You want me to tell you what’s really important? Do you? Are you sure?
The other day, I posted a quick ditty about the NCAA basketball tournament. It was as much to enhance my own enjoyment as anything else — a form of sports Viagra, if you will. In the past, I’ve really enjoyed the tourney IF I had a bet in a pool. Because I had staked something, even a dollar, on the outcome, I cared, and got involved with the excitement as a spectator. It was fun. It almost made me feel like a normal person — taking interest for a change in both sports and television, at the same time.
But I had missed the deadline for any pools, so I filled out my bracket anyway and posted it, thinking that would be a good hook for me. It didn’t really work, possibly because my son got married over the weekend, so I was even busier than usual — a LOT busier. (And it was a blessed time with family and friends, one of the best I can remember. Much better than basketball.)
Anyway, on a whim, I did a video of my bracket and posted it on YouTube, meaning to link to it from the blog post. But I thought that just too stupid and obsessive for words, so I just went with the still photo.
It’s hard to find a dumber or more boring video than my out-of-focus panning over my poorly-considered picks for the NCAA. And yet, even though I didn’t promote it in any way, 58 people have called it up to watch it.
Sure, that’s not many by YouTube standards, but compare it to 59 views of my video of Lindsey Graham talking about the importance of energy independence — which, in my book, is greater than the importance of what an editorial page editor thinks about who will make it to the Final Four.
And it’s not just that people ignore the videos I push. They just watch what interests them. My first video on Grady Patterson, which I also promoted, has been watched 826 times.
Anyway, now that I know what is important to the viewing public, here is some truly riveting cinema on my basketball picks:
Related Posts
It’s basketball. Who cares? Ed
Glad you came to your senses.I wanted to thank you for the link to the McCain site.It’s a really keen site and game they’ve got going.So far,I’m leading McCain by three points,51-48.
Of course,I may not hold that lead for long,but,on the off chance that I get lucky and win something,I’ll send my McCain paraphernalia to ya.
Congrats on gaining a “daughter”.
Basketball is VERY important.The rush of watching a great game is positively exhilarating.I CARE!
This would have been my lead story in the State today:
*************************
In a sweeping bipartisan rebuke of the administration, the Senate voted 94-2 to end Gonzales’ power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. That power had been inserted into a revision of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act last year at the request of the Justice Department.
*************************
Or perhaps this:
*************************
School bus accident sends 17 to hospital
*************************
But instead we get a follow-up story, yes a follow-up story, about the two young men who were dismissed from the USC baseball team. Granted this does transcend sports to some extent but it’s not really worthy of the front page. There is no new information in the story. It’s really just an interview session with various USC coaches and former players. My idea of the front page is to feature something new that is of significant importance to the community. It can be a local, national or international story but it should be something new. The initial arrest/dismissal story was a logical front-page event but not the follow-up.
Don’t talk to me about news, or about sports (which is a subdivision of news). Our lead editorial applauded the very action that the Senate took, and urged the House to follow suit posthaste.
There’s no more than that I can do for you. I’m the editorial page editor, and editorial and news are quite deliberately (and quite appropriately) walled off from each other.
Anyway, bill, now that I look back at the page, I am reminded that today’s lead news story was the pork deal. In fact, I referred to it as such this morning in this post.
This may seem rather lawyerly to you, but the lead story — the most important story of the day — in most newspapers (The New York Times is particularly pedantic on this point) is played in the upper right hand corner right under the nameplate. It’s part of the visual language of newspapers.
Large items with art (pictures, graphics) played more to the left or center of the page tend to be less serious, more featury items.
It’s probably a subtle thing to you, but to me — I was once a front-page editor, and had to agonize over the placement of stories in great detail every day — it’s a big difference. I don’t expect the story in the arty centerpiece position to be all that important. It should be interesting, but it must NOT be as important as the story played in the lede position.
You’ll say that since you, the reader, don’t know all that esoteric stuff, it’s meaningless. And you’d certainly have a point. In fact, your point trumps mine, because you’re the reader. I’m just sharing something with you about the way newspapers traditionally approach a front page.
Brad, I’m not criticizing you personally but it does seem like the State has become increasingly “fluffy” with it’s front page. The USA has always been that way but the NY Time and other big city papers come across as a bit more serious for their front page stories.
But what I really don’t understand is why the school bus story wasn’t on the front page somewhere. On an otherwise relatively slow newsday that story seemed fairly important. It had safety implications in a state that claims 1,000+ lives a year on the highways. It dealt with children. And to some extent it was an education issue. Given the number of stories about the funding shortage for buses and the aging of the fleet this particular story touched on a lot of issues and to me it was worthy of front page mention, if not the lead story outright.
We all have our different tastes. I’m a hard-news guy, and you seem to be of the same persuasion. When I was a front-page editor, I sometimes had to be reminded to think about the “mix” — that is, to remember that different people come to the page for different things. The idea was that I should not edit the paper solely for my own tastes, but provide a variety — the best of several types of stories.
For that reason, newspapers sometimes place the second-biggest news story of the day as lead on the second front — what we call Metro — so they can get a mix of different kinds of stories on the front. Sometimes, that will be considered better play, because you can play it bigger. Sometimes not. Personally, I tend to prefer a single-column presence on the front to any other place in the paper, but I can see other viewpoints.
Between the two, I much prefer the grayer New York Times approach to the bright USA Today way. But that’s just me. I’m sort of old-school. I prefer a well-turned paragraph to an attractive picture, even though I like art. I’m probably in the minority there.
The NY Times and USA Today are famous for making up news and spinning the facts they hate into some fantasy.
I guess when the publisher and top editors hold some of the few handgun permits in the city, while the paper drumbeats to disarm everyone else, you cannot expect them to recognize the reality, much less report it on any subject.