“Newsworthiness a Fluid Standard”

This must have been a hard TV Week column to write a headline for. (The editor ended up with “Newsworthiness a Fluid Standard.” What is Marianne Paskowski‘s point?

She rants about cable news, muses about several dinner parties, talks to Henry Schleiff about cameras in the courtroom, murmurs about the Saddam Hussein trial, then references the “runaway bride:”

“At a lunch a while ago, I privately asked a prominent cable news anchor why she was spending so much time on the ‘runaway bride’ story…In that not-for-attribution conversation, the anchor rolled her eyes and told me, ‘That’s what the producers want,’ referring to the endless coverage about the runaway bride. The anchor, too, thought it was overkill. But the public loved it, apparently. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been so much coverage.”

Marianne, that’s not a new or original thought. In fact, I’m not sure anything in your column is. What’s your point?