Newscoma

There are things that confound me and then at the same time do not surprise me at all. Yesterday, in the national news arena, we watched three very vital stories hit our television/internet worlds and the reaction to all three stories was quite unique. But which story was the biggest one of the day?

We first had the story about the economy which confounds the average citizen and that includes me.

Followed by the withdrawal of Fred Thompson from the GOP presidential race, which could have been his if he wanted it. I can’t help but think that the worries that some of us as Democrats had when he announced and it faded into an abyss of woulda, coulda, shoulda. It may be the Tennessean coming out of me with this observation. I saw a Twitter from Brittney Gilbert in San Francisco say that his announcement didn’t impact anyone in her news room in San Francisco which I think is probably about right.

And then the death of actor Heath Ledger.

In rooting around the Internet yesterday, as I was a blogging fool for about five different websites, the most response I saw about all of the three stories was about the death of the young actor. It was the story that made a lot of people sit and and listen and talk. It even broke Nashville is Talking for awhile.

If you are a member of Twitter, for about four straight hours yesterday, Ledger’s death was the one that had people pondering what had happened, why a young man with a great deal of talent had died so unexpectedly. Was it a suicide? Was it an accidental drug overdose? The nation is apparently enamoured with watching Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Amy Winehouse, but the good actor with the big future was off the radar. It was a surprise.

I had a boss once tell me in news that there are always three big stories. 1.) Kids, 2.) personal issues with money and 3.) the unknown/death.

There is a great deal of validity to all three of those observations.

I thought Ledger was talented. He took chances. And there will always be the mystery of how someone so young could die. His death completely annihilated the other two top stories of the day off the top fold and on key posts of everyone major news organizations’ websites.

The story taking top placement isn’t surprising. And the immediacy of the conversation regarding his passing online wasn’t either. I’m just more connected now than I used to be in online entities.

Am I being analytical? Yes.

I feel all of my age this morning because the first thing I thought of was it’s sad that this kid had to die. But young people die everyday. They die in war, they die in reckless car crashes, they die from disease. But they are not famous they are just our people and we mourn.

And for some reason, we are connected with the instant loss of life because I think it targets some of our most primal fears.  And for the news industry, the other stories take the bottom fold because people want to know about the world of celebrity and watch from a safe distance. That includes me, I assure you.