I have some slight experience with the PR world. The thing I think went wrong here, is that the news slowly came in over the course of several days. Each one adding slight excitement, but individually insignificant. First there was a story about a landing going to happen and the first pictures from space. Then there was a story of landing going on but they would only have results a couple of days later. Then there was a story of the landing seemingly successful and now they have images.
If you compare it to a Tesla launch. One clear moment defined in time, various completely superfluous but amazing details for the stories. Most importantly: high quality photogenic imagery! All leading to a giant one day peak of excitement which does take the frontpages.
That's a great take on the question (and relevant to anyone trying to generate hype for their start ups or projects)... I'm reasonably interested in space, and am regularly excited to watch the launches etc - but the way this story played out I ended up seeing a few photographs, going "wow, that's amazingly cool... ok, next story..." There was nothing to explore, nothing to be swept up along with.
"News" is harmful because out of billions of things going on every day it has to pick out just a few and those few things have to have enough coherence that somebody who watches CNN at 5:25 has a similar experience to someone who tunes in at 7:10 later on.
Communities have shared truths and falsehoods. Here in the US I think many people are following the Kavanaugh supreme court nomination. If you reload Google News every hour you will probably see nothing new, but some bombshell seems to drop every 1.5 days or so.
It is not irrational that people care about it, but the way in which people are irrational is particularly irrational.
For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.
And you know that gets people right back in it and keeps the ratings high and you'd better believe all those anchors on CNN got a bonus at the end of 2018 because if it bleeds it leads.
>For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.
No they couldn't, the Democrats would try to delay any vote to after mid terms. Kavanaugh was announced July 9th for example (of course if the Republicans win again, it wouldn't matter).
Worse, you'd be setting a precedent that you don't need any evidence to take down a supreme court judge nomination, which would of course carry over to politicians as well.
I really want to respond to, and point out some things that I think are fallacies in your thinking. But I won't. What I will do is point out that your comment, my desire to comment on it, and others decision to do just that -- that is precisely why the media focuses on low brow trash. It drives discussion, interest, and ultimately a nonstop target for clicks, which generates revenue. Now let's talk about the rover. Man isn't that cool. Yeah, it's cool. Wow. Yeah.. wow. See those pictures? Yeah. They're cool huh? Yeah. Yeah...
It's quite unfortunate that there's now such a strong profit motive in pushing controversial and divisive topics. The internet was supposed to be the great uniter. Unforeseen consequences, as always.
If the US media only likes US news stories, why was there a huge following for the soccer team in Thailand who were trapped in the cave? It's just a matter of how many other things are in the news right now, and the news cycle right now is being hammered with the SCOTUS nomination. If people want to complain about US news being myopic, this is a really bad example.
Because, while it is a landmark achievement, it has little relevance to which people have access to health care, which people are confined to cages their entire lives, or which people are allowed to make decisions about their own bodies -- and, in the US, other stories are very relevant to these questions right now.
I would love for Hayabusa to get more attention, but the problem isn't that it's being drowned out by nothing. It's being drowned out by stories that will have real and long-lasting effects on people's everyday lives.
And, yet, a billionaire launching a car into space, or a tiny hole in the ISS both received significantly more press coverage than this, but are equally as unimportant compared to the other things you mentioned.
Even here in Japan, I don't recall seeing any news outlets cover this as top story material; in fact, the first place I heard about this was from non-Japanese news sources...
This is very interesting insight. As a US citizen I often marvel at the apparently strongly principled value system of Japanese culture. Specifically, it's a sense of acting for 'the greater good' as opposed to acting for what I call the 'look at me' factor (which I find both repugnant yet rampant in the US today).
I wonder if it's these values that simply led to Japan letting the story take a natual course rather than wasting funds to pumping up a PR campaign. If so, I wish Japan all the best in being the first to tap into the virtually limitless space mining resources. They deserve it.
The purpose of news is not to inform, but to make money. Divisive and emotionally charged issues get people to share, respond, and take a more active part in issues. This, in turn, can be monetized -- clicks are money. And it also tends to be easy to keep milking these sort of divisive and emotionally charged issues for days/weeks at a time.
I was even more disappointed in the coverage of the Falcon Heavy. Most news outlets gave it little more than basic coverage, even though it was one of the most significant achievement in space in decades. And that landing footage of multiple rockets separating and autonomously landing, simultaneously, is something that can give anybody goose bumps. And that was a US achievement, which goes against the hypothesis of 'because it was Japanese' many are stating in this thread.
It's pretty sad. We are currently living through what will undoubtedly be seen as one of the most important times in the history of our very species as we develop the technology and ships that will one day go from being just rockets to outright space ships. And you could ask the average person what they know about it, and it would be next to nothing. Yet ask that same person about whether somebody might have drunkenly groped somebody else 35 years ago, and they'll have all the details and dirt. I suppose when it comes to clicks, gropes beat hopes.
In the US, there are a number of us that wake up every day and feel like our hair is on fire. We read the news, hoping that at some point our elected leaders will do their job and rein in the madness, so we can, for a change, sleep well at night. Anything not related to the circus that is currently running our country is pretty much back-page.
Maybe because its population is 4-5x as much as the US and UK's population combined and its economic growth is an unstoppable force? Especially given how both the US and UK are a political clusterfuck at the moment.
Why is landing on an asteroid a monumentous achievement? It seems like a nice one, I guess a first-of, but monumentous? No. Second, it was Japan, not the US, that probably meant there was less coverage than if NASA had done it. Third, we had some other news over the past few days which has riveted the nation.
Journalism is dead in America. We have clickbait and we have people who share videos typically the length of a vine maybe a bit longer. Traditional journalism has been vilified by expensive slavic viral marketing firms quite successfully. Footage of forest fires is shown on national news every time it happens because its engaging to the typical video clip consumer. Anything spectacular. If a fireworks factory in China explodes its a top headline but if were engaged in a very serious trade war with China that's just nerd stuff left to the eggheads on public media(reviled by at least 30% of the country and even more would see it defunded). Also internationalism has been vilified to the point it is despised by at least 30% of the country probably more. Also many content providers have been scrambling to pander to the emerging Nu Right demographic who explicitly don't care about the achievements of Chinamen.
[+] [-] 317070|7 years ago|reply
If you compare it to a Tesla launch. One clear moment defined in time, various completely superfluous but amazing details for the stories. Most importantly: high quality photogenic imagery! All leading to a giant one day peak of excitement which does take the frontpages.
[+] [-] mrspeaker|7 years ago|reply
It is amazingly cool though.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|7 years ago|reply
"News" is harmful because out of billions of things going on every day it has to pick out just a few and those few things have to have enough coherence that somebody who watches CNN at 5:25 has a similar experience to someone who tunes in at 7:10 later on.
Communities have shared truths and falsehoods. Here in the US I think many people are following the Kavanaugh supreme court nomination. If you reload Google News every hour you will probably see nothing new, but some bombshell seems to drop every 1.5 days or so.
It is not irrational that people care about it, but the way in which people are irrational is particularly irrational.
For instance Kavanaugh could just withdraw him nomination and the Republicans have a long list of other conservative judges that could do that job but no they can't stand losing at all so they will wind up losing something bigger all while warning the Democrats that they risk looking like crazy fools who are out of touch with the American people.
And you know that gets people right back in it and keeps the ratings high and you'd better believe all those anchors on CNN got a bonus at the end of 2018 because if it bleeds it leads.
Can you tear it down for everybody? Good luck.
Can you protect yourself? You can.
[+] [-] ApolloFortyNine|7 years ago|reply
No they couldn't, the Democrats would try to delay any vote to after mid terms. Kavanaugh was announced July 9th for example (of course if the Republicans win again, it wouldn't matter).
Worse, you'd be setting a precedent that you don't need any evidence to take down a supreme court judge nomination, which would of course carry over to politicians as well.
[+] [-] TangoTrotFox|7 years ago|reply
It's quite unfortunate that there's now such a strong profit motive in pushing controversial and divisive topics. The internet was supposed to be the great uniter. Unforeseen consequences, as always.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zimahl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luchak|7 years ago|reply
I would love for Hayabusa to get more attention, but the problem isn't that it's being drowned out by nothing. It's being drowned out by stories that will have real and long-lasting effects on people's everyday lives.
[+] [-] gmiller123456|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ltmi600|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coobird|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mojomark|7 years ago|reply
I wonder if it's these values that simply led to Japan letting the story take a natual course rather than wasting funds to pumping up a PR campaign. If so, I wish Japan all the best in being the first to tap into the virtually limitless space mining resources. They deserve it.
[+] [-] db48x|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TangoTrotFox|7 years ago|reply
I was even more disappointed in the coverage of the Falcon Heavy. Most news outlets gave it little more than basic coverage, even though it was one of the most significant achievement in space in decades. And that landing footage of multiple rockets separating and autonomously landing, simultaneously, is something that can give anybody goose bumps. And that was a US achievement, which goes against the hypothesis of 'because it was Japanese' many are stating in this thread.
It's pretty sad. We are currently living through what will undoubtedly be seen as one of the most important times in the history of our very species as we develop the technology and ships that will one day go from being just rockets to outright space ships. And you could ask the average person what they know about it, and it would be next to nothing. Yet ask that same person about whether somebody might have drunkenly groped somebody else 35 years ago, and they'll have all the details and dirt. I suppose when it comes to clicks, gropes beat hopes.
[+] [-] singularity2001|7 years ago|reply
You conflated 'news' with 'for-profit news agencies'
[+] [-] subtlefart|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Adutude|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JSeymourATL|7 years ago|reply
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/two-takes-depression...
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisArchitect|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmiller123456|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ltmi600|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paradite|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerbalspacepro|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everyone|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theNewMicrosoft|7 years ago|reply
Venera venus missions was a far more important achievement for mankind
[+] [-] dekhn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlv2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dr-detroit|7 years ago|reply