In 1908, an early filmmaker named Pathé Frères had a brilliant idea.  He followed through, and soon he produced the world’s first newsreel, which preceded one of his films.  Soon, these news bites were in front of almost every movie shown.  Within a year, there was a theater which showed only newsreels.

Back then, things were a bit different.  Newsreels were a production unto themselves, not unlike a regular movie but with (in theory) less acting.  They were around for over fifty years, lasting into the 1960’s, by which point television news had easily supplanted them.

TV news was still a production, but not as much as the newsreels.  One did not have to wait for a new newsreel to arrive at the local theater, one just had to wait for the evening news to come on and update the stories of the day before.

In those early days, the newshounds chased after big stories.  Politics, wars, actors, and the movers and shakers who easily defined the word “celebrity” made it onto newsreels and later onto television news.  Slowly, though, the definition changed and what reporters felt was news changed with it.

Nowadays, national attention ain’t what it used to be.  It’s much easier than it once was to get your fifteen minutes of fame, thanks to the way modern technology makes it easy to do something stoopid and have everybody know about it within minutes.

For example, a flight attendant threw a fit on a plane after a passenger bumped him on the head with a piece of heavy luggage.  (The flight attendant claims it was on purpose; the passenger claims it was an accident.)  He got on the plane’s intercom, cussed everyone out, and then used the emergency slide at the rear of the plane to exit.  He hopped aboard a luggage wagon, got to the terminal, and went home.

Twenty-five or thirty years ago–and yes, I think I have to go back that far–this would have been an odd side note on the local news in New York, where this happened.  Now it’s gone “viral”, running around national news like it was on fire.  People are debating whether the attendant was a hero for blowing off steam the way he did or a criminal for the same act.

Now, I will admit that what the attendant did was overboard in the extreme, and I understand why people are sounding off about it.  But that doesn’t mean it’s worthy of national news.  Still it’s up there on CNN and MSNBC.

While I was looking at this story on MSNBC, another story caught my eye.  A couple was at a baseball game.  A foul ball was hit and the man ducked.  The woman didn’t and got smacked with it.  Is this event unique?  No.  Foul balls are hit all summer long in the U.S., and people get hit by them, sometimes because somebody else ducked to avoid it.  But this couple has their faces on the home page of MSNBC.com.

I don’t get it.  I really don’t.  I am sorry the girl got smacked with a ball.  I didn’t read the article, but I imagine she needed some medical attention.  But I shouldn’t even know it happened.  I wasn’t there, it doesn’t affect the lives of anyone outside of the couple, and I cannot see how it’s worthy of a national news site.

Ah, well.  Maybe this is what I need to do to promote my books.  I’ll do something relatively harmless but attention-getting and then hope it goes viral.  I’ll be sure to somehow mention AndysWorlds.com, and soon I’ll have a million books sold.

Of course, selling a million books would also be newsworthy.  See you tomorrow, in the news.