(November 19, 2007) Each day, I read a variety of news sources that summarize trends in the day's activities. I use Google News for starters. I gobble up Techmeme. I try CNN and the Wall Street Journal (soon to be free).
I am generally unsatisfied when I am finished with my news meal. It always feels like I have not had enough news. I have this unnamed hunger for more.
This morning, I found a remarkable piece of the puzzle. Something got me to take a look at the CBS evening News website. There it was, plain as day.
Secret tunnels, 8 limbed Indian babies, car wrecks, poor kids, gang violence, broken families, minor political scandal, violent crime waves, air travel threats, murder, mayhem, reverie and semi-clad bodies. (That's a sentence with real SEO/SEM impact).
I'd been missing something to gawk at.
Amidst all of the decay and all of the decline, the mainstream media still have a lock on edutainment. Human editors are much, much better at finding sleaze and hawking it. While you might make fun of the National Enquirer, they (along with the New York Post), know how to churn a good headline.
While it's true that as advertising becomes more targeted, it looks more like information, it also seems to become humorless.
In our own recruiting landscape, humor has been left in the hands of Jim Stroud and The Fabled Recruiting Animal. While both provide admirably self-critical funny stuff (except when Animal obsesses about younger people), it's hardly the litany of car wrecks and murders that make for tasty news consumption.
Even when Animal can step up to the chore of true headline inflation, it misses the real gore that makes gawking worthwhile.
So, I am suggesting a new Recruiting News vehicle. Perhaps you could call it the RealRecruitingNews.
It would feature
Illustrated US Military interview techniques
Biographies of famous shanghai-ers
Biggest whoppers told in a recruiting conversation
Best rejection letters contests
Sleazy legal tactic advice
Links to myspace/facebook and youtube for purient interests
Recruiting stories from the Adult Entertainment Industry
Long winded arguments about ethics (already available elsewhere)
Stories with pictures from deaths during interviews
Recruiting playboy / playgirl of the month foldout
Examples of bad credit reports and how to read them
and so on.
What the industry truly needs is better edutainment.
Animal and Stroud are tepid compared to mainstream news. Let's encourage them to do better.