In the last couple of weeks, CNN Breaking News has sent me the following scintillating emails (first lines only):
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is changing its name to match its iconic phone.
The U.S. Postal Service plans to stop delivering letters and other first-class mail on Saturdays, beginning August 1, although packages will continue to be delivered.
The cause of Sunday’s power outage at the Super Bowl in New Orleans has been traced to an electrical relay device, Entergy New Orleans Inc. announced.
Mumford & Sons win album of the year for ‘Babel’ at 55th annual Grammy Awards.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida offered the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, focusing on growth, economic opportunity and immigrants.
CNN has exclusive live video of the crippled Carnival Triumph cruise ship as it is tugged to port in Mobile, Alabama. The video is being taken by a CNN crew on a helicopter flying alongside the ship.
All of these are news, but none required the “Breaking News” banner.
So I looked today for a “Breaking News” email on the Russian meteor story. Nope!
A week after the Super Bowl, Google was still feeding me stories speculating about who would win. Some organizations just don’t understand what “news” means.
I really wish some news provider would have separate alerts for both sports and entertainment so they don’t clutter up real news alerts. (No, I will NOT apologize for not considering sports and entertainment real news.) I already filter out the major Chicago sports teams in my Tribune alerts, and did the same thing for the Olympics.
As I’ve posted previously, CNN sent TWO alerts about Michael Jackson’s funeral in 2009:
And did we really need a 314-word ALERT after Obama’s latest SOTU address?
I don’t get alerts sent to me anywhere, but I’ll occasionally go to CNN’s site to see what’s going on in the world. (I’ll pause here while you giggle and mock me.)
I recall one morning, the breaking news was about some celeb being arrested on a DUI. Yep, that’s breaking news, all righty. :rolleyes:
I still find it hard to believe that so much celeb gossip dominates as news, along with such stuff as “reporting” who did what on this or that “reality” show. It may be appropriate to state that this or that program had a record-breaking audience, but seriously, do you really have to waste time to tell me who won American Idol? If I cared, I’d have been watching the show and your report becomes redundant. If I didn’t watch, then chances are I just don’t care… And the recent obsessive chatter about which designer Michelle Obama wore, not to mention her *BANGS!! *:eek: - really? Does that deserve so much air time?
Meanwhile, in the real world, things are happening and I have to dig to find out about such events.
I might like to know the name of the person who won American Idol even though I don’t watch or other things of that nature, but you’re absolutely right in that those sorts of things should not be crowding out the more substantive news. They should never be above the proverbial fold.
Problem is that it doesn’t seem to differentiate between “stuff you won’t want to miss but it can wait until you check the news” and “stuff you probably want to hear about right now.”
To use the Mumford & Sons example from the OP–if cared enough to want to know about who won this right away, I’d have been watching or monitoring a news site. I do want to know, but it can wait until I check the news.
The meteor, on the other hand…yeah, that I’d want to know about ASAP.
Oh, I’m totally with you on this. “Breaking News” should be something like a terrorist attack, or North Korea has started shooting, or President Obama just suffered a massive heart attack. About 95% of the time, however, it’s something like “Kim Kardasian says she likes puppies.” The local morning news has “Breaking News” nearly every morning, and inevitably it’s a house fire that the traffic copter is hovering over, or a shooting that happened at 2 AM. Mildly interesting, but not exactly an earth-shaking event.
IMO, CNN has been an outstanding purveyor of fluff for the last five or so years.
It’s frustratingly difficult to locate excellent journalism on the web… so much stuff ends up in the “top x ways to y”, or “kitten/baby does something insipid” categories.
I’m surprised this thread isn’t about actual stories about crap. CNN covered the living hell out of the Carnival Triumph “poop cruise” story and it got them very good ratings, so you can expect more of that.
So would you create quality journalism even if you were paid more?
Thought not.
Even for-pay journalism is the same celebrity-driven nonsense full of false balance that can’t even get basic scientific and engineering concepts right. Being shallow is one thing; being blatantly wrong is … about what I expect from the newsmedia.
But what’s worse is the false balance: Some issues are closed, in that all of the facts, logic, and honest arguments support one side, and all the other side has is manipulative lies they can get the newsmedia to fall for. Anti-vaccine nonsense is the medical equivalent of Holocaust Denial, in that it is not promoted by anyone for honest reasons because it is known to be absolutely false at this point.
That’s why I use specialized websites for the stuff that really matters. They aren’t forced to pretend that Jenny McCarthy is capable of saying anything worth listening to on the subject of vaccines.
David Beckham, one of the most iconic football stars of his generation, has announced his retirement.
The 38-year-old has most recently been playing for the French club Paris Saint-Germain, a team he helped clinch the title in France’s top division just days ago.
With that Beckham became the first player to win a championship in four different countries – France, Spain with Real Madrid, England with Manchester United, and the United States with the LA Galaxy.
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