do, we get it.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.