In 1908, an early filmmaker named Path\u00e9 Fr\u00e8res had a brilliant idea.\u00a0 He followed through, and soon he produced the world’s first newsreel, which preceded one of his films.\u00a0 Soon, these news bites were in front of almost every movie shown.\u00a0 Within a year, there was a theater which showed only newsreels.<\/p>\n
Back then, things were a bit different.\u00a0 Newsreels were a production unto themselves, not unlike a regular movie but with (in theory) less acting.\u00a0 They were around for over fifty years, lasting into the 1960’s, by which point television news had easily supplanted them.<\/p>\n
TV news was still a production, but not as much as the newsreels.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
In those early days, the newshounds chased after big stories.\u00a0 Politics, wars, actors, and the movers and shakers who easily defined the word “celebrity” made it onto newsreels and later onto television news.\u00a0 Slowly, though, the definition changed and what reporters felt was news changed with it.<\/p>\n
Nowadays, national attention ain’t what it used to be.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 (The flight attendant claims it was on purpose; the passenger claims it was an accident.)\u00a0 He got on the plane’s intercom, cussed everyone out, and then used the emergency slide at the rear of the plane to exit.\u00a0 He hopped aboard a luggage wagon, got to the terminal, and went home.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Now it’s gone “viral”, running around national news like it was on fire.\u00a0 People are debating whether the attendant was a hero for blowing off steam the way he did or a criminal for the same act.<\/p>\n
Now, I will admit that what the attendant did was overboard in the extreme, and I understand why people are sounding off about it.\u00a0 But that doesn’t mean it’s worthy of national news.\u00a0 Still it’s up there on CNN and MSNBC.<\/p>\n
While I was looking at this story on MSNBC, another story caught my eye.\u00a0 A couple was at a baseball game.\u00a0 A foul ball was hit and the man ducked.\u00a0 The woman didn’t and got smacked with it.\u00a0 Is this event unique?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But this couple has their faces on the home page of MSNBC.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n I don’t get it.\u00a0 I really don’t.\u00a0 I am sorry the girl got smacked with a ball.\u00a0 I didn’t read the article, but I imagine she needed some medical attention.\u00a0 But I shouldn’t even know it happened.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n