Yes Virginia, There is World Hunger! (We Just Don’t Say Very Much About It in Our Newspaper)--The South Florida Sun Sentinel Replies to 5^th Grade Delray Beach Students

The following is the letter that fifth grade students in Delray Beach, who are studying world hunger, sent to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.  The editor was kind enough to reply, and Hunger Notes reprints the exchange, as it was sent to us by the mother of one of the students.

Competing for coverage
Earl Maucker

(November 16, 2003)
Q. We are fifth-graders from Morikami Park Elementary School in Delray Beach. We are doing a yearlong project on world hunger, where we are currently researching this topic globally and trying to find a solution locally. In our research we learned that World Food Day was Oct. 16. We did not see anything in your newspaper about it and we are wondering why you did not recognize such an important day. Even though approximately 24,000 people die each day because of hunger and over 840 million people in the world suffer from hunger, we never read a headline about it. We think you should inform Floridians about it. Hopefully next year you will not overlook this important day -- Jessica Rose, Delray Beach.
 

A. Jessica is correct. We searched our archives for a story on World Food Day, and it appears we had no coverage of this year's events.
In a deeper search of previous coverage, we found only one story on the topic of World Food Day, which was written on Sept. 27, nearly a month before the actual day in question.
We certainly didn't ignore the story deliberately. Perhaps by publishing Jessica's letter and using this column to address the issue she raised, we can add at least some awareness to the crisis.
Jessica's letter also provides an opportunity to discuss how stories like this get into the South Florida Sun-Sentinel or -- in some cases -- never find their way to publication.

Each day, thousands of stories from around the nation and around the world move on our wire services. We have wire services that specialize in financial stories, sports stories, national and international stories, plus business press releases and public relations articles, among a host of others, streaming news into the Sun-Sentinel 24 hours a day.
In addition, we have news and feature syndicates, which give us everything from comics to an array of columnists who vie for space in our newspaper.

We could fill a dozen newspapers a day with all the material we receive from all our news sources. But we have the ability to run only a fraction of this information.
All day long and throughout most of the night, editors review material as it comes in and make decisions on which stories will appear and which simply can't make it because of lack of space, limited reader interest or other reasons.

Editors who make these daily decisions are sometimes referred to as gatekeepers because they're the first stop. They monitor the flow of information and make sure the editors for each individual section of the paper also get a chance to review the material.

We all try to make decisions to publish based, first and foremost, on what we think our readers would most like to read.

Sometimes story selection is obvious, such as when Sen. Bob Graham announced earlier this month he would not seek another term in Congress. Other times story selection is not so simple.

You would think a story about World Food Day would be a natural story for us to publish, but on that particular day, it may have been competing with a variety of breaking and critical news stories that bumped it from publication.

As our editors screen stories of international interest, we know news from Canada, South America and the Caribbean are of high interest to the residents of South Florida.

When we review news coming out of Washington, D.C., we look for news that impacts health and insurance, immigration and local politics.

Stories about the war on terrorism in the United States and abroad, as well as military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, also are a priority.

All of those stories compete with local, state and regional stories, most of them written by our staff, for space in the newspaper.

Still, we don't want to minimize the importance of a story about world hunger.

Obviously, it is an important issue. And, it sounds like a worthwhile subject for the fifth-grade students of Morikami Park Elementary.

Now that we've been reminded, we'll do what we can to give the issue the exposure it deserves.

Copyright (c) 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Visit Sun-Sentinel.com

Hunger Notes Home Page