A couple of years ago, I signed up to receive CNN.com's Breaking News E-mail Alerts. These one-liner news bulletins appear in my email box even before the actual stories have been composed and uploaded to the website. If you were to click over to CNN.com upon receiving such an alert, what you would see is a red banner with a bold headline at the top of the web page, reading something like this: "Developing story: Hurricane Katrina Devastates Gulf Coast."
Weeks and months can go by without ever receiving any alerts at all. Of course, these things are cyclical.
But who at CNN makes the call as to what is newsworthy enough for such an alert? There are certainly plenty of life-changing events happening on a daily basis throughout the world. Terrorist threats and hurricane warnings notwithstanding.
Is it just me, or is there a weird disconnect between "Thousands feared to be lost in hurricane aftermath" and "Bob Denver, Gilligan, dies at age 70"?
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