Blogtrek

Blogtrek

2003/02/02

Columbia Tragedy: Memorable or Full?

I rate news stories on their effect on the media. I have six ratings: Memorable, Full, Major, Front-Page, News, and Non-News. To qualify as full, the story must cover the entire newscast at night (hence the name full) and must cover half of the front page or more with a headline, but still leave room for the story. A Memorable event is noted by people asking each other in the future, "When were you when ___ occurred?" about the event. It will also fill the entire front page of a newspaper with a headline and will wipe out all other TV programming for at least 24 hours. Planeattack was certainly a Memorable Event. These are rare; so rare that only five have occurred in my lifetime.

So is the Columbia tragedy full or Memorable? It filled much of the front page of the newspaper but it left room for story. It dominated all the networks for times on 2003 Feb 1, but it left room for other programming later in the day. It did fill the entire news program on the 1st, so it is at least full. But is it memorable? I don't think so. Already other programming is coming back and the news coverage was only a few pages in the newspaper. So it rates as a high full event, somewhere between full and Memorable, but not quite memorable. It is about like the Challenger disaster was. But this is an event that we will remember for a long time, probably in the top 10 in my lifetime. I just hope that it does not put an end to space exploration.

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