News is what happened yesterday – right? Not always. If astronomers found a gigantic meteorite that was on target to smash into Earth in another year, wouldn’t that be news? For sure. Similarly, if Israel was clearly headed in the not-so-distant future for socio-demographic disaster, shouldn’t that be news? Most probably, here too yes.

However, would your favorite news purveyor provide details every day over the whole year? Probably not. And that’s a problem for editors – and news consumers as well, as I noted in my blog post here a few months ago (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/politics-isnt-the-only-news/#comments-1308158). Keep on reading; I’ll get to an important Israeli example soon enough.

Traditionally, news reporting has been divided into two categories: hard news and soft news. The former involves war, the latest economic stats, egregious violence, political turmoil, and the like. Soft news, on the other hand, is lighter fare: sports, culture, and general public “gossip” (celebrities, marital scandals et al). All these happened “yesterday,” or at least were discovered very recently. Which leaves a huge void in the middle – highly important, impactful information that has a longer timeline. I have called this “general news” ()

Is that type of news important? Here’s an exercise you can easily try. Go back a year in time on any internet news site you wish........

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