With apologies to the late Walter Cronkite for the headline, I offer this briefing of today’s news. As I did last summer, I offer it in virtual front-page format, because as a former front-page editor (years before I was editorial page editor), that’s the way I think.
Mind you, this is a sort of fantasy newspaper that is unlimited in its sources of material, since it is a digest of material on the Web.
Here are the stories for today’s front:
- Chile quake — This would be a small lede (perhaps one column) at this point. Chile has sent troops into Concepcion to curb looting as the official death toll (expected to climb) reaches 723.
- Budget cuts could cost 1,000 state jobs — That’s if the $5.1 billion budget now before the SC House stays as it is.
- What happened to the flu? — In a very interesting story, given the way the flu threat was hyped for much of 2009, The Wall Street Journal reports that in February, normally the height of flu season, there were far fewer cases than in a typical year. That’s with H1N1 and ordinary, garden-variety flu counted. Maybe the hype helped, in terms of getting people to wash hands and such, but no one really knows why the incidence is so low.
- SLED probe of missing money — SLED trying to figure out what happened to $395,000 at the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Fraud is suspected. My former colleague Peter O’Boyle says the agency was the victim, but SLED isn’t jumping to that conclusion yet.
- Weather — Farmers are contending with fields too wet to till, and we might have some snow tonight, but it will melt tomorrow at the latest. It should melt pretty early, but if you get up tomorrow before the sun, be very careful. (Note that I link to the National Weather Service, rather than some hyped-up commercial weather site. To the extent that I care about the weather, I get it from an official source without all the melodrama.)
- The 11-year-old armed robber — This is a talker, placed on the page as leavening. Boy steals food from girl at knifepoint, gets nabbed by Leon Lott.
An also-ran: I almost included this NYT story speculating that US automakers are benefiting, somewhat, from Toyota’s troubles. But then I saw this BBC story about GM recalls, and thought, wait a minute — I’m not sure what’s really happening here. And in a related development, the Obama administration is considering requiring brake overrides. Actually, this story from the WSJ may sum up the situation best — Ford outsold GM for the first time in a decade.
That’s if for today.
So what did y’all think of this? Would this be worth my losing an hour’s sleep each morning to get up and do this on a daily basis, to sort of give y’all a briefing before we start our usual back-and-forth about other matters?
I’m thinking about it. Don’t know if I’m going to DO it, but I’m thinking about it…
By the way, the reason I’m doing this is that I’ve been thinking about how a blog might actually become a primary news source for its readers, performing at least some, if not all, of a newspaper’s functions.
There are some fundamental problems with the concept — for instance, if people quit reading newspapers altogether in favor of sources such as this, these venues would have no content, since the content is coming from… newspapers, for the most part.
But I think the experiment may be worthwhile because, since newspapers are dying anyway, we need to try new forms to see what works.
This news briefing would not be the most important thing on the blog — I see it as part of the mix, but a part that takes an ambitious step toward becoming something more comprehensive.
I’m thinking about this at the same time that I’m about to start going after advertising in a systematic way.
Ever since I left the paper, I’ve been thinking (as have thousands of other displaced journalists) about the great contradiction: Even as interest in news is at an all-time high, the business model that has made the news biz possible (both print and broadcast) is fading away. So given that the demand still exists, what sorts of viable business arrangements will arise to satisfy it? The continued viability of our representative democracy depends on the answer…
Part of the idea behind this would be to set a baseline, a background of reasonable perspective, against which the discussions of a blog would take place. It would say, whatever we may discuss here today, THIS was the stuff that was actually important…
OK, I’ll shut up now and let y’all comment. Please do…
I think it’s a good idea if you are willing to put in the time. There will always be people who go to the original source first but there are probably more people who would prefer to have a trusted source who can filter the news for them.
That’s why I read Andrew Sullivan’s blog. He’s got a good mix of personal commentary along with links to other sources. I’ve noticed he now has several other people doing the filtering for him as well. That’s the model you should aspire to. Generate enough traffic based on your ability to inform and entertain to the point where you can bring on others.
But you have to be selfish and strive to steal as many eyeballs from other bloggers as you can. 🙂
As Snoop would say, it’s a Doggy-Dog world…
The time is, of course, the question. I have to earn a living while I build the blog into a business (and I don’t ever expect it to be my sole source of support, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it did?). So would I have to use ALL my available blogging time each day to do this? That would be bad, and sort of defeat the point. Note that while I got this done, I haven’t yet had time to post anything else today…
Warthen’s version of the Ticker? I like it, but don’t know if it’s worth your losing a whole hour of sleep!
I think it’s a great idea. The only thing missing is sports. Bonus!
Seeing Tiger Woods and Jenny Sanford on the front page of this local paper REALLY gets old.
While I won’t GUARANTEE you won’t read about Tiger or Jenny here, I think I can assure you such would be kept to a minimum.
Meanwhile, I share this from a friend who apparently preferred leaving his comment on Facebook:
“Good points all, except a little melodrama with the snow report is OK– like chocolate sauce on one’s sundae.”
I’ve been getting the Slatest from Slate.com and it’s helpful. It delivers the 12 biggest stories of the day (though I think they could do a better job choosing the biggest, some of is fluff you don’t really need to know). Nice to have something local though.
Better and more efficient (for me) than the newspaper.
Ooooh pretty please. I was so annoyed that almost half of the front page of today’s The State was sports, as if they don’t have their own section….
I vote yeah!