That's News To Me

The chatty folks on the morning radio were wondering aloud today about news. Specifically, they were concerned with just what it was that made something "news." At its most basic level I suppose any new information could be considered "news." But really - Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? News?
My mother would be the first to confess that a fixation on the activities of film stars dates back to her youth - when she devoured movie magazines as soon as they made it to her parents' drugstore in Granby, Colorado. Hollywood gossip has been a staple of the American diet for more than seventy-five years. There is a continued vicarious thrill that those of us just outside of the limelight get from knowing who is dating whom and why they haven't been arrested yet. The trials of Fatty Arbuckle and Errol Flynn were no less sensational in their time than Michael Jackson's legal woes.
And now, the difference: Diane Sawyer is a reporter. Matt Lauer is a reporter. They are not gossip columnists on the Hollywood beat. We are now fed a steady diet of "infotainment" along with the suicide bombings and boy scout rescues. The line that separates news and none of your business has been blurred beyond all distinction. Ironically, no less of a media icon than Stephen King chose to weigh in (on the pages of Entertainment Weekly) about the media's treatment of the Michael Jackson trial. The idea becomes meta before you can really consider it - "Should I be interested in what the celebrity horror writer thinks about the child molestation trial of the celebrity pop star?" It's all a little too much.
The grouchy old man in me remembers when the news was on for fifteen minutes at the end of the broadcast day (before the test pattern came on). One guy read the headlines, local sports scores, and then made a stab at what the weather might be for the next day - Good Night.
The twenty-four hour news cycle requires that we make up news. That's why this "runaway bride" thing has had more than the allotted fifteen minutes. When we run out of celebrities to fret about, we fabricate them. The scary lady who bought a finger to put in her Wendy's chili had a nice run of about a month and a half. Again, then things get very post-modern as the TV movie gets made and, if possible, runs opposite the trial reenactment on Court TV.
We have to sift through information that ranges from a daily body count to recipes for a tangy summer salad surprise to an investigative report on the undercover cop who raised pigeons with Mike Tyson. Is it news? I prefer my news to be clickable - let me find a link on Yahoo and read the news that matters to me. When I want to know how Sandra Bullock decided to have painful elective surgery, I'll click on it.