Weighing In - What IS news?

When celebrities die, folks eat it up. Couple a celebrity with va-va-voom figure and a tragic life...its all over. Inundation in the media. Lewis Green rocked my Friday world today with this post. I was easing on into the weekend and he asks all these hard questions :) - I'm kidding, of course. Love hard questions. CK has a post here and a different question. Cam Beck weighs in with a comment at both spots. Keen insight!

My intrigue centers around newspapers and how it played in them. In casual chat around here yesterday it was foremost in everybody's mind. Would that people were as conversational about global warming, cures for cancer, or any other number of topics. I was rather dreading how it would play in this morning's paper. More specifically, I distinctly remember thinking "It's not front page news!" - but it is news. I'm not an editor. It ran on page 3 - right next to Scooter Libby trial.

Here's the recap from Newseum. If you don't want to link, it says of the 509 newspapers they track it was on the front page world wide. My unscientific glance found a handful with no mention on page one - but for arguments sake we'll go with the Newseum observation. So what's that say about us as readers? About newspapers? Does it matter? And don't hold back...I take nothing personally (or at least make a valid attempt).

I believe we are what we read. And we read what we are.