Do We Go Beyond the Headlines in Otsego County, New York?
Since I've started creating content on a daily basis here in Otsego County, I've noticed a bit of a trend. I hatch an idea, put pen to paper and share it with the world. Romantically, I envision a lively discussion that's fruitful and decidedly on topic.
As these things go, that is rarely the case.
Just yesterday, I posted an article speaking to downtown Oneonta's Subway restaurant shuttering. I waxed nostalgic about coming to Oneonta in the late 90s, and how that Subway was a de facto meeting place for some of my crew during those years. The article made but a fleeting mention of the food. Their funky wallpaper played a bigger role in the story.
The comments on social media made it obvious that people just glanced at the headline before adding their two cents. Here are a couple of highlights:
Hotdogman L said: "Who the @&^% is lamenting? Their subs are trash and there’s a another subway on southside"
Linda P dropped this comment everywhere the story was shared: "There is a Subway Mirabito on Southside unless I am really out of the loop."
Finally, Mark S commented: "I had to park two blocks away to get a take out pizza from Tino's. That's after making three passes trying to find a parking spot."
None of these comments spoke to the article. Interestingly, this is an extremely common occurrence. The Media Insight Project, an initiative of the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute did a study on the phenomenon of people reading only headlines and proceeding from there.
The study noted "Fewer Americans invest additional time into following the news more in-depth. The survey asked people about going in-depth for news two different ways. It asked whether people generally tried to get news in-depth on any subject in the last week. It also asked, when they recalled a breaking news story they followed in the last week, whether they had tried to find out more about it after initially learning of it.