Don’t let a good story get in the way of the facts

We’ve been copping a bit of flak this week for our alleged negativity in reporting the deaths of four young travellers in Australia and the headline on our story about the latest International Visitor Survey, which focused on the decline in backpacker numbers rather than the increase in spend and length of stay.  

A few people have posted urging us, as an industry forum, to focus on the positive. Fair enough. But it’s no good shooting the messenger – four young travellers died, a fact we clearly can’t ignore – and our reporting was factual not sensational. It also rankles a little to be lectured about a few negative stories when there’s so much on Thumbrella that’s upbeat.

On this occasion, we did take the most negative aspect of the IVS story and use it as the headline because, in our judgement, the decline in visitor numbers during a recession was the most interesting aspect of the story. And judging by the number of times it was re-tweeted by our Twitter followers, we probably called it right.

It’s not perfect, but I like this definition of news:-

a) a report of recent events

b) previously unknown information

c) something having a specified influence or effect

The fall in backpacker numbers certainly qualified as news under all three, though it could be argued that spend and length of stay were equally newsworthy aspects. Which is why, almost every other time we’ve covered the survey, we’ve focused on the positive. You can see for yourself by clicking here.

But as someone with a vested interest in talking the industry up not down, I did pause for thought when I saw the draft e-mail newsletter with the word “death” or “dies” in every one of the top four stories and tweaked the order to get a few more upbeat articles further up the page.

And then guess what happened? The stories with the highest number of click throughs were as follows:-

1. Fruit picking backpacker dies in the field

2. Backpacker visitor numbers fall by 10,000 year on year

3. Japanese tourist dies in Fraser Island rollover

Which kind of proves what Elvis fans have long suspected – death sells. Having said that, I’d much rather be posting positive stories, so feel free to e-mail them to me here.

As long as it’s “news” as well as “good”.

By Martin Lane  ·  December 16th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

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Comments


  1. greg cole
    22 Dec 09
    3:35 pm

    2. Aggggh! Mr Editor, no need to explain. Outrageous! We want the mixed bag, not the Hillsong News.

    Tell it how you see it and publish whatever the hell you like and if we don’t like it we’ll tell you and if we do like it we’ll say nothing. Our silence is golden.

    greg cole

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