One of the perks of my old job in New York was that I was given a free subscription to the New York Times. Well, kinda: I arrived at least an hour before anyone else, so I had plenty of time to make coffee and peruse the paper we received at the office before anyone else showed up to snatch the Arts section.
One day I was sitting at my desk, gettin’ my buzz on, skimming the news, and there, buried in the belly of the A section, was a tiny, one column by one column-inch piece that said, in essence, “We’ve been hearing these crazy rumors that 200,000 folks have been killed in some kind of fighting in Rwanda. As soon as we find Rwanda on the map, we’ll send someone to investigate.”
It wasn’t necessarily the brevity of the piece that bothered me–I mean, who in their right mind would be in Rwanda to report the story accurately? The Christiane Amanpour’s of the world are stationed somewhere else.
Nor was it a question of placement; if you don’t have much in the way of details, why would you put a story on the front page?
I guess I was more disturbed by the allusion to such a massive tragedy. I was tantalized, horrified, whatever, but the paper couldn’t provide me with any details to understand what happened. It was thoroughly creepy and not a little coy.
Today, it happened again. Yeah, it’s on the front page of the website, but look at the size of the piece. What can that possibly tell me?
Maybe I’m spoiled by CNN. Maybe I need images and human-interest stories to appreciate the news. Maybe by giving me an understanding of the events, those kinds of things provide closure so I can turn off the set and think about watering my plants.
I know it’s stating the obvious, but still.
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