Laatulehti muistaa Anna Nicolea
SMH honours Anna Nicole Smith
Illasta puoleenpäivään tuli yli 130 milliä vettä. Ei tarvitse kastella kasvimaata pariin päivään. Klikkaa satelliittikuvasta isompi.
Laatulehti Sydney Morning Herald teki Anna Nicole Smithin kuolemasta viikonvaihdenmeronsa etusivun uutisen kahdella kuvalla. Ilmastomuutos (viikon puheenaihe täällä niin kuin muuallakin) ei sitten enää mahtunutkaan. Anna Nicolesta jatkettiin lähes puolen sivun verran sivulla neljä ja vielä 3/4 sivun verran viikonvaihteen News Review -osastossa. Se on sellainen osasto, jossa annetaan taustaa viikon uutisaiheille, analysoidaan ja pohditaan. Tai on ollut. Uskomaton yliuutisointi ei millään ollut mahtua päähän, kun koko tapahtuma olisi pitänyt kuitata yksipalstaisella pätkällä. Sitten silmään osui pieni kainalojuttu, joka selvitti lehden uutisvalintaa. Siinä kerrottiin, että 250 000 ihmistä oli klikannut lehden nettisivulla tähtösen kuolemasta alun perin kertonutta linkkiä.
Saahan lukijoita kuunnella, toki. Mutta eikös nyt ole uskomattoman noloa kunniallisen päivälehden antaa nettimassojen käyttäytymisen vaikuttaa näin järjettömässä määrin painetun lehden sisältöön. Olisiko tässä voitu pahemmin mennä metsään? 250 000 uutista klikannutta (tunnustan!) olivat kiinnostuneita yksinomaan siitä, miksi Annasta aika jätti. Sitä ei tiedetty silloin eikä tiedetä nyt, ja viikonvaihdenumeron uutistoimistomateriaalista muokatuilla tarinoilla ei ollut asiaan mitään lisättävää. Enemmän kiinnostaisi tietää, mitä juttuja jätettiin julkaisematta, että saatiin tilaa tälle yhteiskunnallisesti ja maailmanlaajuisesti tärkeälle aiheelle.
Etusivulta löytyi vielä tämäkin: "Her life ended as trainwrecks often do: in death." No voi herra hyvästi hallitkoon, elämä se tuppaa useinkin päättymään kuolemaan.
Oletan, että huomisessa lehdessä on puolentoista broadsheet-sivun verran tästä aiheesta. Gallup: kuinka moni olisi antanut Ralph Fiennesin tulla samaan vessaan?
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The Bureau of Meteorology tells us what we had already suspected. We got over 130 mm of rain overnight in Robertson. Click the satellite image for a bigger view.
The Sydney Morning Herald, once a quality broadsheet or so I am told, has finally sunk lower than any of our impressive tabloids. Encouraged by 250 000 clicks on the paper's website, they decided to put all their journalistic energy on one topic: Anna Nicole Smith's death. They made it their front page story in the weekend issue, with two photos. They contined on page 4 for another half a page or so. And finally, they made it one of the main topics of their News Review section - you know, the section that gives you valuable background, opinion and analysis.
The 250 000 clicks happened on their website when the news of ANS's death first became known. I confess, I clicked the link. I was curious. In two seconds I found out more than I wanted to know, namely that they did not yet know how she died. They still don't and the ridiculous space devoted to the subject in the weekend paper was pure gossip journalism pulled together from various news agency sources.
I'd be most interested to know what was left out of the paper because of Anna Nicole. Climate change certainly did not feature on the front page, but this sentence did: "Her life ended as trainwrecks often do: in death."
Funny, that. Come to think of it, lives surprisingly often end in death. I'd hazard a guess that with lives this happens even more often than with trainwrecks.
I wonder if tomorrow's paper will feature 1.5 broadsheet pages about this subject, as I am sure there would have been some 100 000 clicks or more already.
A little newspoll: would you let Ralph Fiennes join you in the toilet?
Satellite images from the Bureau of Meteorology website.
Comments - Kommentit
Hi Anni
Nice post. Certainly top quality journalism you have detected there. Life does often end in death - and certainly more often than trainwrecks do.
Now to the Rafe Fiennes story, would she have been "stood down" if she had NOT refused his amorous advances? Interesting moral question, for Qantas management.
Where do I click to answer the little Newspoll question you posed: would you let Ralph Fiennes join you in the toilet?
Perhaps the toilets in first class are larger than those in "steerage" class. But I would not!
Posted by: Denis Wilson | February 11, 2007 05:42 PM
Update to the rainfall - by 5 pm there has been 155 mm in 24 hours.
Posted by: Anni | February 11, 2007 06:04 PM
245 mm in the past 24 hours according to our trusty rain gauge.
We have a moat around the house (with one functioning drawbridge to the outside world - should we wish to venture out), a lake to the west and a river heading off to the north. Not to mention, the Real (Caalang) Creek which is the proverbial raging torrent.
No need to water the plants today and many small creatures (including hundreds of baby grasshoppers and multitudes of millipedes) have taken refuge on any external house wall that provides some Shelter From The Storm.
Posted by: Lynn | February 11, 2007 11:04 PM
I love Lynn's description of the moat, and of the insects sheltering from the storm.
Most of the time, Robertson itself feels a bit like that "Shelter from the Storm" (for the humans). I know I dread going out into the hustle and bustle of the outside world. It makes me feel like the fabled "Country Mouse".
Posted by: Denis Wilson | February 12, 2007 12:05 AM
Today my mum bought a paper (on a Sunday - never a good move) to use with her class at school (find a news item, find a sport item, that sort of thing)... On flicking through it she found that pretty much the whole thing was a splendidly sordid array of celebrity misbehaviour, drugs, death, rape and the like. Because obviously elections, climate change, educational policy and international relations aren't newsworthy... at least until Monday.
Did I ever tell you guys that I first experienced the delights of an iced chocolate in Robertson? We caught a steam train and acquired a china salt cellar shaped like a piglet.
Posted by: Angharad | February 12, 2007 02:18 AM
Oh, and as regards Ralph - as Eugene Onegin maybe; as Lord Voldemort probably not.
Posted by: Angharad | February 12, 2007 02:20 AM
Lynn, I suspected it must have been way over 200mm! Momentarily it looked like a moat around our house, too. When Andy got up this morning, there was a baby magpie sheltering inside the hammock on the veranda!
Only two leaks in the roof - exactly where the roof was 'repaired' in 2005 (because there had been leaks).
Angharad, Monday papers usually feature 15 pages of sport and not much else.
I'd forgotten about that Eugene Onegin! Very nice atmosphere I seem to remember. I think it was one of those films that went straight to video/DVD; I came across it quite accidentally in Steve's video shop once when I was looking for something to watch. I seem to remember the end credits several people named Fiennes, must have been a family effort.
Eugene/Yevgeny/Jevgeni Onegin is my favourite opera. Pity Ralph probably doesn't sing opera.
Posted by: Anni | February 12, 2007 10:20 AM
That's right, I'd forgotten about that heartwarming bout of nepotism!
Don't know if it was showing wherever you were at that point in time, but I'm pretty sure I saw it at the cinema...
Posted by: Angharad | February 13, 2007 11:09 AM
Most likely I just wasn't paying attention. I would have been in Finland, though, so there is a chance it didn't come to a cinema near me.
Posted by: Anni | February 13, 2007 03:14 PM