One of the things that always fascinated me as a reporter and member of the media was the news cycle.
Things can turn on a dime. It's days like today that I remember in the global news sense.
Editors and producers planning the 6 p.m. newscasts probably spent all day planning the big splash story of the day: Gov. Sanford of South Carolina admits affair heads to the beach with his family.
You have to know that reporters had been scrambled all over South Carolina and Argentina putting together huge coverage of the scandal. Secondarily, you have the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon. In the parlance of the news business, a great news day.
Then just minutes before the 6 p.m. news, Michael Jackson is stricken with a heart attack and dies right on deadline for the shows.
Scrap all but a 2-minute catch up segment at the end of the NBC news broadcast and fill the first 15 minutes with Michael Jackson news. A brief snippet on Farrah Fawcett and just tad, if anything, on Ed McMahon.
It's enough to make a guy miss the news business.
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While we're on the subject of deadlines, I must air my disbelief and disappointment about the untimeless of the Journal's print deadlines.
Now, we routinely get later-breaking news in the early-edition Free Press, Detroit News and USA Today copies that circulate in Flint.
The Journal was able to respond -- albeit hastily and weakly -- to the death of Michael Jackson, but in that same Friday edition there was nothing about the previous night's NBA draft.
What gives? Of course, we can get this info online, but still ...
For the Thursday and Friday paper they are only using one line at the PDC rather than the two they still use on Sunday, and everyday before this three day per week thing started. So they run the paper bundles out the window and load each truck about half as fast as they could before. This means they have to start way earlier to get the run done in time for the carriers to deliver the paper by 6AM. They used to have until 7:30 to get done on morning runs. This saves the FJ money but means we don't get all the news we should.
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