The Urban Sherpa, a blog by Christopher DeWan

(ein geographischer und geistiger Führer zum Leben in der grossen Stadt...)

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Philanderer's secret

January 25, 2010

Comment

“When I say 'I love you,' I'm not lying to any of you.

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These news cycles are impossible. Someone here wants to run a story on Haiti. Specifically, she wants to run a story on text message donations to Haiti. Truth is, if you're covering technology, text message donation was the story to come out of this earthquake. (Deaths of tens of thousands, and the destruction of a civilization, don't unto themselves net much tech news: devastation has a way of rendering gadgets useless. Not to mention it makes you realize they're stupid.)

Anyway, the operative word, "was": this was a story, a few days ago, when it broke, but now, already, it's over, faster than you can say "tsunami warning system." I mean, the New York Times has covered it for Christ's sake. By the time they get there, it must be over.

"You got an angle?," I ask. Her story already is an angle, so now we're looking for an angle on an angle, because without it, the readers are just going back to Conan and Leno. She doesn't have an angle on the angle, so I kill the story. No reason to run it without an angle on the angle.

Whoever said "Life is a river" never worked in news. Life is a fucking class-six white-water rapid full of boulders, and the boulders don't love you one bit.

"What else you got? There must be something else. RFID tags on aid deliveries? The American SUV finally finds a possible use, more appropriate than soccer practice, in the rubble of Haiti? etc."

"A tech story on Haiti? They don't have roads. They don't have buildings. There's not even electricity."

"OK, OK, I can work with that. These aid workers, these reporters—how are they charging their batteries? Can you get me a solar story?"

Google, riding a wave of karmic good will after its "Fuck you" to China: what if Google buys Haiti? Sergey could build his very own Caribbean Utopia from scratch. God knows they've probably modeled it all out already, some SimCity / Google Earth mashup game. Idealistic freaks. That's a story.

God, I hate disasters. This job depends on writing about shopping, and human suffering takes all of the fun out of consumption. All that sobbing on Fox News makes my job impossible. You want something visceral? Go see Avatar at the IMAX. It'll shake your seat. That's visceral.

"We're still going with the original cover for February," she asks. "Right?"

"Hells yeah we are. Can't let one little earthquake get in the way of the biggest news of our nascent decade. Hells yeah we're going with the Apple tablet cover in February."

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