There are Neoconservatives, and President Bush tried to establish a Compassionate Conservative label, but the development that may ease us toward the light at the end of this national sewer we are in is the growing Conscious Conservative movement.
Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past five years to start putting some distance between themselves and George W. Bush as their political chief executive. They and he may still share some core ideologies and philosophies, but they have just become too conscious of Iraq and Katrina, cronies doing a heck of a job, executive power grabs, the word “terrorism” as a political tool, dangerous detainee policies, national surveillance practices and end runs on the Constitution. Unconscious Conservatives have witnessed these same things, and some of them may be nervous about Bush, but they wouldn’t give up his guarantees to pro-life, guns, and James Dobson, if Bush declared Congress unconstitutional and locked out the Supreme Court.
The irony is, they can have those things, and a competent chief executive, too, when the nation’s electorate becomes conscious-based, a consciousness that takes into account globalization, and terrorism, and the price of being lured into asymmetric warfare against the wrong enemy. No president may have been available, who could measure up to the demands on this country after 9/11, but President Bush’s record would not be too difficult to top. If consciousness, and not political railroading, had been a feature of the 2000 conventions and election, the nation may still have had a pro-life, evangelical Republican president, whose record today almost certainly would have to be preferable to that of George W. Bush.
Conscious Conservatives may be starting to realize something else. The administration points out, almost every day, that the nation has not been attacked by terrorists since 9/11. The emerging reality is that the 9/11 attack hasn’t ended yet. It was just the starting point, the place in Manhattan where the enemy plunged a syringe into the nation, injecting us with a fear-based virus that set into motion erosive events that are occurring still, unchecked. One such event is the immigration wall measure, that James Goldsborough wrote about last week. Another is the signing yesterday, by President Bush, of law that deprives some people of the habeas corpus rule that is a cornerstone of United States jurisprudence.
Such events don’t affect most of us directly, but they create a climate. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about loving airplanes. I also love anticipating trips on airplanes. We are going on a trip soon, and I was online at the airline Website, looking at the planes we will be on, looking at our seat assignments, looking at maps of our destination airports, and suddenly I stopped and stared at the screen. I could feel somebody out there in the government, feel what it would be like if somebody was watching my clicks, and wondering what I was doing. I remembered what a student told me recently. At the library he checked out a book for a paper he was writing on terrorism. A few days later, the FBI showed up at his door. President Bush likes to ask: do you feel safer than you did five years ago? At that moment, looking at a map of DFW, I had to respond: No. I felt watched. This is an erosive climate. I can feel the fear.
Some of this new cadre of Conscious Conservatives enjoy high position. Every time you see a Republican office-holder trying to distance him- or herself from the president, you are looking at a Conscious Conservative. With the November elections close by, their awareness is apparent. As they reassure their district and state voters that they are not in lock-step with Bush Administration policy, the Conscious Conservative movement grows.
The movement should have the effect of expanding the political middle. Not only Dubya-dubious Republicans, but independents and moderate Democrats could find Conscious Conservative appealing. I feel that I am one of those. I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-state’s rights, pro-less government, pro-taxes, as long as they are fair, pro-Constitution, pro-separation of powers, pro-business, pro-mom, pro-apple pie, pro-flag, a veteran, and pro-faith. If a person is pro-faith, how can he also be pro-choice? It is difficult, yes, but so is the woman’s position, and the decision she must make. Only she should have the right to make it.
Who would our candidate be? I have a feeling he or she would come from the conservative side. I can’t think of any particular Democrat smart and tough and willing and aggressive enough to lead the country at this uniquely difficult time. John Kerry couldn’t even rise to keeping himself from getting swift-boated in 2004, and good old avuncular Al Gore lacks the charisma to galvanize the millions away from the margins of the staunch, even on the left. I’m not sure there is an American alive, Republican or Democrat, who after six years of Bush leadership could step in and do anything but sink up to his or her knees in the Bush muck. Colin Powell is tall, and John McCain has been in very deep muck before, so one of them might be able to find some useful footing.
What we really need is a Dave, like in the movie. Good old Dave. I have been thinking about him ever since Bush turned his back on New Orleans. If indifference were an impeachable offense, Congress could send George Bush winging off to Texas at just about any time. But it’s not, and George W. Bush will be President of the United States for more than two years. The best that Conscious Conservatives can hope for is for Dave, a stand-in with affection for the country and a reasonable idea of what to do next. Where have you gone, George Washington? Wow. George W: from first to worst.
October 19, 2006
October 13, 2006
The 45th reunion
In the old days, high school reunions left me hung over. Today, they leave me hoarse.
At the 10th and 20th reunions, it was all about breaking into old cliques and drinking your way through your own personal high school highlight reels. Last week, at the 45th, it was all about talking to everybody with a nametag on, with a subtle double-clutch from the past into the present tense. There must have been 100 of us, and if we didn’t all talk to each other, it was because we ran out of time.
All those dipwads, the thumbnail photos of the faces in our senior class yearbook, Abilene, Texas, High School, Class of 1961. Beautiful dipwads, athletic ones, accomplished ones, most likely to succeed, and most likely never to be heard from again, ones. But still dipwads, barely damp with identity after three years in a West Texas high school adult factory.
Now, by God, they all have stories. Amazing stories, happy stories, sad stories, tough ones, routine ones, special ones, brave, even heroic ones, survival ones, triumphant ones, hopeful ones, all written on the road, all those strange highways, that brought us individually from 1961 back to Abilene in 2006. I guess we just had to wait for it. We didn’t have much to talk about, at the 10th and 20th reunions; we hadn’t had enough time yet. Now we have, and it was worth it. I have names, listed on an envelope, just to jog my memory of the fabulous things they said. Many people didn’t come, staying away from the way we used to be. They would have gone home wiser than they are now. But how were they to know?
Sweet, demure, Ellen Turner was there. She taught senior English; I was in her class. Now she’s 94, be 95 on Nov. 18, and I hope somebody in Abilene reading this will bring her flowers. Her best subject, she said, was math. She loved math, but she understood it so well that she didn’t want to teach it, because it would have been boring. I never knew that. She had a relative, a brother or a cousin – 45th-reunionists’ memories aren’t as dependable as they used to be – named Raymonde (I am almost positive she said it was spelled with an “e”) Howard, who was flying a C-47 over France on D-Day and was shot down and killed. Mrs. Turner remembers that as soon as she heard about the invasion on the radio in Abilene, she had an awful feeling that Raymonde had died. She told me how to find his grave, in the military cemetery at Normandy.
Mrs. Turner’s husband was the technician that wired together Abilene’s first television station, KRBC, in 1953. I never knew any of this. Later, he built the studio at KNIT Radio, the first station devoted to rock and roll in the 1950s in Abilene. A disc jockey at that station was Slim Willet, who affected hillbilly dress and accent and wrote unremarkable country songs, with the exception of “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” a national hit for Perry Como in 1954. Slim, whose real name was Winston Moore, actually was a smart man with a degree in English. “You know, Mrs. Turner, Slim Willet was actually an erudite man,” I said. “Yes,” she smiled, patiently, “I know.”
I am sorry now that Mrs. Turner may think the former student sitting next to her was named Gary. I had forgotten my nametag, and Molly Cline, the reunionmeister, wouldn’t let me go through the lunch line without one. So off her registration table, I selected Gary Hooker. I wanted Cathy Cox, but Molly wouldn’t let me have it. I had earlier introduced myself to Mrs. Turner as “Michael,” but when I sat down next to her, she said, “Hello, Gary, how are you?”
I stayed with Bob and Marilyn Cluck. When we were in high school, Bob’s mom always seemed to have a lemon icebox pie made when I came over to their house. Last week, Marilyn had a lemon icebox pie ready. A thoughtful thing to do. Bob and I went to the Dixie Pig for breakfast Saturday morning; my uncle Clyde used to take me there for pancakes every Saturday morning when he got back from World War II, in 1946. I bought a couple of Dixie Pig t-shirts – I brag often to my wife, Karen, about the Pig – but I left the damn things in the back of the rental car. At the 45th reunion, we were all starting to slow down.
At the 10th and 20th reunions, it was all about breaking into old cliques and drinking your way through your own personal high school highlight reels. Last week, at the 45th, it was all about talking to everybody with a nametag on, with a subtle double-clutch from the past into the present tense. There must have been 100 of us, and if we didn’t all talk to each other, it was because we ran out of time.
All those dipwads, the thumbnail photos of the faces in our senior class yearbook, Abilene, Texas, High School, Class of 1961. Beautiful dipwads, athletic ones, accomplished ones, most likely to succeed, and most likely never to be heard from again, ones. But still dipwads, barely damp with identity after three years in a West Texas high school adult factory.
Now, by God, they all have stories. Amazing stories, happy stories, sad stories, tough ones, routine ones, special ones, brave, even heroic ones, survival ones, triumphant ones, hopeful ones, all written on the road, all those strange highways, that brought us individually from 1961 back to Abilene in 2006. I guess we just had to wait for it. We didn’t have much to talk about, at the 10th and 20th reunions; we hadn’t had enough time yet. Now we have, and it was worth it. I have names, listed on an envelope, just to jog my memory of the fabulous things they said. Many people didn’t come, staying away from the way we used to be. They would have gone home wiser than they are now. But how were they to know?
Sweet, demure, Ellen Turner was there. She taught senior English; I was in her class. Now she’s 94, be 95 on Nov. 18, and I hope somebody in Abilene reading this will bring her flowers. Her best subject, she said, was math. She loved math, but she understood it so well that she didn’t want to teach it, because it would have been boring. I never knew that. She had a relative, a brother or a cousin – 45th-reunionists’ memories aren’t as dependable as they used to be – named Raymonde (I am almost positive she said it was spelled with an “e”) Howard, who was flying a C-47 over France on D-Day and was shot down and killed. Mrs. Turner remembers that as soon as she heard about the invasion on the radio in Abilene, she had an awful feeling that Raymonde had died. She told me how to find his grave, in the military cemetery at Normandy.
Mrs. Turner’s husband was the technician that wired together Abilene’s first television station, KRBC, in 1953. I never knew any of this. Later, he built the studio at KNIT Radio, the first station devoted to rock and roll in the 1950s in Abilene. A disc jockey at that station was Slim Willet, who affected hillbilly dress and accent and wrote unremarkable country songs, with the exception of “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes,” a national hit for Perry Como in 1954. Slim, whose real name was Winston Moore, actually was a smart man with a degree in English. “You know, Mrs. Turner, Slim Willet was actually an erudite man,” I said. “Yes,” she smiled, patiently, “I know.”
I am sorry now that Mrs. Turner may think the former student sitting next to her was named Gary. I had forgotten my nametag, and Molly Cline, the reunionmeister, wouldn’t let me go through the lunch line without one. So off her registration table, I selected Gary Hooker. I wanted Cathy Cox, but Molly wouldn’t let me have it. I had earlier introduced myself to Mrs. Turner as “Michael,” but when I sat down next to her, she said, “Hello, Gary, how are you?”
I stayed with Bob and Marilyn Cluck. When we were in high school, Bob’s mom always seemed to have a lemon icebox pie made when I came over to their house. Last week, Marilyn had a lemon icebox pie ready. A thoughtful thing to do. Bob and I went to the Dixie Pig for breakfast Saturday morning; my uncle Clyde used to take me there for pancakes every Saturday morning when he got back from World War II, in 1946. I bought a couple of Dixie Pig t-shirts – I brag often to my wife, Karen, about the Pig – but I left the damn things in the back of the rental car. At the 45th reunion, we were all starting to slow down.
October 05, 2006
New brother to the club
Fascinating, this week, to read the story by New York Times travel writer Joe Sharkey, of his experience on an airplane he believed might crash. He was aboard the executive jet, flying above the Amazon forest, that was clipped by a jetliner with 155 people aboard. The jetliner crashed, killing all on board, but Sharkey’s story tells how his damaged aircraft was able to stay airborne until they could find a landing field.
It was the first such experience I had ever read, since the same thing happened to me, almost 50 years ago. On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 28, 1958, I was on an airplane that I believed was going to crash. For a moment, in fact, I believed it had crashed, and that I must be dead.
I was a sophomore on our district champion high school football team, the Abilene Eagles, and we were flying from Abilene, in West Texas, for a first-round playoff game against Ysleta, an El Paso suburb. We were on two chartered DC-3s, the first team and head coach on the first plane, the scrubs on the second. I was on the second, in the last seat on the right-hand side.
I loved airplanes, knew all the makes and types, liked to go to the Abilene airport and watch the Pioneer Airlines DC-3s come and go. So I knew, that at Big Spring, 100 miles west of Abilene, there was Webb Air Force Base. The base was south of us, to our left, so I got out of my seat and asked the two guys across the aisle if I could lean across and look out their window at the base. There it was, the runway perpendicular to us, maybe five miles away.
In the next instant, without any sense of anything happening, or time passing, I was stuck, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the airplane. I couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t close my eyes. Directly below my eyes was the window I had been looking out of. Below that was the ground, brown West Texas ranch land, coming up to get me.
In another instant, again without any sense of happening or time, I was on the floor, underneath one of the guys – Graham Holland – I had been leaning over, and on top of us was a lot of stuff, including a long, large, glossy stick, red and white with black marks and numbers on it. Loving airplanes, I knew this was the stick that, at the airport, they used to measure the fuel in the wing tanks. I looked at the stick and thought: this stick is supposed to be outside the airplane. It must mean that I am outside the airplane, too, which means I must be dead. Never having been dead, it made sense that this is what it would look like to a departing spirit: just like life.
But then we started to stir, pick ourselves up. We were flying again, straight and level. It was very quiet on the airplane. The pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom. He said we were almost hit by a T-33 jet trainer, taking off from Webb. He said he cut power to his engines, stood the DC-3 (a fabulous airplane) on its left wingtip, and dropped about 1,000 feet. That’s what stuck me to the ceiling. Kageler said the trainer missed us by about 25 feet.
We flew on to El Paso, played the next day, won, 45-0, and flew home without incident. But the people on the airplane that Friday afternoon had become members of a club who know what it is like on an airplane that is about to crash. We knew three things: your life really does pass before your eyes; the ground really does come up to get you; there is no panic, or terror. No one on the airplane yelled, or screamed; it was eerily quiet, during and after.
For 48 years, I believed the absence of terror was because of time. It happened so quickly, the brain couldn’t figure it out. The brain, being a logical instrument, strives to put patterns on everything, but things were happening too fast. I came to believe it was a form of compensation: people who were about to die at least would not die in the indignity of terror.
Now, this week, I read about Joe Sharkey’s experience, a “terrific jolt,” the sight of a wingtip sheared off and the skin of the wing peeling back, losing speed and altitude, and no visible place in the thick rain forest to land. They were in the air for 30 minutes, “the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life,” Sharkey writes. Plenty of time to figure things out. Yet, Sharkey writes: “Amazingly, no one panicked.”
So there must be something else about human beings. We – not our intellect, but our visceral selves – must understand the singularity of life, of being alive, and we are born with an instinct that says such a possession cannot, will not, be taken away. A wingtip is sheared off, the plane is going down, but that’s okay. Plenty of time left. Plenty of fight. I have witnessed some evidence of this. A person is dying, wasted by disease, yet in the last minutes, the final minute, the last seconds, the body is fighting visibly, ferociously, to stay alive, to possess its singularity, until finally it relaxes, takes a deep breath or two, and then surrenders. This thing about life in us makes us all noble. The World Trade Center victims didn’t jump to die. They jumped because it was their last fighting chance to live.
It was the first such experience I had ever read, since the same thing happened to me, almost 50 years ago. On the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 28, 1958, I was on an airplane that I believed was going to crash. For a moment, in fact, I believed it had crashed, and that I must be dead.
I was a sophomore on our district champion high school football team, the Abilene Eagles, and we were flying from Abilene, in West Texas, for a first-round playoff game against Ysleta, an El Paso suburb. We were on two chartered DC-3s, the first team and head coach on the first plane, the scrubs on the second. I was on the second, in the last seat on the right-hand side.
I loved airplanes, knew all the makes and types, liked to go to the Abilene airport and watch the Pioneer Airlines DC-3s come and go. So I knew, that at Big Spring, 100 miles west of Abilene, there was Webb Air Force Base. The base was south of us, to our left, so I got out of my seat and asked the two guys across the aisle if I could lean across and look out their window at the base. There it was, the runway perpendicular to us, maybe five miles away.
In the next instant, without any sense of anything happening, or time passing, I was stuck, spread-eagled, to the ceiling of the airplane. I couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t close my eyes. Directly below my eyes was the window I had been looking out of. Below that was the ground, brown West Texas ranch land, coming up to get me.
In another instant, again without any sense of happening or time, I was on the floor, underneath one of the guys – Graham Holland – I had been leaning over, and on top of us was a lot of stuff, including a long, large, glossy stick, red and white with black marks and numbers on it. Loving airplanes, I knew this was the stick that, at the airport, they used to measure the fuel in the wing tanks. I looked at the stick and thought: this stick is supposed to be outside the airplane. It must mean that I am outside the airplane, too, which means I must be dead. Never having been dead, it made sense that this is what it would look like to a departing spirit: just like life.
But then we started to stir, pick ourselves up. We were flying again, straight and level. It was very quiet on the airplane. The pilot, Charles L. Kageler, came on the intercom. He said we were almost hit by a T-33 jet trainer, taking off from Webb. He said he cut power to his engines, stood the DC-3 (a fabulous airplane) on its left wingtip, and dropped about 1,000 feet. That’s what stuck me to the ceiling. Kageler said the trainer missed us by about 25 feet.
We flew on to El Paso, played the next day, won, 45-0, and flew home without incident. But the people on the airplane that Friday afternoon had become members of a club who know what it is like on an airplane that is about to crash. We knew three things: your life really does pass before your eyes; the ground really does come up to get you; there is no panic, or terror. No one on the airplane yelled, or screamed; it was eerily quiet, during and after.
For 48 years, I believed the absence of terror was because of time. It happened so quickly, the brain couldn’t figure it out. The brain, being a logical instrument, strives to put patterns on everything, but things were happening too fast. I came to believe it was a form of compensation: people who were about to die at least would not die in the indignity of terror.
Now, this week, I read about Joe Sharkey’s experience, a “terrific jolt,” the sight of a wingtip sheared off and the skin of the wing peeling back, losing speed and altitude, and no visible place in the thick rain forest to land. They were in the air for 30 minutes, “the most harrowing 30 minutes of my life,” Sharkey writes. Plenty of time to figure things out. Yet, Sharkey writes: “Amazingly, no one panicked.”
So there must be something else about human beings. We – not our intellect, but our visceral selves – must understand the singularity of life, of being alive, and we are born with an instinct that says such a possession cannot, will not, be taken away. A wingtip is sheared off, the plane is going down, but that’s okay. Plenty of time left. Plenty of fight. I have witnessed some evidence of this. A person is dying, wasted by disease, yet in the last minutes, the final minute, the last seconds, the body is fighting visibly, ferociously, to stay alive, to possess its singularity, until finally it relaxes, takes a deep breath or two, and then surrenders. This thing about life in us makes us all noble. The World Trade Center victims didn’t jump to die. They jumped because it was their last fighting chance to live.
October 02, 2006
Front Page Values
People are so funny. They have no idea how a newspaper does its job. Last week, stripped across the top of our local paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Letters page, were letters whining about some of the U-T’s recent choices for front-page stories.
One griped about the huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of San Diego teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.
Reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions were not created by the media, or by the first newspaper publishers 500 years ago. Those values and realities were created by people, our ancient ancestors, dating all the way back to the caves, and we carry them still, every day, and we know what they are. News values are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business. There are 10 such values in all, each measured on a strength of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the paper, each on its strength of zero to 10.
When an editor looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.
Novelty is the news value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego!). Setting a record in major league baseball in America is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in Monday newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.
There are two types of proximity: physical and emotional. Physical proximity means the story happened close to you. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. If he pitched for far-away Cleveland, the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page. Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Little guy vs. big guy, David vs. Goliath, is the classic example, because in our lives we have all been Davids at some point, and we know how it feels. When you read a David and Goliath story, you are reading it because of emotional proximity. The U-T did, this week, miss an emotional proximity story. In yesterday’s Letters page was a short letter, way at the bottom, that wondered why, in its Monday “This day in history” feature, the paper didn’t list the PSA crash here on Sept. 25, 1978 that killed 144 people. I don’t expect an actual story until the next anniversary year, 2008, but I did scan the pages, looking for a mention. When it happened, it was a 10-plus for all the values except progress, probably the biggest news story in San Diego media history.
Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. The biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 against the Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.
So if people know what these values are, why do they gripe about front-page content selection? They do it because of demographics. Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story? It would be good if the paper could get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 20 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader.
One griped about the huge front-page photo of Padres pitcher Trevor Hoffman, the morning after he broke Lee Smith’s all-time major league record for saves. Another thought the front page should be reserved for international, national or statewide content. A third wondered about showing a photo of San Diego teachers on the front page, where the news of the day should be.
Reader annoyance with editorial decisions is an eternal, fascinating irony. The values and realities that editors use to make their decisions were not created by the media, or by the first newspaper publishers 500 years ago. Those values and realities were created by people, our ancient ancestors, dating all the way back to the caves, and we carry them still, every day, and we know what they are. News values are nothing more than categorization and measurement of the way people react to events, and those reactions began tens of thousands of years before the media came into being. In fact the media came into being simply by adopting those values and turning them into a business. There are 10 such values in all, each measured on a strength of zero to 10. Every value is present in every story in the paper, each on its strength of zero to 10.
When an editor looks at a photo of Trevor Hoffman on the front page of The San Diego Union-Tribune, he or she sees novelty (10), proximity (10), prominence (10), and sensationalism (7 or 8). Timeliness (7) and human interest (about a 6) are there, too, but the others are the big four behind the Trevor photo.
Novelty is the news value invoked by the unusual, the rare (Snow In San Diego!). Setting a record in major league baseball in America is an unusual event. People still talk about Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. Setting a record for saves hadn’t been done for decades. Novelty insured that the feat was noted in Monday newspapers all over the country, even three paragraphs in The New York Times.
There are two types of proximity: physical and emotional. Physical proximity means the story happened close to you. Hoffman pitches for the Padres, the home-town team. If he pitched for far-away Cleveland, the story would have been three paragraphs on an inside sports page. Emotional proximity is just that: the story is close to your emotions. Little guy vs. big guy, David vs. Goliath, is the classic example, because in our lives we have all been Davids at some point, and we know how it feels. When you read a David and Goliath story, you are reading it because of emotional proximity. The U-T did, this week, miss an emotional proximity story. In yesterday’s Letters page was a short letter, way at the bottom, that wondered why, in its Monday “This day in history” feature, the paper didn’t list the PSA crash here on Sept. 25, 1978 that killed 144 people. I don’t expect an actual story until the next anniversary year, 2008, but I did scan the pages, looking for a mention. When it happened, it was a 10-plus for all the values except progress, probably the biggest news story in San Diego media history.
Prominence is simple: big names make news. Trevor Hoffman is a celebrity, who achieved a novel feat, in his home town. And sensationalism, in its legitimate sense, refers to an event that is sensational. The biggest sensational story that I can remember is the farewell tour of the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. His performances were sensational, and they were noted in the media worldwide, as they happened. My biggest personal sensational story is Steve Garvey’s home run (off Lee Smith, incidentally), in Game 4 against the Cubs in 1984. You can ask anyone who was there (all 10 million of them) if they have ever heard a louder roar.
So if people know what these values are, why do they gripe about front-page content selection? They do it because of demographics. Every reader, from highbrow to sports fan, has his or her own list of stories they want to see. It forces editors into choices, which are usually based on another value, consequence: on any given day, which demographic represents the largest number of readers likely to react to this story? It would be good if the paper could get all the news in, every day, but the paper would weigh 20 pounds, they could never sell enough ads, and 90 percent of the content would go unread by any given reader.
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